A Bold Move

The fight at Kingston began around dawn on August 30, 1862, with skirmishers on both sides trading shots. Upon being notified of the exchange, Union Gen. Mahlon Manson led his men south along the State Road. He deployed his brigade of the Army of Kentucky along the ridges on either side of Mt. Zion Church, placing artillery between each of the three infantry regiments. Another infantry regiment was held in reserve. While the Union forces marched south, a Confederate division under Gen. Patrick Cleburne pushed north from Bobtown. Soon a terrific artillery duel began. The barrage was heard as far away as Winchester.

Cleburne's commander Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, arrived with a plan to turn the Union flank at Mt. Zion Church. Kirby Smith's second division, under the command of Gen. Thomas J. Churchill, was ordered to march up a ravine formed by Mound Creek west of the State Road, a move that allowed them to escape detection by the Union soldiers near the church.

The maneuver worked. Around 10 a.m., the Confederates burst out of the ravine, charged across a field and hit the Union right flank. At the same time, the remainder of the Confederates attacked the Union left and center. The coordinated attacks by the veteran Confederate troops proved too much for Manson's raw soldiers. As one Confederate put it, "We charged through the open field in face of a perfect storm of bullets, and scattered the enemy like chaff before the wind."

Mound Creek ravine or as it is locally known, Churhill's draw, is just to the west of this location. Its position is marked by the tree line in front of you.

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When Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith arrived on the field just north of Kingston, he had already devised a solid, simple plan to defeat the Union soldiers facing his small army. According to historian Dean Warren Lambert: "What Kirby Smith was doing was simple, good, common-sense soldiering." The maneuver of sending half of Churchill's men up the ravine was a simple flanking move and it worked to perfection.

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