An Inexperienced Army

An Inexperienced Army. The Battle of Richmond, Kentucky. Gen. Mahlon Manson's brigade had almost no combat experience. The "grizzled veterans” of the brigade were the 18th Kentucky. Detachments of the regiment had fought at the Battle of Cynthiana in July and participated in skirmishes in Paris and Mt. Sterling. The 55th Indiana, mustered in in June, had some training but no experience in battle., Most of the other regiments in Manson's brigade were mustered into service less than a week before they boarded the train for Kentucky on August 20-just ten days before the battle. Although a few regiments had been organizing and drilling for several months, most of the men arrived with no military training to speak of. Manson's officers began drilling the men as soon as they arrived in Richmond but it was too little, too late., Manson's Hoosiers, the 71st, 69th, 16th and 55th Indiana, performed well on August 29, 1862 in their first action as a brigade, driving Col. John Scott's cavalry from the field. For most of the men it was their first service under fire. The next day, however, the inexperience of Manson's army was woefully apparent. The men fought well given their limited training and experience but they faced an experienced Confederate army, men who had fought together many times and in many places, including the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee., "The men knew nothing of the duties or habits of soldiers. Most of them had been less than a fortnight away from their homes. They could but indifferently execute some of the simplest movements in the manual of arms, but knew nothing whatever of company or battalion drill. Both officers and men were earnest and brave, but wholly inexperienced and untrained." , Gen. Charles Cruft, "We had been in camp little more than a week when our regiment was ordered to the front. Boarding a long train of box cars without seats, we traveled via Cincinnati to Lexington, Kentucky.” David LeSourd, 12 Indiana, "Slept in freight cars. Next morning we were turned out of one car into another until very near dinner when we started for this place. We arrived in Lexington, Ky. tired, hungry and sleepy on Sunday night between 9 and 10 o'clock.” David F. Rohrer, 95 Ohio, General Manson led an army of 6,500 men, for the most part inexperienced new recruits, against an equal number of seasoned Confederates.