General Braxton Bragg's second Confederate invasion of Kentucky includes Edmund Kirby Smith's triumph at the Battle of Richmond and ends with a meaningless victory over Major General Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville.

Bragg is forced to end his attempt at invading Kentucky and retreat due to lack of support for the Confederacy in that state.

General Braxton Bragg is able to reach Chattanooga before Buell can, even though he had not left Tupelo until July 21.

Bragg's general plan is to invade Kentucky in a joint operation with Major General Edmund Kirby Smith, cut Buell's lines of communications, defeat him, then turn back to defeat Grant.

General Edmund Kirby Smith had left Knoxville on August 14, forced the Union to evacuate Cumberland Gap, defeated a small Union force at the Battle of Richmond (Kentucky), and reaches Lexington on August 30.

Bragg had departed Chattanooga just before Smith reached Lexington, while Buell moved north from Nashville to Bowling Green, but Bragg had moved quickly and by September 14 had interposed his army on Buell's supply lines from Louisville.

Bragg is reluctant to develop this situation because he is outnumbered by Buell; if he had been able to combine with Kirby Smith, he would have been numerically equal, but Smith's command is separate, and Smith believes that Bragg can capture Louisville without his assistance.

...Harrodsburg, where he is joined by Kirby Smith's Army of Kentucky on October 10.

Despite having a strong combined force, Bragg makes no attempt to regain the initiative.

Buell is equally passive.

Bragg retreats through the Cumberland Gap and returns to Murfreesboro by way of Chattanooga.

The Union government had replaced Buell on October 24 with Rosecrans, who has renamed his force the Army of the Cumberland.

After a period of resupplying and training his army in Nashville, Rosecrans moves against Bragg at Murfreesboro just after Christmas.

In the Battle of Stones River, Bragg surprises Rosecrans with a powerful assault on December 31, pushing the Union forces back to a small perimeter against the Stones River.

General Kirby Smith in Texas is informed by the Confederacy's President Jefferson Davis after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863 that he can expect no further help from east of the Mississippi River.

Although he lacks resources to beat Union armies, he builds up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international smuggling.

The Union in turn does not directly engage him.

The last land battle of the civil war, the Battle of Palmito Ranch in far south Texas on May 13, 1865, more than a month after Confederate General Lee's surrender, ends with a Confederate victory.

Why the battle happened remains something of a mystery.

The French Foreign Legion was occupying neighboring Matamoros, Mexico at the time, and was said to have reinforced the Confederate forces in Brownsville.

Theodore H. Barrett's detractors among the brigade suggested soon after the battle that he had desired "a little battlefield glory before the war ended altogether." (Marvel, William. "Last Hurrah at Palmetto Ranch." Civil War Times, January 2006 (Vol. XLIV, No. 6); p. 69)

Others theorized that Barrett needed horses for the three hundred dismounted cavalry in his brigade and for other purposes.

In Barrett's official report of August 10, 1865, he will report one hundred and fifteen Union casualties: one killed, nine wounded, and one hundred and five captured.

Confederate casualties will be reported as five or six wounded, with none killed.

Historian and Ford biographer Stephen B. Oates, however, concludes that Union deaths were much higher, numbering approximately thirty, many of whom drowned in the Rio Grande or were attacked and killed by French border guards on the Mexican side.

He likewise estimated Confederate casualties at approximately the same number.

The last Confederate army under General Edmund Kirby Smith surrenders on June 2 to Canby at Shreveport, Louisiana.