The first of May proved, instead, a true April day, of the most fickle and changeable type. Gusts of rain and wind alternated with flashes of bright sunshine. The second battalion of the Third Regiment arrived, and the work of completing the cantonments went on. The huts which were half finished yesterday were now put in good order, and in building the new ones the men profited by the experience of their comrades. We were however suddenly thrown into one of those small tempests which it is so easy to get up in a new camp, and which for the moment always seems to have an importance out of all proportion to its real consequence. Captain Rosecrans, as engineer, was superintending the work of building, and finding that the companies were putting floors and bunks in their huts, he peremptorily ordered that these should be taken out, insisting that the huts were only intended to take the place of tents and give such shelter as tents could give. The company and regimental officers loudly protested, and the men were swelling with indignation and wrath. Soon both parties were before me; Rosecrans hot and impetuous, holding a high tone, and making use of General McClellan's name in demanding, as an officer of his staff, that the floors should be torn out, and the officers of the regiments held responsible for obedience to the order that no more should be made. He fairly bubbled with anger at the presumption of those who questioned his authority. As soon as a little quiet could be got, I asked Rosecrans if he had specific orders from the general that the huts should have no floors. No, he had not, but his staff position as engineer gave him sufficient control of the subject. I said I would examine the matter and submit it to General McClellan, and meanwhile the floors already built might remain, though no new ones should be made till the question was decided. I reported to the general that, in my judgment, the huts should have floors and bunks, because the ground was wet when they were built,--they could not be struck like tents to dry and air the earth, and they were meant to be permanent quarters for the rendezvous of troops for an indefinite time. The decision of McClellan was in accordance with the report. Rosecrans acquiesced, and indeed seemed rather to like me the better on finding that I was not carried away by the assumption of indefinite power by a staff officer.

This little flurry over, the quarters were soon got in as comfortable shape as rough lumber could make them, and the work of drill and instruction was systematized. The men were not yet armed, so there was no temptation to begin too soon with the manual of the musket, and they were kept industriously employed in marching in single line, by file, in changing direction, in forming columns of fours from double line, etc., before their guns were put in their hands. Each regiment was treated as a separate camp, with its own chain of sentinels, and the officers of the guard were constantly busy teaching guard and picket duty theoretically to the reliefs off duty, and inspecting the sentinels on post. Schools were established in each regiment for field and staff and for the company officers, and Hardee's Tactics was in the hands of everybody who could procure a copy. It was one of our great inconveniences that the supply of the authorized Tactics was soon exhausted, and it was difficult to get the means of instruction in the company schools. An abridgment was made and published in a very few days by Thomas Worthington, a graduate of West Point in one of the earliest classes,--of 1827, I think,--a son of one of the first governors of Ohio. This eccentric officer had served in the regular army and in the Mexican War, and was full of ideas, but was of so irascible and impetuous a temper that he was always in collision with the powers that be, and spoiled his own usefulness. He was employed to furnish water to the camp by contract, and whilst he ruined himself in his efforts to do it well, he was in perpetual conflict with the troops, who capsized his carts, emptied his barrels, and made life a burden to him. The quarrel was based on his taking the water from the river just opposite the camp, though there was a slaughter-house some distance above. Worthington argued that the distance was such that the running water purified itself; but the men wouldn't listen to his science, vigorously enforced as it was by idiomatic expletives, and there was no safety for his water-carts till he yielded. He then made a reservoir on one of the hills, filled it by a steam-pump, and carried the water by pipes to the regimental camps at an expense beyond his means, and which, as it was claimed that the scheme was unauthorized, was never half paid for. His subsequent career as colonel of a regiment was no more happy, and talents that seemed fit for highest responsibilities were wasted in chafing against circumstances which made him and fate seem to be perpetually playing at cross purposes. [Footnote: He was later colonel of the Forty-sixth Ohio, and became involved in a famous controversy with Halleck and Sherman over his conduct in the Shiloh campaign and the question of fieldworks there. He left the service toward the close of 1862.]

A very different character was Joshua W. Sill, who was sent to us as ordnance officer. He too had been a regular army officer, but of the younger class. Rather small and delicate in person, gentle and refined in manner, he had about him little that answered to the popular notion of a soldier. He had resigned from the army some years before, and was a professor in an important educational institution in Brooklyn, N. Y., when at the first act of hostility he offered his services to the governor of Ohio, his native State. After our day's work, we walked together along the railway, discussing the political and military situation, and especially the means of making most quickly an army out of the splendid but untutored material that was collecting about us. Under his modest and scholarly exterior I quickly discerned a fine temper in the metal, that made his after career no enigma to me, and his heroic death at the head of his division in the thickest of the strife at Stone's River no surprise.

The two regiments which began the encampment were quickly followed by others, and the arriving regiments sometimes had their first taste of camp life under circumstances well calculated to dampen their ardor. The Fourth Ohio, under Colonel Lorin Andrews, President of Kenyon College, came just before a thunderstorm one evening, and the bivouac that night was as rough a one as his men were likely to experience for many a day. They made shelter by placing boards from the fence tops to the ground, but the fields were level and soon became a mire, so that they were a queer-looking lot when they crawled out next morning. The sun was then shining bright, however, and they had better cover for their heads by the next night. The Seventh Ohio, which was recruited in Cleveland and on the Western Reserve, sent a party in advance to build some of their huts, and though they too came in a rain-storm, they were less uncomfortable than some of the others. Three brigades were organized from the regiments of the Ohio contingent, exclusive of the two which had been hurried to Washington. The brigadiers, beside myself, were Generals Joshua H. Bates and Newton Schleich. General Bates, who was the senior, was a graduate of West Point, who had served some years in the regular army, but had resigned and adopted the profession of the law. He lived at Cincinnati, and organized his brigade in that city. They marched to Camp Dennison on the 20th of May, when, by virtue of his seniority, General Bates assumed command of the camp in McClellan's absence. His brigade consisted of the Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth regiments, and encamped on the east side of the railroad in the bend of the river. General Schleich was a Democratic senator, who had been in the state militia, and was also one of the drill-masters of the legislative squad which had drilled upon the Capitol terrace. His brigade included the Third, Twelfth, and Thirteenth regiments, and, with mine, occupied the fields on the west side of the railroad close to the slopes of the hills. My own brigade was made up of the Fourth, Seventh, Eighth, and Eleventh regiments, and our position was the southernmost in the general camp. McClellan had intended to make his own headquarters in the camp; but the convenience of attending to official business in Cincinnati kept him in the city. His purpose was to make the brigade organizations permanent, and to take them as a division to the field when they were a little prepared for the work. Like many other good plans, it failed to be carried out. I was the only one of the brigadiers who remained in the service after the first enlistment for ninety days, and it was my fate to take the field with new regiments, only one of which had been in my brigade in camp. Schleich did not show adaptation to field work, and though taken into West Virginia with McClellan in June, he was relieved of active service in a few weeks. He afterward sought and obtained the colonelcy of the Sixty-first Ohio; but his service with it did not prove a success, and he resigned in September, 1862, under charges. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 308-310.] General Bates had some reason to expect an assignment to staff duty with McClellan, and therefore declined a colonelcy in the line at the end of the three months' service. He was disappointed in this expectation after waiting some time for it, and returned to civil life with the regrets of his comrades. There were some disappointments, also, in the choice of regimental officers who were elected in the regiments first organized, but were afterward appointed by the governor. The companies were organized and assigned to regiments before they came to camp, but the regimental elections were held after the companies were assembled. Garfield was a candidate for the colonelcy of the Seventh Regiment, but as he was still engaged in important public duties and was not connected with any company, he was at a disadvantage in the sort of competition which was then rife. He was defeated,--a greater disappointment to me than to him, for I had hoped that our close friendship would be made still closer by comradeship in the field. In a few weeks he was made colonel of the Forty-second Ohio, in the second levy.

Up to the time that General Bates relieved me of the command of the camp, and indeed for two or three days longer, the little schoolhouse was my quarters as well as telegraph and express office. We had cleared out most of the desks and benches, but were still crowded together, day and night, in a way which was anything but comfortable or desirable. Sheds for quartermaster's and subsistence stores were of first necessity, and the building of a hut for myself and staff had to be postponed till these were up. On the arrival of General Bates with two or three staff officers, the necessity for more room could not be longer ignored, and my own hut was built on the slope of the hillside behind my brigade, close under the wooded ridge, and here for the next six weeks was my home. The morning brought its hour of business correspondence relating to the command; then came the drill, when the parade ground was full of marching companies and squads. Officers' drill followed, with sword exercise and pistol practice. The day closed with the inspection of the regiments in turn at dress parade, and the evening was allotted to schools of theoretic tactics, outpost duty, and the like. Besides their copies of the regulation tactics, officers supplied themselves with such manuals as Mahan's books on Field Fortifications and on Outpost Duty. I adopted at the beginning a rule to have some military work in course of reading, and kept it up even in the field, sending home one volume and getting another by mail. In this way I gradually went through all the leading books I could find both in English and in French, including the whole of Jomini's works, his histories as well as his "Napoleon" and his "Grandes OpÉrations Militaires." I know of no intellectual stimulus so valuable to the soldier as the reading of military history narrated by an acknowledged master in the art of war. To see what others have done in important junctures, and to have both their merits and their mistakes analyzed by a competent critic, rouses one's mind to grapple with the problem before it, and begets a generous determination to try to rival in one's own sphere of action the brilliant deeds of soldiers who have made a name in other times. Then the example of the vigorous way in which history will at last deal with those who fail when the pinch comes, tends to keep a man up to his work and to make him avoid the rock on which so many have split, the disposition to take refuge in doing nothing when he finds it difficult to decide what should be done.

The first fortnight in camp was the hardest for the troops. The ploughed fields became deep with mud, which nothing could remove but the good weather which should allow them to pack hard under the continued tramp of thousands of men. The organization of the camp kitchens had to be learned by the hardest also, and the men in each company who had some aptitude for cooking had to be found by a slow process of natural selection, during which many an unpalatable meal had to be eaten. A disagreeable bit of information came to us in the proof that more than half the men had never had the contagious diseases of infancy. The measles broke out, and we had to organize a camp hospital at once. A large barn near by was taken for this purpose, and the surgeons had their hands full of cases which, however trivial they might seem at home, were here aggravated into dangerous illness by the unwonted surroundings and the impossibility of securing the needed protection from exposure. As soon as the increase of sickness in the camp was known in Cincinnati, the good women of that city took promptly in hand the task of providing nurses for the sick, and proper diet and delicacies for hospital uses. The Sisters of Charity, under the lead of Sister Anthony, a noble woman, came out in force, and their black and white robes harmonized picturesquely with the military surroundings, as they flitted about under the rough timber framing of the old barn, carrying comfort and hope from one rude couch to another. As to supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a requisition for rations or for clothing, and easy as it is to rail at "red tape," the necessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement and wastefulness justified the staff bureaus at Washington in insisting upon regular vouchers to support the quartermaster's and commissary's accounts. But here, too, men were gradually found who had special talent for the work.

The infallible newspapers had no lack of material for criticism. There were plenty of real blunders to invite it, but the severest blame was quite as likely to be visited upon men and things which did not deserve it. The governor was violently attacked for things which he had no responsibility for, or others in which he had done all that forethought and intelligence could do. When everybody had to learn a new business, it would have been miraculous if grave errors had not frequently occurred. Looking back at it, the wonder is that the blunders and mishaps had not been tenfold more numerous than they were. By the middle of May the confusion had given place to reasonable system, but we were now obliged to meet the embarrassments of reorganization for three years, under the President's second call for troops. We had more than ten thousand men who had begun to know something of their duties, and it was worth a serious effort to transfer them into the permanent service; but no one who did not go through the ordeal can imagine how trying it was. In every company some discontented spirits wanted to go home, shrinking from the perils to which they had committed themselves in a moment of enthusiasm. For a few to go back, however, would be a disgrace; and every dissatisfied man, to avoid the odium of going alone, became a mischief-maker, seeking to prevent the whole company from re-enlisting. The recruiting of a majority was naturally made the condition of allowing the company organization to be preserved, and a similar rule applied to the regiment. The growing discipline was relaxed or lost in the solicitations, the electioneering, the speech-making, and the other common arts of persuasion. After a majority had re-enlisted and an organization was secure, it would have been better to have discharged the remaining three months' men and to have sent them home at once; but authority for this could not be got, for the civil officers could not see, and did not know what a nuisance these men were. Dissatisfied with themselves for not going with their comrades, they became sulky, disobedient, complaining, trying to make the others as unhappy as themselves by arguing that faith was not kept with them, and doing all the mischief it was possible to do.

In spite of all these discouragements, however, the daily drills and instruction went on with some approach to regularity, and our raw volunteers began to look more like soldiers. Captain Gordon Granger of the regular army came to muster the re-enlisted regiments into the three years' service, and as he stood at the right of the Fourth Ohio, looking down the line of a thousand stalwart men, all in their Garibaldi shirts (for we had not yet received our uniforms), he turned to me and exclaimed: "My God! that such men should be food for powder!" It certainly was a display of manliness and intelligence such as had hardly ever been seen in the ranks of an army. There were in camp at that time three if not four companies, in different regiments, that were wholly made up of undergraduates of colleges who had enlisted together, their officers being their tutors and professors; and where there was not so striking evidence as this of the enlistment of the best of our youth, every company could still show that it was largely recruited from the best-nurtured and most promising young men of the community.

Granger had been in the Southwest when the secession movement began, had seen the formation of military companies everywhere, and the incessant drilling which had been going on all winter, whilst we, in a strange condition of political paralysis, had been doing nothing. His information was eagerly sought by us all, and he lost no opportunity of impressing upon us the fact that the South was nearly six months ahead of us in organization and preparation. He did not conceal his belief that we were likely to find the war a much longer and more serious piece of business than was commonly expected, and that unless we pushed hard our drilling and instruction we should find ourselves at a disadvantage in our earlier encounters. What he said had a good effect in making officers and men take more willingly to the laborious routine of the parade ground and the regimental school; for such opinions as his soon ran through the camp, and they were commented upon by the enlisted men quite as earnestly as among the officers. Still, hope kept the upper hand, and if the question had been put to vote, I believe that three-fourths of us still cherished the belief that a single campaign would end the war.

In the organization of my own brigade I had the assistance of Captain McElroy, a young man who had nearly completed the course at West Point, and who was subsequently made major of the Twentieth Ohio. He was sent to the camp by the governor as a drill officer, and I assigned him to staff duty. For commissary, I detailed Lieutenant Gibbs, who accompanied one of the regiments from Cincinnati, and who had seen a good deal of service as clerk in one of the staff departments of the regular army. I had also for a time the services of one of the picturesque adventurers who turn up in such crises. In the Seventh Ohio was a company recruited in Cleveland, of which the nucleus was an organization of Zouaves, existing for some time before the war. It was made up of young men who had been stimulated by the popularity of Ellsworth's Zouaves in Chicago to form a similar body. They had had as their drill master a Frenchman named De Villiers. His profession was that of a teacher of fencing; but he had been an officer in Ellsworth's company, and was familiar with fancy manoeuvres for street parade, and with a special skirmish drill and bayonet exercise. Small, swarthy, with angular features, and a brusque, military manner, in a showy uniform and jaunty kÉpi of scarlet cloth, covered with gold lace, he created quite a sensation among us. His assumption of knowledge and experience was accepted as true. He claimed to have been a surgeon in the French army in Algiers, though we afterward learned to doubt if his rank had been higher than that of a barber-surgeon of a cavalry troop. From the testimonials he brought with him, I thought I was doing a good thing in making him my brigade-major, as the officer was then called whom we afterward knew as inspector-general. He certainly was a most indefatigable fellow, and went at his work with an enthusiasm that made him very useful for a time. It was worth something to see a man who worked with a kind of dash,--with a prompt, staccato movement that infused spirit and energy into all around him. He would drill all day, and then spend half the night trying to catch sentinels and officers of the guard at fault in their duty. My first impression was that I had got hold of a most valuable man, and others were so much of the same mind that in the reorganization of regiments he was successively elected major of the Eighth, and then colonel of the Eleventh. We shall see more of him as we go on; but it turned out that his sharp discipline was not steady or just; his knowledge was only skin-deep, and he had neither the education nor the character for so responsible a situation as he was placed in. He nearly plagued the life out of the officers of his regiment before they got rid of him, and was a most brilliant example of the way we were imposed upon by military charlatans at the beginning. He was, however, good proof also of the speed with which real service weeds out the undesirable material which seemed so splendid in the days of common inexperience and at a distance from danger. We had visits from clerical adventurers, too, for the "pay and emoluments of a captain of cavalry" which the law gave to a chaplain induced some to seek the office who were not the best representatives of their profession. One young man who had spent a morning soliciting the appointment in one of the regiments, came to me in a shamefaced sort of way before leaving camp and said, "General, before I decide this matter, I wish you would tell me just what are the pay and emoluments of a Captain of Calvary!" Though most of our men were native Ohioans, General Bates's brigade had in it two regiments made up of quite contrasted nationalities. The Ninth Ohio was recruited from the Germans of Cincinnati, and was commanded by Colonel "Bob" McCook. In camp, the drilling of the regiment fell almost completely into the hands of the adjutant, Lieutenant Willich (afterward a general of division), and McCook, who humorously exaggerated his own lack of military knowledge, used to say that he was only "clerk for a thousand Dutchmen," so completely did the care of equipping and providing for his regiment engross his time and labor. The Tenth was an Irish regiment, and its men used to be proud of calling themselves the "Bloody Tinth." The brilliant Lytle was its commander, and his control over them, even in the beginning of their service and near the city of their home, showed that they had fallen into competent hands. It happened, of course, that the guard-house pretty frequently contained representatives of the Tenth who, on the short furloughs that were allowed them, took a parting glass too much with their friends in the city, and came to camp boisterously drunk. But the men of the regiment got it into their heads that the Thirteenth, which lay just opposite them across the railroad, took a malicious pleasure in filling the guard-house with the Irishmen. Some threats had been made that they would go over and "clean out" the Thirteenth, and one fine evening these came to a head. I suddenly got orders from General Bates to form my brigade, and march them at once between the Tenth and Thirteenth to prevent a collision which seemed imminent. My brigade was selected because it was the one to which neither of the angry regiments belonged, the others being ordered into their quarters. My little Frenchman, De Villiers, covered himself with glory. His horse flew, under the spur, to the regimental headquarters, the long roll was beaten as if the drummers realized the full importance of the first opportunity to sound that warlike signal, and the brigade-major's somewhat theatrical energy was so contagious that many of the companies were assembled and ready to file out of the company streets before the order reached them. We marched by the moonlight into the space between the belligerent regiments; but Lytle had already got his own men under control, and the less mercurial Thirteenth were not disposed to be aggressive, so that we were soon dismissed with a compliment for our promptness. I ordered the colonels to march the regiments back to the camps separately, and with my staff rode through that of the Thirteenth, to see how matters were there. All was quiet, the men being in their quarters; so, turning, I passed along near the railway, in rear of the quartermaster's sheds. In the shadow of the buildings I had nearly ridden over some one on foot, when he addressed me, and I recognized an officer of high rank in that brigade. He was in great agitation, and exclaimed, "Oh, General, what a horrible thing that brothers should be killing each other!" I assured him the danger of that was all over, and rode on, wondering a little at his presence in that place under the circumstances.

The six weeks of our stay in Camp Dennison seem like months in the retrospect, so full were they crowded with new experiences. The change came in an unexpected way. The initiative taken by the Confederates in West Virginia had to be met by prompt action, and McClellan was forced to drop his own plans to meet the emergency. The organization and equipment of the regiments for the three years' service were still incomplete, and the brigades were broken up, to take across the Ohio the regiments best prepared to go. One by one my regiments were ordered away, till finally, when on the 3d of July I received orders to proceed to the Kanawha valley, I had but one of the four regiments to which I had been trying to give something of unity and brigade feeling, and that regiment (the Eleventh Ohio) was still incomplete. General Bates fared even worse; for he saw all his regiments ordered away, whilst he was left to organize new ones from freshly recruited companies that were sent to the camp. This was discouraging to a brigade commander, for even with veteran troops mutual acquaintance between the officer and his command is a necessary condition of confidence and a most important element of strength. My own assignment to the Great Kanawha district was one I had every reason to be content with, except that for several months I felt the disadvantage I suffered from assuming command of troops which I had never seen till we met in the field.

The period of organization, brief as it was, had been valuable to the regiments, and it had been of the utmost importance to secure the re-enlistment of those which had received some instruction. It had been, in the condition of the statute law, from necessity and not from choice that the Administration had called out the state militia for ninety days. The new term of enrolment was for "three years or the war," and the forces were now designated as United States Volunteers. It would have been well if the period of apprenticeship could have been prolonged; but events would not wait. All recognized the necessity, and thankful as we should have been for a longer preparation and more thorough instruction, we were eager to be ordered away.

McClellan had been made a major-general in the regular army, and a department had been placed under his command which included the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to which was added a little later West Virginia north of the Great Kanawha. [Footnote: McClellan's Report and Campaigns (New York, 1864), p. 8. McClellan's Own Story, p. 44. Official Records, vol. ii. p. 633.] Rosecrans was also appointed a brigadier-general in the regulars, and there was much debate at the time whether the Administration had intended this. Many insisted that he was nominated for the volunteer service, and that the regular appointment was a clerical mistake in the bureaus at Washington. There was no solid foundation for this gossip. A considerable increase of the regular army was authorized by law, and corresponding appointments were made, from major-general downward. It was at this time that Sherman was made colonel of one of the new regiments of regulars. It would perhaps have been wiser to treat the regular commissions as prizes to be won only by conspicuous and successful service in the field, as was done later; but this policy was not then adopted, and the newly created offices were filled in all grades. They were, of course, given to men from whom great services could reasonably be expected; but when none had been tested in the great operations of war, every appointment was at the risk that the officer might not show the special talent for command which makes a general. It was something of a lottery, at best; but the system would have been improved if a method of retiring inefficient officers had been adopted at once. The ostensible reason for the different organization of volunteers and regulars was that the former, as a temporary force to meet an exigency, might be wholly disbanded when the war should end, without affecting the permanent army, which was measured in size by the needs of the country in its normal condition.

On July 13th we moved again, making about ten miles, and finding the navigation becoming difficult by reason of the low water. At several shoals in the stream rough wing-dams had been built from the sides to concentrate the water in the channel, and at Knob Shoals, in one of these "chutes" as they were called, a coal barge had sometime before been sunk. In trying to pass it our leading boat grounded, and, the current being swift, it was for a time doubtful if we should get her off. We finally succeeded, however, and the procession of boats slowly steamed up the rapids. We had hardly got beyond them when we heard a distant cannon-shot from our advance-guard which had opened a long distance between them and us during our delay. We steamed rapidly ahead. Soon we saw a man pulling off from the south bank in a skiff. Nearing the steamer, he stood up and excitedly shouted that a general engagement had begun. We laughingly told him it couldn't be very general till we got in, and we moved on, keeping a sharp outlook for our parties on either bank. When we came up to them, we learned that a party of horsemen had appeared on the southern side of the river and had opened a skirmishing fire, but had scampered off as if the Old Nick were after them when a shell from the rifled gun was sent over their heads. The shell, like a good many that were made in those days, did not explode, and the simple people of the vicinity who had heard its long-continued scream told our men some days after that they thought it was "going yet."

From this time some show of resistance was made by the enemy, and the skirmishing somewhat retarded the movement. Still, about ten miles was made each day till the evening of the 16th, when we encamped at the mouth of the Pocotaligo, a large creek which enters the Kanawha from the north. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 418.] The evening before, we had had one of those incidents, not unusual with new troops, which prove that nothing but habit can make men cool and confident in their duties. We had, as usual, moored our boats to the northern bank and made our camp there, placing an outpost on the left bank opposite us supporting a chain of sentinels, to prevent a surprise from that direction. A report of some force of the enemy in their front made me order another detachment to their support after nightfall. The detachment had been told off and ferried across in small boats. They were dimly seen marching in the starlight up the river after landing, when suddenly a shot was heard, and then an irregular volley was both seen and heard as the muskets flashed out in the darkness. A supporting force was quickly sent over, and, no further disturbance occurring, a search was made for an enemy, but none was found. A gun had accidentally gone off in the squad, and the rest of the men, surprised and bewildered, had fired, they neither knew why nor at what. Two men were killed, and several others were hurt. This and the chaffing the men got from their comrades was a lesson to the whole command. The soldiers were brave enough, and were thoroughly ashamed of themselves, but they were raw; that was all that could be said of it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 421.]

We were here overtaken by the Second Kentucky, which had stopped at Guyandotte on its way up the river, and had marched across the country to join us after our progress had sufficiently covered that lower region. From Guyandotte a portion of the regiment, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Neff, had gone to Barboursville and had attacked and dispersed an encampment of Confederates which was organizing there. It was a very creditable little action, in which officers and men conducted themselves well, and which made them for the time the envy of the rest of the command.

The situation at "Poca," as it was called in the neighborhood, was one which made the further advance of the army require some consideration. Information which came to us from loyal men showed that some force of the enemy was in position above the mouth of Scary Creek on the south side of the Kanawha, and about three miles from us. We had for two days had constant light skirmishing with the advance-guard of Wise's forces on the north bank of the river, and supposed that the principal part of his command was on our side, and not far in front of us. It turned out in fact that this was so, and that Wise had placed his principal camp at Tyler Mountain, a bold spur which reaches the river on the northern side (on which is also the turnpike road), about twelve miles above my position, while he occupied the south side with a detachment. The Pocotaligo, which entered the river from the north at our camp, covered us against an attack on that side; but we could not take our steam-boats further unless both banks of the river were cleared. We had scarcely any wagons, for those which had been promised us could not yet be forwarded, and we must either continue to keep the steamboats with us, or organize wagon transportation and cut loose from the boats. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 420; dispatch of 17th also.] My urgent dispatches were hurrying the wagons toward us, but meanwhile I hoped the opposition on the south bank of the river would prove trifling, for artillery in position at any point on the narrow river would at once stop navigation of our light and unarmed transports. On the morning of the 17th a reconnoitering party sent forward on the south side of the river under command of Lieutenant-Colonel White of the Twelfth Ohio, reported the enemy about five hundred strong intrenched on the further side of Scary Creek, which was not fordable at its mouth, but could be crossed a little way up the stream. Colonel Lowe of the Twelfth requested the privilege of driving off this party with his regiment accompanied by our two cannon. He was ordered to do so, whilst the enemy's skirmishers should be pushed back from the front of the main column, and it should be held ready to advance rapidly up the north bank of the river as soon as the hostile force at Scary Creek should be dislodged.

The Twelfth and two companies of the Twenty-first Ohio were ferried over and moved out soon after noon. The first reports from them were encouraging and full of confidence, the enemy were retreating and they had dismounted one of his guns; but just before evening they returned, bringing the account of their repulse in the effort to cross at the mouth of the creek, and their failure to find the ford a little higher up. Their ammunition had run short, some casualties had occurred, and they had become discouraged and given it up. Their loss was 10 men killed and 35 wounded. If they had held on and asked for assistance, it would have been well enough; but, as was common with new troops, they passed from confidence to discouragement as soon as they were checked, and they retreated.

The affair was accompanied by another humiliating incident which gave me no little chagrin. During the progress of the engagement Colonel Woodruff and Lieutenant-Colonel Neff of the Second Kentucky, with Colonel De Villiers of the Eleventh Ohio, rode out in front, on the north bank of the river, till they came opposite the enemy's position, the hostile party on our side of the stream having fallen back beyond this point. They were told by a negro that the rebels were in retreat, and they got the black man to ferry them over in a skiff, that they might be the first to congratulate their friends. To their amazement they were welcomed as prisoners by the Confederates, who greatly enjoyed their discomfiture. The negro had told the truth in saying that the enemy had been in retreat; for the fact was that both sides retreated, but the Confederates, being first informed of this, resumed their position and claimed a victory. The officers who were captured had gone out without permission, and, led on by the hare-brained De Villiers, had done what they knew was foolish and unmilitary, resulting for them in a severe experience in Libby Prison at Richmond, and for us in the momentary appearance of lack of discipline and order which could not fairly be charged upon the command. I reported the facts without disguise or apology, trusting to the future to remove the bad impression the affair must naturally make upon McClellan.

The report of the strength of the position attacked and our knowledge of the increasing difficulty of the ground before us, led me to conclude that the wisest course would be to await the arrival of the wagons, now daily expected, and then, with supplies for several days in hand, move independent of the steamers, which became only an embarrassment when it was advisable to leave the river road for the purpose of turning a fortified position like that we had found before us. We therefore rested quietly in our strong camp for several days, holding both banks of the river and preparing to move the main column by a country road leading away from the stream on the north side, and returning to it at Tyler Mountain, where Wise's camp was reported to be. I ordered up the First Kentucky from Ravenswood and Ripley, but its colonel found obstacles in his way, and did not join us till we reached Charleston the following week.

On the 23d of July I had succeeded in getting wagons and teams enough to supply the most necessary uses, and renewed the advance. We marched rapidly on the 24th by the circuitous route I have mentioned, leaving a regiment to protect the steamboats. The country was very broken and the roads very rough, but the enemy had no knowledge of our movement, and toward evening we again approached the river immediately in rear of their camp at Tyler Mountain. When we drove in their pickets, the force was panic-stricken and ran off, leaving their camp in confusion, and their supper which they were cooking but did not stop to eat. A little below the point where we reached the river, and on the other side, was the steamboat "Maffet" with a party of soldiers gathering the wheat which had been cut in the neighboring fields and was in the sheaf. I was for a moment doubtful whether it might not be one of our own boats which had ventured up the river under protection of the regiment left behind, and directed our skirmishers who were deployed along the edge of the water to hail the other side. "Who are you?" was shouted from both banks simultaneously. "United States troops," our men answered. "Hurrah for Jeff Davis!" shouted the others, and a rattling fire opened on both sides. A shell was sent from our cannon into the steamer, and the party upon her were immediately seen jumping ashore, having first set fire to her to prevent her falling into our hands. The enemy then moved away on that side, under cover of the trees which lined the river bank. Night was now falling, and, sending forward an advance-guard to follow up the force whose camp we had surprised, we bivouacked on the mountain side.

In the morning, as we were moving out at an early hour, we were met by the mayor and two or three prominent citizens of Charleston who came to surrender the town to us, Wise having hurriedly retreated during the night. He had done a very unnecessary piece of mischief before leaving, in partly cutting off the cables of a fine suspension bridge which spans the Elk River at Charleston. As this stream enters the Kanawha from the north and below the city, it may have seemed to him that it would delay our progress; but as a large number of empty coal barges were lying at the town, it took our company of mechanics, under Captain Lane of the Eleventh Ohio, but a little while to improvise a good floating bridge, and part of the command passed through the town and camped beyond it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 425.] One day was now given to the establishment of a depot of supplies at Charleston and to the organization of regular communication by water with Gallipolis, and by wagons with such positions as we might occupy further up the river. Deputations of the townspeople were informed that it was not our policy to meddle with private persons who remained quietly at home, nor would we make any inquisition as to the personal opinions of those who attended strictly to their own business; but they were warned that any communication with the enemy would be remorselessly punished.

We were now able to get more accurate information about Wise's forces than we could obtain before, and this accorded pretty well with the strength which he reported officially. [Footnote: Ante, p. 63 note.] His infantry was therefore more than equal to the column under my command in the valley, whilst in artillery and in cavalry he was greatly superior. Our continued advance in the face of such opposition is sufficient evidence that the Confederate force was not well handled, for as the valley contracted and the hills crowded in closer to the river, nearly every mile offered positions in which small numbers could hold at bay an army. Our success in reaching Charleston was therefore good ground for being content with our progress, though I had to blame myself for errors in the management of my part of the campaign at Pocataligo. I ought not to have assumed as confidently as I did that the enemy was only five hundred strong at Scary Creek and that a detachment could dispose of that obstacle whilst the rest of the column prepared to advance on our principal line. Wise's force at that point was in fact double the number supposed. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. ii. p. 1011.] It is true it was very inconvenient to ferry any considerable body of troops back and forth across the river; but I should nevertheless have taken the bulk of my command to the left bank, and by occupying the enemy's attention at the mouth of Scary Creek, covered the movement of a sufficient force upon his flank by means of the fords farther up that stream. This would have resulted in the complete routing of the detachment, and it is nearly certain that I could have pushed on to Charleston at once, and could have waited there for the organization of my wagon train with the prestige of victory, instead of doing so at 'Poca' with the appearance of a check.

McClellan recognized the fact that he was asking me to face the enemy with no odds in my favor, and as soon as he heard that Wise was disposed to make a stand he directed me not to risk attacking him in front, but rather to await the result of his own movement toward the Upper Kanawha. [Footnote: Dispatches of July 16 and 20.] Rosecrans did the same when he assumed command; but I knew the hope had been that I would reach Gauley Bridge, and I was vexed that my movement should have the appearance of failing when I was conscious that we had not fairly measured our strength with my opponent. As soon, therefore, as the needful preparations could be made, I decided upon the turning movement which I have already described, and our resolute advance seems to have thrown Wise into a panic from which he did not recover till he got far beyond Gauley Bridge.

At Charleston I learned of the Bull Run disaster, and that McClellan had been ordered to Washington, leaving Rosecrans in command of our department. The latter sent me orders which implied that to reach Charleston was the most he could expect of me, and directing me to remain on the defensive if I should succeed in getting so far, whilst he should take up anew McClellan's plan of reaching the rear of Wise's army. [Footnote: Dispatches of July 26 and 29.] His dispatches, fortunately, did not reach me till I was close to Gauley Bridge and was sure of my ability to take possession of that defile, some forty miles above Charleston. An additional reason for my prompt advance was that the Twenty-first Ohio was not yet re-enlisted for the war, was only a "three months" regiment whose time was about to expire, and Governor Dennison had telegraphed me to send it back to Ohio. I left this regiment as a post-garrison at Charleston till it could be relieved by another, or till my success in reaching Gauley Bridge should enable me to send back a detachment for that post, and, on the 26th July, pushed forward with the rest of my column, which, now that the First Kentucky had joined me, consisted of four regiments. Our first night's encampment was about eleven miles above Charleston in a lovely nook between spurs of the hills. Here I was treated to a little surprise on the part of three of my subordinates which was an unexpected enlargement of my military experience. The camp had got nicely arranged for the night and supper was over, when these gentlemen waited upon me at my tent. The one who had shown the least capacity as commander of a regiment was spokesman, and informed me that after consultation they had concluded that it was foolhardy to follow the Confederates into the gorge we were travelling, and that unless I could show them satisfactory reasons for changing their opinion they would not lead their commands further into it. I dryly asked if he was quite sure he understood the nature of his communication. There was something probably in the tone of my question which was not altogether expected, and his companions began to look a little uneasy. He then protested that none of them meant any disrespect, but that as their military experience was about as extensive as my own, they thought I ought to make no movements but on consultation with them and by their consent. The others seemed to be better pleased with this way of putting it, and signified assent. My answer was that their conduct very plainly showed their own lack both of military experience and elementary military knowledge, and that this ignorance was the only thing which could palliate their action. Whether they meant it or not, their action was mutinous. The responsibility for the movement of the army was with me, and whilst I should be inclined to confer very freely with my principal subordinates and explain my purposes, I should call no councils of war, and submit nothing to vote till I felt incompetent to decide for myself. If they apologized for their conduct and showed earnestness in military obedience to orders, what they had now said would be overlooked, but on any recurrence of cause for complaint I should enforce my power by the arrest of the offender at once. I dismissed them with this, and immediately sent out the formal orders through my adjutant-general to march early next morning. Before they slept one of the three had come to me with earnest apology for his part in the matter, and a short time made them all as subordinate as I could wish. The incident could not have occurred in the brigade which had been under my command at Camp Dennison, and was a not unnatural result of the sudden assembling of inexperienced men under a brigade commander of whom they knew nothing except that at the beginning of the war he was a civilian like themselves. These very men afterward became devoted followers, and some of them life-long friends. It was part of their military education as well as mine. If I had been noisy and blustering in my intercourse with them at the beginning, and had done what seemed to be regarded as the "regulation" amount of cursing and swearing, they would probably have given me credit for military aptitude at least; but a systematic adherence to a quiet and undemonstrative manner evidently told against me, at first, in their opinion. Through my army life I met more or less of the same conduct when assigned to a new command; but when men learned that discipline would be inevitably enforced, and that it was as necessary to obey a quiet order as one emphasized by expletives, and especially when they had been a little under fire, there was no more trouble. Indeed, I was impressed with the fact that after this acquaintance was once made, my chief embarrassment in discipline was that an intimation of dissatisfaction on my part would cause deeper chagrin and more evident pain than I intended or wished.

The same march enabled me to make the acquaintance of another army "institution,"--the newspaper correspondent. We were joined at Charleston by two men representing influential Eastern journals, who wished to know on what terms they could accompany the column. The answer was that the quartermaster would furnish them with a tent and transportation, and that their letters should be submitted to one of the staff, to protect us from the publication of facts which might aid the enemy. This seemed unsatisfactory, and they intimated that they expected to be taken into my mess and to be announced as volunteer aides with military rank. They were told that military position or rank could only be given by authority much higher than mine, and that they could be more honestly independent if free from personal obligation and from temptation to repay favors with flattery. My only purpose was to put the matter upon the foundation of public right and of mutual self-respect. The day before we reached Gauley Bridge they opened the subject again to Captain McElroy, my adjutant-general, but were informed that I had decided it upon a principle by which I meant to abide. Their reply was, "Very well; General Cox thinks he can get along without us, and we will show him. We will write him down."

They left the camp the same evening, and wrote letters to their papers describing the army as demoralized, drunken, and without discipline, in a state of insubordination, and the commander as totally incompetent. As to the troops, more baseless slander was never uttered. Their march had been orderly. No wilful injury had been done to private property, and no case of personal violence to any non-combatant, man or woman, had been even charged. Yet the printing of such communications in widely read journals was likely to be as damaging as if it all were true. My nomination as Brigadier-General of U. S. Volunteers was then before the Senate for confirmation, and "the pen" would probably have proved "mightier than the sword" but for McClellan's knowledge of the nature of the task we had accomplished, as he was then in the flood-tide of power at Washington, and expressed his satisfaction at the performance of our part of the campaign which he had planned. By good fortune also, the injurious letters were printed at the same time with the telegraphic news of our occupation of Gauley Bridge and the retreat of the enemy out of the valley. [Footnote: As one of these correspondents became a writer of history, it is made proper to say that he was Mr. William Swinton, of whom General Grant has occasion to speak in his "Personal Memoirs" (vol. ii. p. 144), and whose facility in changing his point of view in historical writing was shown in his "McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed," which was published in 1864 by the Union Congressional Committee (first appearing in the "New York Times" of February, March, and April of that year), when compared with his "History of the Army of the Potomac" which appeared two years later. Burnside accused him of repeated instances of malicious libel of his command in June, 1864. Official Records, vol. xxxvi. pt. iii. p. 751.] I was, however, deeply convinced that my position was the right one, and never changed my rule of conduct in the matter. The relations of newspaper correspondents to general officers of the army became one of the crying scandals and notorious causes of intrigue and demoralization. It was a subject almost impossible to settle satisfactorily; but whoever gained or lost by cultivating this means of reputation, it is a satisfaction to have adhered throughout the war to the rule I first adopted and announced.

Wise made no resolute effort to oppose my march after I left Charleston, and contented himself with delaying us by his rear-guard, which obstructed the road by felling trees into it and by skirmishing with my head of column. We however advanced at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles a day, reaching Gauley Bridge on the morning of the 29th of July. Here we captured some fifteen hundred stands of arms and a considerable store of munitions which the Confederate general had not been able to carry away or destroy. It is safe to say that in the wild defile which we had threaded for the last twenty miles there were as many positions as there were miles in which he could easily have delayed my advance a day or two, forcing me to turn his flank by the most difficult mountain climbing, and where indeed, with forces so nearly equal, my progress should have been permanently barred. At Gauley Bridge he burned the structure which gave name to the place, and which had been a series of substantial wooden trusses resting upon heavy stone piers. My orders definitively limited me to the point we had now reached in my advance, and I therefore sent forward only a detachment to follow the enemy and keep up his precipitate retreat. Wise did not stop till he reached Greenbrier and the White Sulphur Springs, and there was abundant evidence that he regarded his movement as a final abandonment of this part of West Virginia. [Footnote: Floyd's Dispatches, Official Records, vol. li. pt. ii. pp. 208, 213.] A few weeks later General Lee came in person with reinforcements over the mountains and began a new campaign; but until the 20th of August we were undisturbed except by a petty guerilla warfare.

McClellan telegraphed from Washington his congratulations, [Footnote: Dispatch of August 1.] and Rosecrans expressed his satisfaction also in terms which assured me that we had done more than had been expected of us. [Footnote: Dispatch of July 31.] The good effect upon the command was also very apparent; for our success not only justified the policy of a determined advance, but the officers who had been timid as to results were now glad to get their share of the credit, and to make amends for their insubordination by a hearty change in bearing and conduct. My term of service as a brigadier of the Ohio forces in the three months' enrolment had now ended, and until the Senate should confirm my appointment as a United States officer there was some doubt as to my right to continue in command. My embarrassment in this regard was very pleasantly removed by a dispatch from General Rosecrans in which he conveyed the request of Lieutenant-General Scott and of himself that I should remain in charge of the Kanawha column. It was only a week, however, before notice of the confirmation was received, and dropping all thoughts of returning home, I prepared my mind for continuous active duty till the war should end.

General Rosecrans found the country so difficult a one that he was in no little doubt as to the plan of campaign it was now best to follow. It was out of the question to supply his column by wagon trains over the mountainous roads from Clarksburg, and the Kanawha River must therefore be made the line of communication with his base, which had to be transferred to Gallipolis. In anticipation of this, I had accumulated supplies and ordnance stores at Gauley Bridge as much as possible with my small wagon trains, and had arranged for a larger depot at the head of steamboat navigation. I was ready therefore to turn over the control of my supply lines to Rosecrans's officers of the quartermaster and commissary departments as soon as his wagon trains could be transferred. It was to consult in regard to these matters, as was as in regard to the future conduct of the campaign, that the general directed me to visit his headquarters at Carnifex Ferry. I rode over from my camp at the Sunday Road junction on the morning of the 15th, found that one of the little flatboats had been again raised and repaired at Carnifex, and passing through the field of the recent combat, reached the general's headquarters near Cross Lanes. I was able from personal observation to assure him that it was easy for his command to follow the line of the march on which Floyd had retreated, if better means of crossing the Gauley were provided; but when they should join me on the Lewisburg turnpike, that highway would be the proper line of supply, making Gauley Bridge his depot. He hesitated to commit himself to either line for decisive operations until the Gauley should be bridged, but on my description of the commodious ferry I had made at Gauley Bridge by means of a very large flatboat running along a hawser stretched from bank to bank, he determined to advance, and to have a bridge of boats made in place of my ferry. McCook's brigade was ordered to report to me as soon as it could be put over the river, and I was authorized to advance some six miles toward the enemy, to Alberson's or Spy Rock, already mentioned beyond which Big Sewell Mountain is fourteen miles further to the southwest. [Footnote: Official Records vol. v. p. 602.]

At Cross Lanes I met the commanders of the other brigades who were called in by General Rosecrans of an informal consultation based upon my knowledge of the country and the enemy. I naturally scanned them with some interest, and tried to make the most of the opportunity to become acquainted with them. General Benham I knew already, from his visit to me at Gauley Bridge in his capacity of engineer officer. I had met Colonel Robert McCook at Camp Dennison, and now that it was intimated that he would be for some days under my command, I recalled a scene I had witnessed there which left many doubts in my mind whether he would prove an agreeable subordinate. I had gone, one morning, to General Bates's office, and as I entered found McCook expressing himself with more vigor than elegance in regard to some order which had been issued respecting his regiment. My presence did not seem to interfere with the fluency of his remarks or the force of his expletives, but after a moment or two he seemed to notice a look of surprise in my face, and his own broadened humorously as his manner changed from vehemence to geniality. General Bates and he were familiar acquaintances at the bar in Cincinnati, and McCook had evidently presumed upon this as a warrant for speaking his mind as he pleased. When he reported to me at this later period, I found a hearty and loyal character under his bluff exterior and rough speech, with real courage, a quick eye for topography, and no lack of earnest subordination when work was to be done. Although our service together was short, I learned to have real respect for him, and sincerely mourned his loss when, later in the war, he met his tragic death. The other brigade commander was Colonel E. P. Scammon of the Twenty-third Ohio. He had graduated from West Point in 1837, and had served in the Topographical Engineers of the regular army and as instructor in the Military Academy. In the Mexican War he had been aide-de-camp to General Scott. He had been out of the army for some years before the rebellion, and was acting as professor of mathematics in St. Xavier's College, Cincinnati, when he was appointed to the colonelcy of the Twenty-third Ohio upon Rosecrans's promotion. Like Rosecrans, he was a Roman Catholic, though himself of Puritan descent. It seems that at the time of the Puseyite movement in England and in this country there had been a good many conversions to Romanism among the students and teachers at West Point, under the influence of the chaplain of the post, and Scammon, among a number of young men who subsequently became distinguished officers, was in this number. It need hardly be said that Scammon was well instructed in his profession. He was perhaps too much wedded to the routine of the service, and was looked upon by his subordinates as a martinet who had not patience enough with the inexperience of volunteer soldiers. He was one of the older men of our army, somewhat under the average height and weight, with a precise politeness of manner which reminded one of a Frenchman, and the resemblance was increased by his free use of his snuff-box. His nervous irritability was the cause of considerable chafing in his command, but this left him under fire, and those who had been with him in action learned to admire his courage and conduct. He was with me subsequently at South Mountain and Antietam, and still later had the misfortune to be one of those prisoners in the Confederates' hands who were exposed to the fire of our batteries in front of Charleston, S. C.

But being a subordinate, I was most interested in the characteristics of our commander. Our Camp Dennison acquaintance had been a pleasant one, and he greeted me with a cordiality that was reassuring. His general appearance was attractive. He was tall but not heavy, with the rather long head and countenance that is sometimes called Norman. His aquiline nose and bright eyes gave him an incisive expression, increased by rapid utterance in his speech, which was apt to grow hurried, almost to stammering, when he was excited. His impulsiveness was plain to all who approached him; his irritation quickly flashed out in words when he was crossed, and his social geniality would show itself in smiles and in almost caressing gestures when he was pleased. In discussing military questions he made free use of his theoretic knowledge, often quoted authorities and cited maxims of war, and compared the problem before him to analogous cases in military history. This did not go far enough to be pedantic, and was full of a lively intelligence; yet it did not impress me as that highest form of military insight and knowledge which solves the question before it upon its own merits and without conscious comparison with historical examples, through a power of judgment and perception ripened and broadened by the mastery of principles which have ruled the great campaigns of the world. He was fond of conviviality, loved to banter good-humoredly his staff officers and intimates, and was altogether an attractive and companionable man, with intellectual activity enough to make his society stimulating and full of lively discussion. I could easily understand Garfield's saying, in his letter to Secretary Chase which afterward became the subject of much debate, that he "loved every bone in his body." [Footnote: An anecdote told at my table in 1890 by the Rev. Dr. Morris, long Professor in Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, is so characteristic of Rosecrans that it is worth repeating. After the battle of Stone's River (January, 1863) Dr. Morris, who was then minister of a Presbyterian church in Columbus, was made by Governor Tod a member of a commission sent to look after the wounded soldiers. He called on General Rosecrans at his headquarters in Murfreesboro, and among others met there Father Tracy, the general's chaplain, a Roman Catholic priest. During the visit Rosecrans was called aside (but in the same room) by a staff officer to receive information about a spy who had been caught within the lines. The general got quite excited over the information, talked loudly and hurriedly in giving directions concerning the matter, using some profane language. It seemed suddenly to occur to him that the clergymen were present, and from the opposite side of the room he turned toward them, exclaiming apologetically, "Gentlemen, I sometimes swear, but I never blaspheme!"]

Rosecrans's adjutant-general was Captain George L. Hartsuff, an officer of the regular army, who was well qualified to supplement in many ways the abilities and deficiencies of his chief. [Footnote: Hartsuff was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers in the next year and was severely wounded at Antietam, after which he was made major-general and commanded the Twenty-third Army Corps in Burnside's campaign of East Tennessee.] He was a large man, of heavy frame; his face was broad, and his bald head, tapering high, gave a peculiar pyramidal appearance to his figure. He was systematic and accurate in administrative work, patient and insistent in bringing the young volunteer officers in his department into habits of order and good military form. His coolness tempered the impulsiveness of his chief, and as they were of similar age and had about the same standing in the army before the war, the familiarity between them was that of comrades and equals more than of commander and subordinate.

My intercourse with these officers on the occasion of my visit to Cross Lanes was only the beginning of the acquaintance on which I based the estimate of them which I have given; but it was a good beginning, for the cordial freedom of thought and speech in the conference was such as to bring out the characteristics of the men. I rode back to my camp in the evening, feeling a sense of relief at the transfer of responsibility to other shoulders. The command of my brigade under the orders of Rosecrans seemed an easy task compared with the anxieties and the difficulties of the preceding three months. And so it was. The difference between chief responsibility in military movements and the leadership even of the largest subordinate organizations of an army is heaven-wide; and I believe that no one who has tried both will hesitate to say that the subordinate knows little or nothing of the strain upon the will and the moral faculties which the chief has to bear.

McCook's brigade joined me on the 16th, and we immediately marched to Alderson's, where we made a camp afterward known as Camp Lookout. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 481.] I was able to bring up the Second Kentucky Regiment from Gauley Bridge, giving me in hand three regiments of my own brigade. I sent forward Major Hines with five companies as an advance-guard, and with these he scouted the country as far as the top of Big Sewell Mountain, and was able to give us definite information that Floyd had retreated as far as Meadow Bluff, where the Wilderness road joins the turnpike. Wise halted at Big Sewell Mountain and persisted in keeping his command separate from Floyd, who ordered him to join the rest of the column at Meadow Bluff. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. pp. 854,855,862.] On the 20th September my advance-guard occupied the crest of the mountain, whilst Wise withdrew to a parallel ridge a mile beyond, and loudly insisted that Floyd should join him there instead of concentrating the Confederate force at Meadow Bluff. General Lee reached the latter place in person on the 21st, but found Wise's headstrong and captious spirit hardly more amenable to his discipline than to Floyd's. He shared Floyd's opinion that it was better to await Rosecrans's advance at Meadow Bluff, throwing upon the National forces the burden of transportation over the extended line, whilst guarding against a possible turning movement by the Wilderness road. But Wise was so noisy in his assertions that his was the only position in which to fight, that Lee hesitated to order him back peremptorily, and finally yielded to his clamor and directed Floyd to advance to Wise's position. [Footnote: Id., pp. 868,874,878,879.] The scandal of the quarrel between the two officers had, however, become so notorious that the Richmond government had authorized Lee to send Wise elsewhere, and, probably on his advice, the Confederate War Department ordered Wise to report at Richmond in person. The last scene in the comedy was decidedly amusing. Wise appealed passionately to Lee to say whether his military honor did not require that he should disobey the order till the expected battle should be fought, and Lee, no doubt in dismay lest he should still fail to get rid of so intractable a subordinate, gravely advised him that both honor and duty would be safe in obeying promptly the order. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. p. 879.]

Whilst waiting at Camp Lookout for authority to move forward, an incident occurred which gave us a little excitement and amusement, and which shows, better than much explanation could do, the difficult and intricate character of the country in which we were operating. A wagon-master from our camp had gone out hunting for forage, which was very scarce. He soon came back in excitement, reporting that he had come upon an encampment of a regiment of the enemy between our camp and New River and somewhat in our rear. His report was very circumstantial, but was so improbable that I was confident there was some mistake about it. He was, however, so earnest in his assertions that he could not be mistaken, that McCook, in whose brigade he was, sent out an officer with some men, guided by the wagon-master, to verify the report. The story was confirmed, and the matter was brought to me for action. Puzzled but not convinced, and thinking that as McCook's command was new to the country, it would be better to send some one who was used to scouting in the mountains, I ordered a lieutenant named Bontecou, of the Second Kentucky Regiment, to take a small party and examine the case anew. Bontecou had done a good deal of successful work in this line, and was regarded as a good woodsman and an enterprising scout. He too came back at nightfall, saying that there could be no mistake about it. He had crept close to the sentinels of the camp, had counted the tents, and being challenged by the guard, had made a run for it through the thicket, losing his hat. The position of the enemy was, by all the reports, about three miles from us, diagonally in rear of our right flank. It now seemed that it must be true that some detachment had been delayed in joining the retreating column, and had found itself thus partly cut off by our advance. I therefore ordered McCook to start at earliest peep of day, upon the Chestnutburg road (on which the wagon-master had been foraging), and passing beyond the hostile detachment, attack from the other side, it being agreed by all the scouting parties that this would drive the enemy toward our camp. My own brigade would be disposed of to intercept the enemy and prevent escape. McCook moved out as ordered, and following his guides came by many devious turns to a fork in the road, following which, they told him, a few minutes would bring him upon the enemy. He halted the column, and with a small skirmishing party went carefully forward. The guides pointed to a thicket from which the Confederates could be seen. His instinct for topography had made him suspect the truth, as he had noted the courses in advancing, and crawling through the thicket, he looked out from the other side upon what he at once recognized as the rear of his own camp, and the tents of the very regiment from which he had sent an officer to test the wagon-master's report. All the scouts had been so deceived by the tangle of wooded hills and circling roads that they fully believed they were still miles from our position; and, bewildered in the labyrinth, they were sure the tents they saw were the enemy's and not ours. The march had been through rain and mist, through dripping thickets and on muddy roads, and the first impulse was wrath at the erring scouts; but the ludicrous side soon prevailed, and officers and men joined in hearty laughter over their wild-goose chase. They dubbed the expedition the "Battle of Bontecou," and it was long before the lieutenant heard the last of the chaffing at his talents as a scout. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. pp. 484, 485.]

Major Hines's reports of the strength of the position on Sewell Mountain which the enemy had occupied, and my own reconnoissance of the intervening country, satisfied me that if we meant to advance on this line, we ought not to give the enemy time to reconsider and to reoccupy the mountain top from which he had retreated. On representing this to General Rosecrans, he authorized me to advance twelve miles to the Confederate camp on Big Sewell, directing me, however, to remain upon the defensive when there, and to avoid bringing on any engagement till he could bring up the rest of the column. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. pp. 484, 486.] His means of crossing at Carnifex Ferry were so poor that what he had thought would be done in two or three days from the time McCook joined me, took a full fortnight to accomplish.

I marched with my own and McCook's brigades on the 23d September, but when I reached the Confederate camp where Hines with the advance-guard awaited me, it was evident at a glance that we must go further. [Footnote: Id., p. 487.] The position was a very strong one for resisting an approach from our direction, but was commanded by higher ground beyond. The true crest of the mountain was two miles further on, and there alone could we successfully bar the way against a superior force coming from the east. I therefore marched rapidly forward and occupied the crest in force. It was impossible to hide the whole of our camp from view and properly hold the position, but we made use of such cover as we could find, and prepared to defend the pass against all comers, since it was vain to attempt to mystify the enemy as to our advance in force.

On the 24th we had a lively skirmish with Wise's legion in front, and forced it to retire to a ridge out of range of our artillery. We dismounted one of his howitzers in the engagement, but contented ourselves with making him yield the ground which would interfere with our easy holding of our own position and the spurs of the mountain directly connected with it. Wise had learned that Rosecrans was not with my column, and on the supposition that the advance was made by my brigade only, Lee concluded to order Floyd to Wise's camp, being now satisfied that no movement of our troops had been made by way of the Wilderness road. It was at this time that Wise was relieved of command and ordered to Richmond, and Lee found it advisable to unite his forces and take command in person.

The relations of these three distinguished Virginians had not begun with this campaign, but dated back to the capture of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Wise was then the governor of his State, and received from Lee the prisoner whose execution at Charlestown was to become an historical event. Floyd, who himself had once been governor of Virginia, was then Buchanan's Secretary of War, and ordered Lee with the detachment of marines to Harper's Ferry, where they stormed the engine-house which Brown had made his fort. Dealing with such men as his subordinates, and with such a history behind them, it can easily be understood that Lee would feel no ordinary delicacy in asserting his authority, and no common embarrassment at their quarrels.

Rosecrans was at first disturbed at my going further than had been expected; [Footnote: Rosecrans's Dispatches, Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. pp. 486, 487.] but he was soon satisfied that nothing better could have been done. It is true that I was thirty-five miles from the supports in the rear, whether at Carnifex Ferry or Gauley Bridge; but the position was almost impregnable in front, and by watchfulness I should know of any attempt to turn it in time to make safe my retreat to Camp Lookout. On the 26th Scammon's brigade came within easy supporting distance, and General Rosecrans came in person to my camp. He had not been able to bring up his headquarters train, and was my guest for two or three days, sharing my tent with me. Cold autumnal rains set in on the very day the general came to the front, and continued almost without intermission. In the hope of still having some favorable weather for campaigning, the other brigades were brought forward, and the whole force was concentrated at the mountain except the necessary garrisons for the posts in the rear. Brigadier-General Robert C, Schenck reported for duty in the evening of a fearfully stormy day whilst Rosecrans was still my tent-mate. He had heard rumors of fighting at the front, and had hurried forward with a couple of staff officers, but without baggage. My staff officers were sharing their shelter with the gentlemen who had accompanied Rosecrans, but the new-comers were made heartily welcome to what we had. In my own tent General Rosecrans occupied my camp cot; I had improvised a rough bunk for myself on the other side of the tent, but as General Schenck got in too late for the construction of any better resting-place, he was obliged to content himself with a bed made of three or four camp-stools set in a row. Anything was better than lying on the damp ground in such a storm; but Schenck long remembered the aching weariness of that night, as he balanced upon the narrow and unstable supports which threatened to tumble him upon the ground at the least effort to change the position of stiffened body and limbs. One could not desire better companionship than we had during our waking hours, for both my guests had had varied and interesting experience and knew how to make it the means of delightful social intercourse and discussion. The chilly temperature of the tent was pleasantly modified by a furnace which was the successful invention of the private soldiers. A square trench was dug from the middle of the tent leading out behind it; this was capped with flat stones three or four inches thick, which were abundant on the mountain. At the end of it, on the outside, a chimney of stones plastered with mud was built up, and the whole topped out by an empty cracker-barrel by way of chimney-pot. The fire built in the furnace had good draught, and the thick stones held the heat well, making, on the whole, the best means of warming a tent which I ever tried. The objection to the little sheet-iron stoves furnished with the Sibley tent is that they are cold in a minute if the fire dies out.

The rains, when once they began, continued with such violence that the streams were soon up, the common fords became impassable, and the roads became so muddy and slippery that it was with the utmost difficulty our little army was supplied. The four brigades were so reduced by sickness and by detachments that Rosecrans reported the whole as making only 5200 effective men. Every wagon was put to work hauling supplies and ammunition, even the headquarters baggage wagons and the regimental wagons of the troops, as well those stationed in the rear as those in front. We were sixty miles from the head of steamboat navigation, the wagon trains were too small for a condition of things where the teams could hardly haul half loads, and by the 1st of October we had demonstrated the fact that it was impossible to sustain our army any further from its base unless we could rely upon settled weather and good roads.

Lee had directed an effort to be made by General Loring, his subordinate, on the Staunton line, to test the strength of the posts under Reynolds at Cheat Mountain and Elkwater, and lively combats had resulted on the 12th, and 14th of September. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. pp. 185-193.] Reynolds held firm, and as Rosecrans was not diverted from his plans and was pushing forward on the Lewisburg line, Lee ordered Loring to report to him with most of his command. Reynolds, in return, made a forced reconnoissance upon the Confederate position at Greenbrier River on October 2d, but found it too strong to be carried. The reinforcement by Loring gave Lee a very positive advantage in numbers, but the storms and foundering roads paralyzed both armies, which lay opposite each other upon the crests of Big Sewell separated by a deep gorge. On the 5th of October the condition of the Kanawha valley had become such that Rosecrans felt compelled to withdraw his forces to the vicinity of Gauley Bridge. The freshet had been an extraordinary one. At Charleston the Kanawha River usually flows in a bed forty or fifty feet below the plateau on which the town is built; but the waters now rose above these high banks and flooded the town itself, being four or five feet deep in the first story of dwelling-houses built in what was considered a neighborhood safe from floods. The inundation almost stopped communication, though our quartermasters tried to remedy part of the mischief by forcing light steamers up as near to the Kanawha Falls as possible. But it was very difficult to protect the supplies landed upon a muddy bank where were no warehouses, and no protection but canvas covers stretched over the piles of barrels and boxes of bread and sacks of grain. There was enormous waste and loss, but we managed to keep our men in rations, and were better off than the Confederates, in regard to whom Floyd afterward reported to his government that the eleven days of cold storms at Sewell Mountain had "cost more men, sick and dead, than the battle of Manassas Plains."

It has been asserted by Confederate writers that Lee was executing a movement to turn Rosecrans's left flank when the latter marched back from Sewell Mountain. If so, it certainly had not gone far enough to attract our attention, and from my own knowledge of the situation, I do not believe it had passed beyond the form of discussion of a possible movement when the weather should become settled. Such plans were discussed on both sides, but the physical condition of the country was an imperative veto upon aggressive action.

During the 5th of October our sick and spare baggage were sent back to Camp Lookout. Tents were struck at ten o'clock in the evening, and the trains sent on their way under escort at eleven. The column moved as soon as the trains were out of the way, except my own brigade, to which was assigned the duty of rear-guard. We remained upon the crest of the hill till half-past one, the men being formed in line of battle and directed to lie down till the time for them to march. Our sentinels had been posted with extra precaution, so that they might be withdrawn an hour or two after the brigade should move. Extra reserves were assigned to them, and Major Hines put in command of the whole detachment, with orders to keep in communication with me at the extreme rear of the marching column. It was interesting to observe the effect of this night movement upon the men. Their imagination was excited by the novelty of the situation, and they furnished abundant evidence that the unknown is always, in such cases, the wonderful. The night had cleared off and the stars were out. The Confederate position was eastward from us, and as a bright star rose above the ridge on which the enemy was, we could hear soldiers saying in a low tone to each other, "There goes a fire balloon--it must be a signal--they must have discovered what we are doing!" The exaggerated parallax at the horizon made the rising star seem to move rapidly for the first few minutes, and men, ignorant of this, naturally mistook its character. In a similar way an occasional shot on the picket line would be the cause of a subdued excitement. I doubt if soldiers ever make a night movement in an enemy's presence without being under a nervous strain which exaggerates the importance of everything they see and hear, and this gives uncertainty and increases the difficulty of such duty. It is no small part of the duty of officers, in such cases, to allay this tendency to excitement, to explain the situation, and by a wise mixture of information and discipline to keep the men intelligently cool and in full command of their faculties.

General Rosecrans had gone with the head of the column, and had left with me Major Slemmer, his inspector-general, to bring him word when the rear of the column should be in march. Slemmer was the officer who, as a lieutenant, had distinguished himself by holding Fort Pickens in Pensacola harbor at the outbreak of the rebellion. He was a man of marked character, and in view of his experience it may easily be understood that we had no lack of interesting matter for conversation as we paced in rear of the reclining men during the midnight hours. His failing health prevented his taking the prominent part in the war that his abilities warranted, but I have retained, from that evening's work together, a pleasing impression of his character and a respect for his military knowledge and talents. In impressing on me the fact that my position was the one of special honor in this movement, he expressed the wish that Rosecrans had himself remained there; but the result showed that hardly less than the commanding general's own authority and energy could have got the column forward in the mud and darkness. The troops had marched but a mile or two when they overtook part of the wagon train toiling slowly over the steep and slippery hills. Here and there a team would be "stalled" in the mud, and it looked as if daylight would overtake us before even a tolerably defensive position would be reached. Rosecrans now gave his personal supervision to the moving of the wagons and artillery,--wagon-master's work, it maybe said, but it was work which had to be done if the little army was not to be found in the morning strung out and exposed to the blows of the enemy if he should prove enterprising.

We who were at the rear did not know of the difficulty the column was having, and when my messenger reported the rear of the preceding brigade a mile or more from the camp, I gave the order to march, and my men filed into the road. Slemmer went forward to inform the general that we were in movement, and I remained with Major Hines till all was quiet, when he was directed to call in his pickets and sentinels and follow. I had gone hardly a mile when we were brought to a halt by the head of the brigade overtaking those who had preceded us. Word was brought back that the artillery was finding great difficulty in getting over the first considerable hill west of the mountain. We ourselves were upon the downward road from the mountain crest, but our way led along the side of a spur of the mountain which towered above us on our left. We were in a dense wood that shut out the stars, and in darkness that could almost be felt. I rode back a little to meet Hines and to keep some distance between the column and his little rear-guard. We sent a chain of sentinels over the hill commanding the road, and waited, listening for any evidence that the enemy had discovered our movement and followed. An hour passed in this way, and the column moved on a short distance. Again there was a halt, and again a deployment of our sentries. When at last day broke, we were only three or four miles from our camp of the evening before; but we had reached a position which was easily defensible, and where I could halt the brigade and wait for the others to get entirely out of our way. The men boiled their coffee, cooked their breakfast, and rested. Early in the forenoon a small body of the enemy's cavalry followed us, but were contented with very slight skirmishing, and we marched leisurely to Camp Lookout before evening. Such night marches from the presence of an enemy are among the most wearing and trying in the soldier's experience, yet, in spite of the temptation to invest them with extraordinary peril, they are rarely interfered with. It is the uncertainty, the darkness, and the effect of these upon men and officers that make the duty a delicate one. The risk is more from panic than from the foe, and the loss is more likely to be in baggage and in wagons than in men. I have several times been in command of rear-guards on such occasions, and I believe that I would generally prefer an open withdrawal by day. It is not hard to hold even a bold enemy at bay by a determined brigade or division, and a whole army may be saved from the exhaustion and exposure which rapidly fill the hospitals, and may cost more than several combats between rear and advance guards.

My brigade remained two or three days at Camp Lookout, where we were put upon the alert on the 7th by a reported advance of the enemy, but it amounted to nothing more than a lively skirmish of some cavalry with our outposts. Lee was glad to move back to Meadow Bluff to be nearer his supplies, and Rosecrans encamped his troops between Hawk's Nest and the Tompkins farm, all of them being now within a few miles of Gauley Bridge. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. p. 253. See also Official Atlas, pl. ix.] Part of my brigade garrisoned the post at the bridge, but by Rosecrans's direction my own headquarters tents were pitched near his own upon the Tompkins farm. Both parties now remained in observation till near the end of October. Floyd, more enterprising in plans than resolute or skilful in carrying them out, had obtained Lee's consent to make an attempt to render our position untenable by operations on the opposite side of New River. Lee had intended to co-operate by moving against us with the rest of his force, but on the 20th of October the reports from the Staunton region were so threatening that he determined to send Loring back there, [Footnote: Id., p. 908.] and this, of course, settled it that Lewisburg would be covered in front only by Wise's Legion, commanded by Colonel Davis. Although Floyd complained of this change of plan, he did not abandon his purpose, but ordering the militia on that side of the river to reassemble, he marched to Fayette C. H. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. p. 286.]

Rosecrans had distributed his brigades in echelon along the turnpike,--Schenck's, the most advanced, being ten miles from Gauley Bridge; McCook's eight miles, where the road from Fayette C. H. by way of Miller's Ferry comes in across New River; Benham's six miles, whilst of my own one regiment at the Tompkins farm guarded headquarters, and the rest were at Gauley Bridge and lower posts where they could protect the navigation of the Kanawha. [Footnote:Id., p. 253.] McCook by Rosecrans's direction marched to Fayette C. H. about the 20th of October, and on his return reported that only guerilla parties were abroad in that vicinity. Rosecrans seems to have expected that at least a foothold would be kept on the other side of New River at Miller's Ferry, but McCook left nothing there, and when he tried to place a detachment on that side about the 25th, the shore and cliffs were found to be held by a force of sharpshooters. This marked the advance of Floyd, who established his camp in front of Fayette C. H. at the forking of the roads to Miller's Ferry and to Gauley Bridge. [Footnote: Id., p. 285.] For a few days he made no serious demonstration, and Rosecrans hastened forward the work of clothing and paying his men, recruiting his teams and bringing back to the ranks the soldiers whom exposure had sent to the hospital. He had heard in a trustworthy way of Lee's intention to move against us by the turnpike whilst Floyd advanced on the other side of the river, but Tie had not yet learned of the withdrawal of Lee with Loring's troops. He therefore remained quiet and expectant, awaiting the definite development of events.

As this had been my first service in the field as part of a larger command, I was keenly alive to the opportunity of comparing the progress we had made in discipline and instruction with that of other brigades, so that I might cure defects in my own methods and improve the soldierly character as well as the administration of my own command. I was gratified to see in my troops evidence of a pride in their own organization and a wholesome emulation, which made them take kindly to the drill and discipline which were necessary to improvement. I was particularly interested in observing Rosecrans's methods with the men. His standard of soldierly excellence was high, and he was earnest in insisting that his brigadiers and his staff officers should co-operate vigorously in trying to attain it. His impulsiveness, however, led him sometimes into personal efforts at discipline where the results were at least doubtful. He would sometimes go out through the camps in the evening, and if he saw a tent lighted after "taps," or heard men singing or talking, he would strike loudly on the canvas with the flat of his sword and command silence or the extinguishment of the light. The men, in good-humored mischief, would try different ways of "getting even" with him. One that gave much amusement to the camp was this: the men in a tent thus attacked pretended to believe that their regimental wagon-master was playing a practical joke on them, and shouted back to him all sorts of rough camp chaff. When the exasperated general appeared at the door of the tent, they were, of course, overwhelmed with the most innocent astonishment, and explained that that wagon-master was in the habit of annoying them, and that they really had not heard the "taps." I have been with the general in approaching a picket, when he would hotly lecture a sentinel who showed ignorance of some of his duties or inattention to them. I thought I could see in all such cases that it would have been wiser to avoid any unnecessary collision with the privates, but to take the responsible officer aside and make him privately understand that he must answer for such lack of instruction or of discipline among his men. An impulsive man is too apt to meddle with details, and so to weaken the sense of responsibility in the intermediate officers, who hate to be ignored or belittled before the soldiers. But if Rosecrans's method was not an ideal one, it was at least vigorous, and every week showed that the little army was improving in discipline and in knowledge of duty.

It is the military custom, in executions by shooting, to select the firing party from the regiment to which the condemned man belongs. To have changed the rule would have looked like timidity, and I determined that it must not be done, but resolved upon an order of procedure which would provide, as far as possible, against the chances of interference. On such occasions the troops are usually paraded upon three sides of a hollow square, without arms, the place of execution being in the middle of the open side, where the prisoner kneels upon his coffin. The place chosen was in the meadows on the lower side of the Elk River, opposite Charleston, a short distance from the regimental camp. The camps of two other regiments at the post were half a mile from the place of execution. These regiments were, therefore, marched to the field with their arms. That to which the prisoner belonged was marched without arms to its position as the centre of the parade, and the others were formed on their right and left at right angles, thus forming the three sides of the enclosure. The arms of these last regiments were stacked immediately behind them where they could be seized in a moment, but the parade was formed without muskets. Captain Gibbs was on duty as commissary at my headquarters, and his appearance with the staff would have been unpleasant to himself as well as a possible cause of excitement in the Kentucky regiment. To solve the difficulty without making a significant exception, I ordered only the personal staff and the adjutant-general with the chief surgeon to accompany me, leaving out the administrative officers of both quartermaster's and commissary's departments.

When the parade was formed, I took my place with my staff at the right of the line, and, as upon a review, rode slowly down the whole line, on the inside of the square. In going along the front of the First Kentucky, I took especial pains to meet the eyes of the men as they were turned to me in passing, desirous of impressing them with my own feeling that it was a solemn but inevitable duty. Immediately after we returned to our places, the music of the dead-march was heard, and an ambulance was seen approaching from the camp, escorted by the provost-marshal and the execution party with the music. The solemn strains, the slow funereal step of the soldiers, the closed ambulance, the statue-like stillness of the paraded troops made an impression deeper and more awful than a battle scene, because the excitement was hushed and repressed. The ambulance stopped, the man was helped out at the back, and led by the provost-marshal to his place upon the coffin, where he was blindfolded. The firing party silently took its place. The muskets were cocked and aimed, while the noise of the retiring ambulance covered the sound. The provost-marshal, with a merciful deception, told the prisoner he must wait a moment and he would return to him before the final order, but stepping quickly out of the range of the muskets, he gave the signal with his handkerchief, and the man fell dead at the volley, which sounded like a single discharge. The detail of soldiers for the firing had been carefully instructed that steadiness and accuracy made the most merciful way of doing their unwelcome duty. The surgeon made his official inspection of the body, which was placed in the coffin and removed in the ambulance. The drums and fifes broke the spell with quick marching music, the regiments took their arms, sharp words of command rattled along the lines, which broke by platoons into column and moved rapidly off the field.

I confess it was a relief to have the painful task ended, and especially to have it ended in the most perfect order and discipline. The moral effect was very great, for our men were so intelligent that they fully appreciated the judicial character of the act, and the imposing solemnity of the parade and execution made the impression all the more profound. As it was accompanied and followed by a searching test of the capacity and character of their officers, of which they daily saw the effects in the retirement of some from the service and in the increased industry and studious devotion to duty of all, it gave a new tone to the whole command. I spared no effort to make the feeling pervade every regiment and company, that the cause of the country, their own success and honor, and even their own personal safety depended upon their entering the next campaign with such improved discipline and instruction as should make them always superior to an equal number of the enemy. Leaves of absence and furloughs were limited as closely as possible, and I set the example of remaining without interruption on duty, though there were many reasons why a visit home was very desirable. My wife made me a visit at Charleston in mid-winter, and this naturally brought me into more frequent social relations to the people, and led me to observe more closely their attitude to the government and its cause.

Before the secession of Virginia a very large majority of the inhabitants of the Kanawha valley were Unionists; but the attachment to the state organization had become so exaggerated in all slave-holding communities, that most of the well-to-do people yielded to the plea that they must "go with their State." The same state pride led this class of people to oppose the division of Virginia and the forming of the new State on the west of the mountains. The better class of society in Charleston, therefore, as in other towns, was found to be disloyal, and in sympathy with the rebellion. The young men were very generally in the Confederate army; the young women were full of the most romantic devotion to their absent brothers and friends, and made it a point of honor to avow their sentiments. The older people were less demonstrative, and the men who had a stake in the country generally professed acquiescence in the position of West Virginia within the Union, and a desire to bring back their sons from the Confederate service. The necessity of strict watch upon the communications sent through the lines brought to my notice a great deal of family history full of suffering and anxiety, and showed that that was indeed a fearful situation for a family when its young men were not only separated from them by military service in the field, but could only be heard from by the infrequent chances of communication under flags of truce, and with all the restrictions and reserves necessary to the method. The rule I adopted in dealing personally with non-combatants of either sex was to avoid all controversy or discussion, to state with perfect frankness but courteously my own attitude and sense of duty, and to apply all such stringent rules as a state of war compels with an evenness of temper and tone of dispassionate government which should make as little chafing as possible. Most intelligent people, when they are not excited, are disposed to recognize the obligations imposed upon a military officer in such circumstances, and it was rarely the case that any unpleasant collisions occurred.

The following incident will illustrate some of the embarrassments likely to occur. When I reached Charleston in July previous, I was visited by the wife of a gentleman named Parks, who told me that her husband had left the valley with General Wise, but not in any military capacity, being fearful that he might suffer arrest at our hands on account of his sympathy with the Confederates. I told her, what I had told to a formal deputation of citizens, that I did not propose to meddle with non-combatants if they in good faith remained at home, minding their own business, and carefully abstaining from giving aid or information to the enemy. I had, on general principles, a dislike for test oaths, and preferred to make conduct the test, and to base my treatment of people on that, rather than on oaths which the most unscrupulous would be first to take. Had her husband known this, she said, he would not have left home, and begged that she might be allowed to send an open letter through the lines to him to bring him back. I allowed her to do so at the first proper opportunity, and Mr. Parks at once returned. In the latter part of September, however, Governor Peirpoint of West Virginia thought it necessary to arrest some prominent citizens, known as Secessionists, and hold them as hostages for Union men that the Confederate troops had seized and sent to Richmond. It happened that Mr. Parks was arrested as one of these hostages, without any knowledge on the part of the civil authorities of the circumstances under which he had returned home. I was ignorant of his arrest till I received a letter from the lady, complaining bitterly of what seemed to her a breach of faith. I was at Sewell Mountain at the time, but lost no time in writing her a careful explanation of the complete disconnection between his arrest by the civil authorities as a hostage, and a promise of non-interference with him on my part as an officer of the United States army. I also showed her that the arrest of non-combatant Union men by the Confederate forces was the real cause of her husband's unpleasant predicament. In view of the circumstances, however, I thought it right to request the Governor to substitute some other hostage for Mr. Parks, so that there might not be the least question whether the letter or the spirit of my military safeguard had been broken, and the result was that the gentleman was very soon at home again.

The most prominent citizen of the valley was the Hon. George Summers, who had represented it in the Congress of the United States, and had opposed secession in the Virginia Convention with a vigor that had brought him into personal peril. When, however, secession was an accomplished fact, his ideas of allegiance to his State so far influenced him that he was unwilling to take active part in public affairs, and sought absolute retirement at his pleasant home a little below Charleston on the Kanawha. His house was on a hill overlooking the beautiful valley, broad enough at this point to give room for ample fields in the rich bottom lands. I had called upon him, as I passed with my troops when I went up the valley. He was a dignified and able man, just past middle life, but in full physical and mental force, and capable of exerting a very great influence if he could have thrown himself heartily into public activity. But he was utterly saddened and depressed by the outbreak of civil war, and deliberately chose the part of suffering in seclusion whatever it might bring, unable to rouse himself to a combative part. As a slave-holder, he was bitter against the anti-slavery movement, and as a Unionist he condemned the Secessionists. He was very glad to have the Kanawha valley in the possession of the National troops, now that Wise had made the effort to occupy it for the Confederacy; though he had tried to procure the adoption of a policy which should leave it neutral ground,--a policy as impossible here as in Kentucky. The result was that he was distrusted by both sides, for in civil war each acts upon the maxim that "he that is not for us is against us." I renewed my acquaintance with him in the winter, making his house the limit of an occasional ride for exercise. I appreciated his feelings, and respected his desire to set an example of obedient private citizenship with renunciation of all other or more active influence.

There were other men of social prominence who had less hesitation in throwing themselves actively upon the National side. Mr. Patrick was an elderly man, of considerable wealth, whose home was a very similar one to Mr. Summers', a little nearer to Charleston upon the same road. His wife was of old Virginia stock, a relative of Chief Justice Marshall, and a pronounced Southern woman, though too good a wife to make her sympathies give annoyance to her husband or his guests. Lewis Ruffner was also a prominent Union man, and among the leaders of the movement to make West Virginia a separate State. Mr. Doddridge, long the cashier and manager of the Bank at Charleston, whose family was an old and well-known one, was an outspoken Unionist, and in the next year, when the war put an end for the time to banking in the valley, he became a paymaster in the National army. Colonel Benjamin F. Smith was a noteworthy character also. He was a leading lawyer, a man of vigorous and aggressive character, and of tough fibre both physically and mentally. He shared the wish of Summers to keep West Virginia out of the conflict if possible, but when we had driven Wise out of the valley, he took a pronounced position in favor of the new state movement. A little afterward he was appointed District Attorney for the United States. Although the loyal people had such competent leaders, the majority of the men of wealth and of the families recognized as socially eminent were avowed Secessionists. They were a small minority of the whole people, but in all slave-holding communities social rank is so powerful that their influence was out of proportion to their numbers. Even the leaders of the Unionists found their own "house divided against itself," for scarce one of them but had a son in Wise's legion, and the Twenty-second Virginia Regiment was largely composed of the young men of Charleston and the vicinity. I have already referred to the journal of Major Smith which fell into my hands as "captured rebel mail," and its pages are full of pathetic evidence of the conflicting emotions which such a situation excited. He was the son of B. F. Smith, whom I have just mentioned, and whilst in Floyd's camp in front of us at Sewell Mountain he wrote: "My source of constant trouble is that my father will be in danger. Wicked and unscrupulous men, with whom he has lived in friendship for years, absolutely thirst for his blood, as I truly believe. He and Summers, as one of their friends remarked to me to-day, are especial objects of hatred and aversion to men here. I am actually leading a set of men one of whose avowed objects is the arrest and the judicial or lynch murder of my father!" In the next month he heard "the startling news" that his father had fully identified himself with the new state movement, and writes: "Those with whom I was connected, call and curse him as a traitor,--and he knew it would be so! Why my dear father has chosen to place me in this terrible situation is beyond my comprehension. I have been shocked beyond description in contemplating the awful consequences to the peace, safety, and happiness of both of us!" The family distress and grief revealed by accident in this case is only an example of what was common in all the families of prominent Union men. In some cases, as in that of Major Smith, the young men resigned their commissions and made their way home, finding the mental and moral strain too great to bear; but in many more, pride and the influence of comrades kept them in the Confederate service with the enlisted men who could not resign, and with hearts sorely torn by conflicting duties, they fought it out to the end.

The slavery question was the vexed one which troubled the relations of the army and the people in all the border States. My own position was that of the party which had elected Mr. Lincoln. We disclaimed any purpose of meddling with the institution in the States which remained loyal to the Union, whilst we held it to be within the war powers of the government to abolish it in the rebellious States. We also took satisfaction in enforcing the law which freed the "contrabands" who were employed by their masters in any service within the Confederate armies. These principles were generally understood and acquiesced in by the West Virginians; but it was impossible to come to any agreement in regard to fugitive slaves who took refuge in our camps. The soldiers and many of the officers would encourage the negroes to assert their freedom, and would resist attempts to recapture them. The owners, if Union men, would insist that the fugitives should be apprehended and restored to them by military authority. This was simply impossible, for the public sentiment of the army as a whole was so completely with the slaves that any such order would have been evaded and made a farcical dead letter. The commanders who made such orders uniformly suffered from doing it; for the temper of the volunteer army was such that the orders were looked upon as evidence of sympathy with the rebellion, and destroyed the usefulness of the general by creating an incurable distrust of him among his own men. Yet nearly all the department commanders felt obliged at first, by what they regarded as the letter of the law, to order that fugitive slaves claimed by loyal citizens should be arrested, if within the camps, and delivered up.

Within the district of the Kanawha I tried to avoid the difficulty by stringent orders that slaves should be kept out of the camps; but I declined to order the troops to arrest and return them. I had two little controversies on the subject, and in both of them I had to come in collision with Colonel Benjamin Smith. After they were over we became good friends, but the facts are too important an illustration of the war-time and its troubles to be omitted.

The first raised the question of "contraband." A negro man was brought into my camp by my advance-guard as we were following Floyd to Sewell Mountain in September. He was the body-servant of Major Smith, and had deserted the major, with the intention of getting back to his family at Charleston. In our camp he soon learned that he was free, under the Act of Congress, and he remained with us, the servants about headquarters giving him food. When I returned to Gauley Bridge, Mr. Smith appeared and demanded the return of the man to him, claiming him as his slave. He, however, admitted that he had been servant to Major Smith in the rebel army with his consent. The man refused to go with him, and I refused to use compulsion, informing Mr. Smith that the Act of Congress made him free. The claimant then went to General Rosecrans, and I was surprised by the receipt, shortly after, of a note from headquarters directing the giving up of the man. [Footnote: Letter of Major Darr, acting A. A. G., November 18.] On my stating the facts the matter was dropped, and I heard no more of it for a month, the man meanwhile disappearing. Soon after my headquarters were moved to Charleston, in December, I received another note from headquarters, again directing the delivery of the fugitive. [Footnote: Letter of Captain Hartsuff, A. A. G., December 13.] Again I gave a temperate and clear statement of the facts, adding that I had reason to believe the man had now taken advantage of his liberty to go to Ohio. Mr. Smith's case thus ended, but it left him with a good deal of irritation at what he thought a wrong done to him as well as insubordination on my part.

In March following, another case arose, and I received a paper from headquarters containing an alleged statement of the facts, and referred to me in usual course for report. I had been absent from Charleston when the incidents occurred, but made careful inquiry satisfying myself of the truth, and perhaps cannot give an intelligent explanation better than by quoting the report itself, for its tone shows the sort of annoyance I felt, and it exhibits some of the conditions of an army command involving administrative duties that were far from pleasant.

I said: "The document is in the handwriting of B. F. Smith, Esq., U. S. District Attorney, residing here, though signed only by John Slack, Jr., and William Kelly; the former an acting deputy U. S. marshal, the latter the jailer at the county jail. Its composition is so peculiar that it is difficult to tell what part of the statement is Slack's or Kelly's and what is Colonel Smith's, and therefore I do not know whom to hold responsible for the misstatements contained in it.

"Mr. Slack is a respectable young man, who I believe would do his duty as far as he understands it, but who has not energy enough to keep him from being the tool of others. Mr. Kelly, the jailer, is sufficiently described when I state the fact that he has attempted to add to his profits as turnkey by selling bad whisky to soldiers put in his calaboose, at the rate of five dollars per pint bottle. Mr. Smith, the District Attorney, has lost no opportunity of being annoying to the military officers here, since the controversy about the negro man captured from his son, Major Isaac Smith of the rebel army. This reference to the parties concerned is necessary to enable the commanding general to understand the animus of their complaints.

"The facts are substantially as follows: Henry H. Hopkins is a notorious Secessionist living near Coal River, and a man of considerable property. Some time before his arrest he sent the negro man mentioned in the complaint South, in charge of some Logan County 'bushwhackers.' On his way and in McDowell County the man managed to escape and returned into Hopkins's neighborhood, near Boone C. H., where he took his wife and three children alleged to have been the property of a woman named Smoot, and brought them to this post. Upon his representation that he had escaped from armed rebels in McDowell County, and without further knowledge of the facts, the Post Quartermaster set him at work. About the 19th of February Hopkins came to town with Mrs. Smoot, and without notice to the quartermaster or any color of authority by any civil process, procured the aid of Kelly, the jailer, seized the negro and took him to Wright's hotel. The provost-marshal, knowing that Hopkins was an active Secessionist and that he had been personally engaged in the combat at Boone C. H. last fall, ordered his arrest. Shortly after, he was waited upon by B. F. Smith, Esq., U. S. District Attorney, who stated that he had known Mr. Hopkins for a good many years and was confident he was a good Union man, although in fact the deputy-marshal at the very time held a warrant for the arrest of Hopkins for treason and conspiracy, under an indictment found in the U. S. Court, of which, to say the least of it, it is very strange Mr. Smith should have been ignorant. At the request of the provost-marshal, the warrant was served on Hopkins, who was admitted to bail in the sum of $2000, which is most inadequate security for the appearance of a man of Hopkins's wealth and influence, accused of such a crime. After the arrest of Hopkins, the negro being left to himself returned to his quarters, but sometime during the night stole a skiff and attempted to escape with his family down the Kanawha River. The circumstances of his accident in the river, the drowning of his family and his subsequent capture, I have not been able to investigate fully.

"The only matter of controversy now is in regard to the horse. The bar-keeper at the tavern denies that he has said it was taken by Wagon-master West (a man who has since been discharged by the Post Quartermaster), and I have been unable to trace it, although every effort has been made in perfect good faith to do so. The man West was put under arrest, to see if that would make him admit anything with regard to it, but without effect. I advised Slack to procure some one who knew the horse to pass through the government stables and teams, and if he recognized the animal to let me know at once, and I would give an order to him to obtain it. The statement that 'Slack says he told Cox he could not find him, that a soldier or employee in his command got him, and if proper measures were taken he could be had,' is both impudent and false, and I respectfully submit that it is not, in matter or manner, such a complaint as the Commanding General should call upon me to reply to.

"The statement of these civil officials at once gives me the opportunity and makes it my duty to state to the Commanding General that the only occasions on which these gentlemen show any vitality, is when some Secessionist's runaway negroes are to be caught. For any purpose of ordinary municipal magistracy they seem utterly incompetent. I have urged the organization of the county and of the town, but to no effect. Every street that is mended, every bridge that is repaired, or wharf that is put in order, must be done by the army at the expense of the U. S. government. They will not elect officers to look after the poor, but leave us to feed the starving near our camps. They will establish no police, and by force of public opinion keep suitors out of the courts ordered to be held by Governor Peirpoint. Yet a U. S. Commissioner, without any warrant or even pretended jurisdiction, will stop any vagrant negro, drive him through the streets in person, and say that he does it as a U. S. officer! Of course we simply look on and have had no controversy with them, unless driven to it by direct efforts on their part to interfere with our necessary regulations.

"The simple fact is that a few men of property who are avowed Secessionists control the town and make its public sentiment. By this means they practically control these officers also. Many of the negroes employed at the salt-works, and under hire in other capacities in the vicinity, are the slaves of rebels who are either in the rebel army or fled with it from the valley. The great problem upon which the Secessionists remaining here are exercising their ingenuity is to find the means of using the U. S. Commissioner and Marshal to secure to them the services of these persons without cost or legitimate contract of hiring, for the present profit of these gentlemen here, and the future advantage of their compatriots across the lines.

"Colonel Smith and Mr. Slack say that they made the statement at the express request of Major Darr of the Commanding General's staff. A simple inquiry by the Major would have saved me the necessity of writing this long letter."

It is due to General Rosecrans to say that although he had been anything but an anti-slavery man before the war, he made no pressure upon me to violate my own sense of right in these or similar cases, and they ended with my reports of the facts and of my reasons for the course I pursued. The side lights thrown upon the situation by the letter last quoted will be more instructive than any analysis I could now give, and the spice of flavor which my evident annoyance gave it only helps to revive more perfectly the local color of the time. In the case of Mr. Smith's "negro boy Mike," I had the satisfaction of finding in the intercepted correspondence of his son the major, the express recognition of the man's right to liberty by reason of his use in the enemy's service, and could not deny myself the pleasure of calling attention to it in my letters to headquarters.

My experience during the winter begot in me a rooted dislike for the military administration of the border districts, and strengthened my wish to be in the most active work at the front, where the problems were the strictly military ones of attack and defence in the presence of the armed enemy. [Footnote: I did not lack evidence that a steady rule, based on principles frankly avowed and easily understood, was rapidly bringing the people to be content to be in the Union, even those most inclined to secession. This result I am gratified to find attested by General Lee and General Floyd, who in dispatches very lately printed confessed the effect my administration had in quieting the valley during the first months of my occupation. Official Records, vol. li. pt. ii. pp. 220, 225.] Not that the winter was without compensating pleasures, for we were recipients of much social attention of a very kindly and agreeable sort, and carried away cherished memories of refined family circles in which the collision of opinions and the chafing of official relations were forgotten in hearty efforts to please. With the unconditionally loyal people our sympathies were very deep, for we found them greatly torn and disturbed in the conflict of duties and divided affections, where scarce a single household stood as a unit in devotion to the cause, and where the triumph of either side must necessarily bring affliction to some of them.

The education of peril is so powerful in bringing out the qualities that can master it, and for any one who has true military courage the acquirement of skill in the more mechanical part of his duty in war is so rapid, that my experience has led me to reckon low, in the comparison, the value of the knowledge a soldier gains in times of peace. I say "in the comparison." Tactics are essential to the handling of large bodies of men, and must be learned. But the zealous young soldier with aptitude for his work will learn this part of his duty so fast that a single campaign will find him abreast of any. At the beginning of a great war and in the organization of a great army, the knowledge of routine and of details undoubtedly saves time and saves cost both of treasure and of life. I am therefore far from arguing that the knowledge which was found in the regular army should not be made the most of. I have already said that it should have been scattered through the whole volunteer organization. So I also say that it was quite right to look for the higher qualities for command in those who had the technical information and skill. But I reckon patriotic zeal and devotion so high that I have no hesitation in adding, that our army as a whole would have been improved if the distinction between regular and volunteer had been abolished, and, after the first beginnings, a freer competition for even the highest commands had been open to all. To keep up the regular army organization was practically to say that a captaincy in it was equivalent to a brigade command in the volunteers, and to be a brigadier in it was a reward which regular officers looked forward to as a result of the successful conduct of a great campaign as general-in-chief of an army. The actual command in war was thus ridiculously belittled in the official scale in comparison with grades of a petty peace establishment, and the climax of absurdity was reached when, at the close of hostilities, men who had worthily commanded divisions and corps found themselves reduced to subordinate places in regiments, whilst others who had vegetated without important activity in the great struggle were outranking them by virtue of seniority in the little army which had existed before the Rebellion!

McClellan directed me to take the two regiments with me into camp with Franklin's corps at Annandale, three miles in front of Alexandria, and to obey Franklin's orders if any emergency should occur. [Footnote: Id., p. 692.] I found, at the post-quartermaster's office, an officer who had served in West Virginia a year before, and by his hearty and efficient good-will secured some supplies for the regiments with me during the days that were yet to pass before we got our own trains and could feel that we had an assured means of living and moving in an independent way. We bivouacked by the roadside without shelter of any sort, enveloped in dense clouds of dust from the marching columns of the Army of the Potomac, their artillery and wagons, as they passed and went into camp just in front of us. About noon, on Thursday (28th), Colonel Scammon joined me with the two regiments he had taken toward Manassas, and we learned the particulars of the sharp engagement he had at the railway bridge.

The train carrying the troops approached the bridge over Bull Run about eight o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, and Colonel Scammon immediately pushed forward the Twelfth Ohio (Colonel White) to the bridge itself and the bank of the stream. He met the New Jersey brigade of four regiments coming back in confusion and panic. The commander, General Taylor, had taken position on the west side of the creek, covering the bridge; but he had no artillery, and though his advance was made with great spirit (as Jackson recognized in his report [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 644.] ), his lines had been subjected to a heavy artillery fire from the batteries of A. P. Hill's and Jackson's own divisions, and broke, retreating in disorder to the eastern side of the stream. General Taylor himself fell severely wounded whilst trying to rally them. It was at this moment that Scammon reached the field with the Twelfth Ohio. He had heard the artillery fire, but little or no musketry, and was astonished at seeing the retreat. He sent his adjutant-general, Lieutenant Robert P. Kennedy, [Footnote: Member of Congress (1890), and recently Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio.] to communicate with General Taylor and to try to rally the fugitives. Meanwhile he ordered Colonel White to line the bank of the creek with his men and try to protect the bridge structure. Kennedy found General Taylor in a litter being carried to the rear, and the general, though in anguish from his wound, was in great mental distress at the rout of his men. He begged every one to rally the flying troops if possible, and sent his own adjutant-general, Captain Dunham, to turn over the general command to Scammon. All efforts to rally the panic-stricken brigade were fruitless, and Scammon resisted the advance of Hill's division through nearly a whole day with the two regiments alone. A Lieutenant Wright of the Fourth New Jersey, with ten men, reported to Colonel Scammon and begged assignment in the line. Their names are honorably enrolled in Scammon's report, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 407.] and these, with Captain Dunham, did heroic service, but were all of the brigade that took any further part in the fight. Dunham succeeded in rallying a portion of the brigade later in the day, but too late to enter the engagement.

Taking advantage of the bridges near the stream, Scammon kept his men covered from the artillery fire as well as possible, driving back with his volleys every effort to pass by the bridge or to ford the stream in his front. Hill moved brigades considerably to right and left, and attempted to surround White and the Twelfth Ohio. But Coleman, with the Eleventh, had come up in support, and Scammon ordered him to charge on the enemy's right, which was passing White's left flank. Coleman did so in splendid style, driving his foe before him, and crossing the bridge to the west side. The odds, however, were far too great where a brigade could attack each regiment of ours and others pass beyond them, so that Scammon, having fully developed the enemy's force, had to limit himself to delaying their advance, retiring his little command in echelon from one ridge to another, as his wings were threatened. This he did with perfect coolness and order, maintaining the unequal struggle without assistance till about half-past three in the afternoon. The enemy's efforts now relaxed, and Scammon withdrew at leisure to a position some three miles from the bridge. Hill still showed a disposition to surround the detachment by manoeuvres, and Scammon retired toward Annandale in the night. He himself underestimated the enemy's force in infantry, which Jackson's report puts at "several brigades." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 644.] His loss in the two Ohio regiments was 106 in killed, wounded, and missing. [Footnote: Id., p. 262.] Those of the New Jersey brigade are not reported. The combat was a most instructive military lesson, teaching what audacity and skill may do with a very small force in delaying and mystifying a much larger one, which was imposed upon by its firm front and its able handling.

Some of Scammon's wounded being too badly hurt to be removed, he detailed a surgeon to remain with them and care for them till they should be exchanged or otherwise brought within our lines. This surgeon was taken to Jackson's headquarters, where he was questioned as to the troops which had held the Confederates at bay. General J. E. B. Stuart was with Jackson, and on the surgeon's stating that the fighting during most of the day had been by the two Ohio regiments alone, Stuart's racy expressions of admiration were doubly complimentary as coming from such an adversary, and, when repeated, were more prized by the officers and men than any praise from their own people. [Footnote: The history of this engagement was currently published with curious inaccuracies. Even Mr. Ropes in his "Campaign under Pope" does not seem to have seen the Official Records on our side, and supposed that Taylor's brigade was all that was engaged. See Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 405-411; also pt. iii. pp. 698, 699; also C. W., vol. i. pp. 379-382.]

Toward evening on Thursday, a thunderstorm and gale of wind came up, adding greatly to the wretched discomfort of the troops for the moment, but making the air clearer and laying the dust for a day or two. I found partial shelter with my staff, on the veranda of a small house which was occupied by ladies of the families of some general officers of the Potomac Army, who had seized the passing opportunity to see their husbands in the interval of the campaign. We thought ourselves fortunate in getting even the shelter of the veranda roof for the night. On Friday morning (29th), Captain Fitch, my quartermaster, was able to report his train and baggage safe at Alexandria, and we were ready for any service. Orders came from General McClellan during the forenoon to move the four regiments now with me into Forts Ramsey and Buffalo, on Upton's and Munson's hills, covering Washington on the direct road to Centreville by Aqueduct Bridge, Ball's Cross-Roads, and Fairfax C. H. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 712, 726. For this he had Halleck's authority, in view of the danger of cavalry raids into the city. Id., p. 722.] General McClellan had established his headquarters on Seminary Ridge beyond the northern outskirts of Alexandria, and after putting my command in motion I rode there to get fuller instructions from him as to the duty assigned me. His tents were pitched in a high airy situation looking toward the Potomac on the east; indeed he had found them a little too airy in the thunder-squall of the previous evening which had demolished part of the canvas village. It must have been about noon when I dismounted at his tent. The distant pounding of artillery had been in our ears as we rode. It was Pope's battle with Jackson along the turnpike between Bull Run and Gainesville and on the heights above Groveton, thirty miles away.

Map

General Franklin had ridden over from Annandale and was with McClellan receiving his parting directions under the imperative orders which Halleck had sent to push that corps out to Pope. McClellan's words I was not likely to forget. "Go," he said, "and whatever may happen, don't allow it to be said that the Army of the Potomac failed to do its utmost for the country." McClellan then explained to me the importance of the position to which I was ordered. The heights were the outer line of defence of Washington on the west, which had been held at one time, a year before, by the Confederates, who had an earthwork there, notorious for a while under the camp name of "Fort Skedaddle." From them the unfinished dome of the Capitol was to be seen, and the rebel flag had flaunted there, easily distinguishable by the telescopes which were daily pointed at it from the city. McClellan had little expectation that Pope would escape defeat, and impressed upon me the necessity of being prepared to cover a perhaps disorderly retreat within the lines. Some heavy artillery troops (Fourth New York Heavy Artillery) were in garrison at one of the forts, and these with the forces at Falls Church were ordered to report to me. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 726.] Assuring me that he would soon visit me in my new quarters, McClellan dismissed me, and I galloped forward to overtake my troops.

I found the position of the forts a most commanding one, overlooking the country in every direction. Westward the ground sloped away from us toward Fairfax Court House and Centreville. Northward, in a pretty valley, lay the village of Falls Church, and beyond it a wooded ridge over which a turnpike road ran to Vienna and on to Leesburg. Behind us was the rolling country skirting the Potomac, and from Ball's Cross-Roads, a mile or two in rear, a northward road led to the chain bridge above Georgetown, whilst the principal way went directly to the city by the Aqueduct Bridge. Three knolls grouped so as to command these different directions had been crowned with forts of strong profile. The largest of these, Fort Ramsey, on Upton's Hill was armed with twenty-pounder Parrott rifles, and the heavy-artillery troops occupied this work. I had a pair of guns of the same kind and calibre in my mixed battery, and these with my other field artillery were put in the other forts. Lines of infantry trench connected the works and extended right and left, and my four regiments occupied these. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. pp. 777, 779; vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 176.] A regiment of cavalry (Eighth Illinois, joined later by the Eighth Pennsylvania) was ordered to report to me, and this, with Schambeck's squadron which had come with me, made a cavalry camp in front of Falls Church and picketed and patrolled the front. [Footnote: See my order assigning garrisons to the forts. Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 771.]

We pitched our headquarters tents on Upton's Hill, just in rear of Fort Ramsey, and had a sense of luxury in "setting our house in order" after the uncomfortable experience of our long journey from West Virginia. The hurry of startling events in the past few days made our late campaign in the mountains seem as far away in time as it was in space. We were now in the very centre of excitement, and had become a very small part of a great army. The isolation and the separate responsibility of the past few months seemed like another existence indefinitely far away. I lost no time in making a rapid ride about my position, studying its approaches in the gathering twilight and trying to fix in mind the leading features of the topography with their relation to the possible retreat of our army and advance of the enemy. And all the while the rapid though muffled thumping of the distant cannon was in our ears, coming from the field in front of Groveton, where Lee, having now united his whole army against Pope, was sending part of Longstreet's divisions against McDowell's corps along the Warrenton turnpike.

On Saturday the 30th ambulances began coming through our lines with wounded men, and some on foot with an arm in a sling or bandages upon the head were wearily finding their way into the city. All such were systematically questioned, their information was collated and corrected, and reports were made to General Halleck and General McClellan. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 405; pt. iii. pp. 748, 789; vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 170; vol. li. pt. i. p. 777.] The general impression of all undoubtedly was that the engagement of Friday had been victorious for our army, and that the enemy was probably retreating at dark. During the day the cannonade continued with occasional lulls. It seemed more distant and fainter, requiring attentive listening to hear it. This was no doubt due to some change in the condition of the atmosphere; but we naturally interpreted it according to our wishes, and believed that the success of Friday was followed by the pursuit of the enemy. About four o'clock in the afternoon the distant firing became much more rapid; at times the separate shots could not be counted. I telegraphed to McClellan the fact which indicated a crisis in the battle. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 748.] It was the fierce artillery duel which preceded the decisive advance of Longstreet against Pope's left wing. This was the decisive turning-point in the engagement, and Pope was forced to retreat upon Centreville.

Early in the evening all doubt was removed about the result of the battle. Ill news travels fast, and the retreat toward us shortened the distance to be travelled. But as Sumner's and Franklin's corps had gone forward and would report to Pope at Centreville, we were assured that Pope was "out of his scrape" (to use the words of McClellan's too famous dispatch to the President [Footnote:Id., vol. xi. pt. i. p. 98.] ), and that the worst that could now happen would be the continuance of the retreat within our lines. The combat at Chantilly on the evening of September 1st was the last of Pope's long series of bloody engagements, and though the enemy was repulsed, the loss of Generals Kearny and Stevens made it seem to us like another disaster.

Frederick was a loyal city, and as Hampton's cavalry went out at one end of the street and our infantry came in at the other, and whilst the carbine smoke and the smell of powder still lingered, the closed window-shutters of the houses flew open, the sashes went up, the windows were filled with ladies waving their handkerchiefs and national flags, whilst the men came to the column with fruits and refreshments for the marching soldiers as they went by in the hot sunshine of the September afternoon. [Footnote: Although at the head of the column, the "truth of history" compels me to say that I saw nothing of Barbara Frietchie, and heard nothing of her till I read Whittier's poem in later years. When, however, I visited Frederick with General Grant in 1869, we were both presented with walking-sticks made from timbers of Barbara's house which had been torn down, and, of course, I cannot dispute the story of which I have the stick as evidence; for Grant thought the stick shut me up from any denial and established the legend.] Pleasonton's cavalry came in soon after by the Urbana road, and during the evening a large part of the army drew near the place. Next morning (13th) the cavalry went forward to reconnoitre the passes of Catoctin Mountain, Rodman's division of our corps being ordered to support them and to proceed toward Middletown in the Catoctin valley. Through some misunderstanding Rodman took the road to Jefferson, leading to the left, where Franklin's corps was moving, and did not get upon the Hagerstown road. About noon I was ordered to march upon the latter road to Middletown. McClellan himself met me as my column moved out of town, and told me of the misunderstanding in Rodman's orders, adding that if I found him on the march I should take his division also along with me. [Footnote: As is usual in such cases, the direction was later put in writing by his chief of staff. Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 827.] I did not meet him, but the other two divisions of the corps crossed Catoctin Mountain that night, whilst Rodman returned to Frederick. The Kanawha division made an easy march, and as the cavalry was now ahead of us, met no opposition in crossing Catoctin Mountain or in the valley beyond. On the way we passed a house belonging to a branch of the Washington family, and a few officers of the division accompanied me, at the invitation of the occupant, to look at some relics of the Father of his Country which were preserved there. We stood for some minutes with uncovered heads before a case containing a uniform he had worn, and other articles of personal use hallowed by their association with him, and went on our way with our zeal strengthened by closer contact with souvenirs of the great patriot. Willcox's division followed us, and encamped a mile and a half east of Middletown. Sturgis's halted not far from the western foot of the mountain, with corps headquarters near by. My own camp for the night was pitched in front (west) of the village of Middletown along Catoctin Creek. Pleasonton's cavalry was a little in advance of us, at the forks of the road where the old Sharpsburg road turns off to the left from the turnpike. The rest of the army was camped about Frederick, except Franklin's corps (Sixth), which was near Jefferson, ten miles further south but also east of Catoctin Mountain.

The Catoctin or Middletown valley is beautifully included between Catoctin Mountain and South Mountain, two ranges of the Blue Ridge, running northeast and southwest. It is six or eight miles wide, watered by Catoctin Creek, which winds southward among rich farms and enters the Potomac near Point of Rocks. The National road leaving Frederick passes through Middletown and crosses South Mountain, as it goes northwestward, at a depression called Turner's Gap. The old Sharpsburg road crosses the summit at another gap, known as Fox's, about a mile south of Turner's. Still another, the old Hagerstown road, finds a passage over the ridge at about an equal distance north. The National road, being of easier grades and better engineering, was now the principal route, the others having degenerated to rough country roads. The mountain crests are from ten to thirteen hundred feet above the Catoctin valley, and the "gaps" are from two to three hundred feet lower than the summits near them. [Footnote: These elevations are from the official map of the U.S. Engineers.] These summits are like scattered and irregular hills upon the high rounded surface of the mountain top. They are wooded, but along the southeasterly slopes, quite near the top of the mountain, are small farms, with meadows and cultivated fields.

The military situation had been cleared up by the knowledge of Lee's movements which McClellan got from a copy of Lee's order of the day for the both. This had been found at Frederick on the 13th, and it tallied so well with what was otherwise known that no doubt was left as to its authenticity. It showed that Jackson's corps with Walker's division were besieging Harper's Ferry on the Virginia side of the Potomac, whilst McLaws's division supported by Anderson's was co-operating on Maryland Heights. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 281, 603.] Longstreet, with the remainder of his corps, was at Boonsboro or near Hagerstown. D. H. Hill's division was the rear-guard, and the cavalry under Stuart covered the whole, a detached squadron being with Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws each. The order did not name the three separate divisions in Jackson's command proper (exclusive of Walker), nor those remaining with Longstreet except D. H. Hill's; but it is hardly conceivable that these were not known to McClellan after his own and Pope's contact with them during the campaigns of the spring and summer. At any rate, the order showed that Lee's army was in two parts, separated by the Potomac and thirty or forty miles of road. As soon as Jackson should reduce Harper's Ferry they would reunite. Friday the 12th was the day fixed for the concentration of Jackson's force for his attack, and it was Saturday when the order fell into McClellan's hands. Three days had already been lost in the slow advance since Lee had crossed Catoctin Mountain, and Jackson's artillery was now heard pounding at the camp and earthworks of Harper's Ferry. McLaws had already driven our forces from Maryland Heights, and had opened upon the ferry with his guns in commanding position on the north of the Potomac. [Footnote: Id., p. 607.] McClellan telegraphed to the President that he would catch the rebels "in their own trap if my men are equal to the emergency." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 281.] There was certainly no time to lose. The information was in his hands before noon, for he refers to it in a dispatch to Mr. Lincoln at twelve. If his men had been ordered to be at the top of South Mountain before dark, they could have been there; but less than one full corps passed Catoctin Mountain that day or night, and when the leisurely movement of the 14th began, he himself, instead of being with the advance, was in Frederick till after 2 P.M., at which hour he sent a dispatch to Washington, and then rode to the front ten or twelve miles away. The failure to be "equal to the emergency" was not in his men. Twenty-four hours, as it turned out, was the whole difference between saving and losing Harper's Ferry with its ten or twelve thousand men and its unestimated munitions and stores. It may be that the commanders of the garrison were in fault, and that a more stubborn resistance should have been made. It may be that Halleck ought to have ordered the place to be evacuated earlier, as McClellan suggested. Nevertheless, at noon of the 13th McClellan had it in his power to save the place and interpose his army between the two wings, of the Confederates with decisive effect on the campaign. He saw that it was an "emergency," but did not call upon his men for any extraordinary exertion. Harper's. Ferry surrendered, and Lee united the wings of his army beyond the Antietam before the final and general engagement was forced upon him.

At my camp in front of Middletown, I received no orders looking to a general advance on the 14th; but only to support, by a detachment, Pleasonton's cavalry in a reconnoissance toward Turner's Gap. Pleasonton himself came to my tent in the evening, and asked that one brigade might report to him in the morning for the purpose. Six o'clock was the hour at which he wished them to march. He said further that he and Colonel Crook were old army acquaintances and that he would like Crook to have the detail. I wished to please him, and not thinking that it would make any difference to my brigade commanders, intimated that I would do so. But Colonel Scammon, learning what was intended, protested that under our custom his brigade was entitled to the advance next day, as the brigades had taken it in turn. I explained that it was only as a courtesy to Pleasonton and at his request that the change was proposed. This did not better the matter in Scammon's opinion. He had been himself a regular officer, and the point of professional honor touched him. I recognized the justice of his demand, and said he should have the duty if he insisted upon it. Pleasonton was still in the camp visiting with Colonel Crook, and I explained to him the reasons why I could not yield to his wish, but must assign Scammon's brigade to the duty in conformity with the usual course. There was in fact no reason except the personal one for choosing one brigade more than the other, for they were equally good. Crook took the decision in good part, though it was natural that he should wish for an opportunity of distinguished service, as he had not been the regular commandant of the brigade. Pleasonton was a little chafed, and even intimated that he claimed some right to name the officer and command to be detailed. This, of course, I could not admit, and issued the formal orders at once. The little controversy had put Scammon and his whole brigade upon their mettle, and was a case in which a generous emulation did no harm. What happened in the morning only increased their spirit and prepared them the better to perform what I have always regarded as a very brilliant exploit.

South Mountain

The morning of Sunday the 14th of September was a bright one. I had my breakfast very early and was in the saddle before it was time for Scammon to move. He was prompt, and I rode on with him to see in what way his support was likely to be used. Two of the Ninth Corps batteries (Gibson's and Benjamin's) had accompanied the cavalry, and one of these was a heavy one of twenty-pounder Parrotts. They were placed upon a knoll a little in front of the cavalry camp, about half a mile beyond the forks of the old Sharpsburg road with the turnpike. They were exchanging shots with a battery of the enemy well up in the gap. Just as Scammon and I crossed Catoctin Creek I was surprised to see Colonel Moor standing at the roadside. With astonishment I rode to him and asked how he came there. He said that he had been taken beyond the mountain after his capture, but had been paroled the evening before, and was now finding his way back to us on foot. "But where are you going?" said he. I answered that Scammon was going to support Pleasonton in a reconnoissance into the gap. Moor made an involuntary start, saying, "My God! be careful!" then checking himself, added, "But I am paroled!" and turned away. I galloped to Scammon and told him that I should follow him in close support with Crook's brigade, and as I went back along the column I spoke to each regimental commander, warning them to be prepared for anything, big or little,--it might be a skirmish, it might be a battle. Hurrying to camp, I ordered Crook to turn out his brigade and march at once. I then wrote a dispatch to General Reno, saying I suspected we should find the enemy in force on the mountain top, and should go forward with both brigades instead of sending one. Starting a courier with this, I rode forward again and found Pleasonton. Scammon had given him an inkling of our suspicions, and in the personal interview they had reached a mutual good understanding. I found that he was convinced that it would be unwise to make an attack in front, and had determined that his horsemen should merely demonstrate upon the main road and support the batteries, whilst Scammon should march by the old Sharpsburg road and try to reach the flank of the force on the summit. I told him that in view of my fear that the force of the enemy might be too great for Scammon, I had determined to bring forward Crook's brigade in support. If it became necessary to fight with the whole division, I should do so, and in that case I should assume the responsibility myself as his senior officer. To this he cordially assented.

One section of McMullin's six-gun battery was all that went forward with Scammon (and even these not till the infantry reached the summit), four guns being left behind, as the road was rough and steep. There were in Simmonds's battery two twenty-pounder Parrott guns, and I ordered these also to remain on the turnpike and to go into action with Benjamin's battery of the same calibre. It was about half-past seven when Crook's head of column filed off from the turnpike upon the old Sharpsburg road, and Scammon had perhaps half an hour's start. We had fully two miles to go before we should reach the place where our attack was actually made, and as it was a pretty sharp ascent the men marched slowly with frequent rests. On our way up we were overtaken by my courier who had returned from General Reno with approval of my action and the assurance that the rest of the Ninth Corps would come forward to my support.

When Scammon had got within half a mile of Fox's Gap (the summit of the old Sharpsburg road), [Footnote: The Sharpsburg road is also called the Braddock road, as it was the way by which Braddock and Washington had marched to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg) in the old French war. For the same reason the gap is called Braddock's Gap. I have adopted that which seems to be in most common local use.] the enemy opened upon him with case-shot from the edge of the timber above the open fields, and he had judiciously turned off upon a country road leading still further to the left, and nearly parallel to the ridge above. His movement had been made under cover of the forest, and he had reached the extreme southern limit of the open fields south of the gap on this face of the mountain. Here I overtook him, his brigade being formed in line under cover of the timber, facing open pasture fields having a stone wall along the upper side, with the forest again beyond this. On his left was the Twenty-third Ohio under Lieutenant-Colonel R. B. Hayes, who had been directed to keep in the woods beyond the open, and to strike if possible the flank of the enemy. His centre was the Twelfth Ohio under Colonel Carr B. White, whose duty was to attack the stone wall in front, charging over the broad open fields. On the right was the Thirtieth Ohio, Colonel Hugh Ewing, who was ordered to advance against a battery on the crest which kept up a rapid and annoying fire. It was now about nine o'clock, and Crook's column had come into close support. Bayonets were fixed, and at the word the line rushed forward with loud hurrahs. Hayes, being in the woods, was not seen till he had passed over the crest and turned upon the enemy's flank and rear. Here was a sharp combat, but our men established themselves upon the summit and drove the enemy before them. White and Ewing charged over the open under a destructive fire of musketry and shrapnel. As Ewing approached the enemy's battery (Bondurant's), it gave him a parting salvo, and limbered rapidly toward the right along a road in the edge of the woods which follows the summit to the turnpike near the Mountain House at Turner's Gap. White's men never flinched, and the North Carolinians of Garland's brigade (for it was they who held the ridge at this point) poured in their fire till the advancing line of bayonets was in their faces when they broke away from the wall. Our men fell fast, but they kept up their pace, and the enemy's centre was broken by a heroic charge. Garland strove hard to rally his men, but his brigade was hopelessly broken in two. He rallied his right wing on the second ridge a little in rear of that part of his line, but Hayes's regiment was here pushing forward from our left. Colonel Ruffin of the Thirteenth North Carolina held on to the ridge road beyond our right, near Fox's Gap. The fighting was now wholly in the woods, and though the enemy's centre was routed there was stubborn resistance on both flanks. His cavalry dismounted (said to be under Colonel Rosser [Footnote: Stuart's Report, Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 817.] ) was found to extend beyond Hayes's line, and supported the Stuart artillery, which poured canister into our advancing troops. I now ordered Crook to send the Eleventh Ohio (under Lieutenant-Colonel Coleman) beyond Hayes's left to extend our line in that direction, and to direct the Thirty-sixth Ohio (Lieutenant-Colonel Clark) to fill a gap between the Twelfth and Thirtieth caused by diverging lines of advance. The only remaining regiment (the Twenty-eighth, Lieutenant-Colonel Becker) was held in reserve on the right. The Thirty-sixth aided by the Twelfth repulsed a stout effort of the enemy to re-establish their centre. The whole line again sprung forward. A high knoll on our left was carried. The dismounted cavalry was forced to retreat with their battery across the ravine in which the Sharpsburg road descends on the west of the mountain, and took a new position on a separate hill in rear of the heights at the Mountain House. There was considerable open ground at this new position, from which their battery had full play at a range of about twelve hundred yards upon the ridge held by us. But the Eleventh and Twenty-third stuck stoutly to the hill which Hayes had first carried, and their line was nearly parallel to the Sharpsburg road, facing north. Garland had rushed to the right of his brigade to rally them when they had broken before the onset of the Twenty-third Ohio upon the flank, and in the desperate contest there he had been killed and the disaster to his command made irreparable. On our side Colonel Hayes had also been disabled by a severe wound as he gallantly led the Ohio regiment.

I now directed the centre and right to push forward toward Fox's Gap. Lieutenant Croome with a section of McMullin's battery had come up, and he put his guns in action in the most gallant manner in the open ground near Wise's house. The Thirtieth and Thirty-sixth changed front to the right and attacked the remnant of Garland's brigade, now commanded by Colonel McRae, and drove it and two regiments from G. B. Anderson's brigade back upon the wooded hill beyond Wise's farm at Fox's Gap. The whole of Anderson's brigade retreated further along the crest toward the Mountain House. Meanwhile the Twelfth Ohio, also changing front, had thridded its way in the same direction through laurel thickets on the reverse slope of the mountain, and attacking suddenly the force at Wise's as the other two regiments charged it in front, completed the rout and brought off two hundred prisoners. Bondurant's battery was again driven hurriedly off to the north. But the hollow at the gap about Wise's was no place to stay. It was open ground and was swept by the batteries of the cavalry on the open hill to the northwest, and by those of Hill's division about the Mountain House and upon the highlands north of the National road; for those hills run forward like a bastion and give a perfect flanking fire along our part of the mountain. The gallant Croome with a number of his gunners had been killed, and his guns were brought back into the shelter of the woods, on the hither side of Wise's fields. The infantry of the right wing was brought to the same position, and our lines were reformed along the curving crests from that point which looks down into the gap and the Sharpsburg road, toward the left. The extreme right with Croome's two guns was held by the Thirtieth, with the Twenty-eighth in second line. Next came the Twelfth, with the Thirty-sixth in second line, the front curving toward the west with the form of the mountain summit. The left of the Twelfth dipped a little into a hollow, beyond which the Twenty-third and Eleventh occupied the next hill facing toward the Sharpsburg road. Our front was hollow, for the two wings were nearly at right angles to each other; but the flanks were strongly placed, the right, which was most exposed, having open ground in front which it could sweep with its fire and having the reserve regiments closely supporting it. Part of Simmonds's battery which had also come up had done good service in the last combats, and was now disposed so as to check the fire of the enemy.

It was time to rest. Three hours of up-hill marching and climbing had been followed by as long a period of bloody battle, and it was almost noon. The troops began to feel the exhaustion of such labor and struggle. We had several hundred prisoners in our hands, and the field was thickly strewn with dead, in gray and in blue, while our field hospital a little down the mountain side was encumbered with hundreds of wounded. We learned from our prisoners that the summit was held by D. H. Hill's division of five brigades with Stuart's cavalry, and that Longstreet's corps was in close support. I was momentarily expecting to hear from the supporting divisions of the Ninth Corps, and thought it the part of wisdom to hold fast to our strong position astride of the mountain top commanding the Sharpsburg road till our force should be increased. The two Kanawha brigades had certainly won a glorious victory, and had made so assured a success of the day's work that it would be folly to imperil it. [Footnote: For Official Records, see Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 458-474.]

General Hill has since argued that only part of his division could oppose us; [Footnote: Century War Book, vol. ii. pp. 559, etc.] but his brigades were all on the mountain summit within easy support of each other, and they had the day before them. It was five hours from the time of our first charge to the arrival of our first supports, and it was not till three o'clock in the afternoon that Hooker's corps reached the eastern base of the mountain and began its deployment north of the National road. Our effort was to attack the weak end of his line, and we succeeded in putting a stronger force there than that which opposed us. It is for our opponent to explain how we were permitted to do it. The two brigades of the Kanawha division numbered less than 3000 men. Hill's division was 5000 strong, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 1025.] even by the Confederate method of counting their effectives, which should be increased nearly one-fifth to compare properly with our reports. In addition to these Stuart had the principal part of the Confederate cavalry on this line, and they were not idle spectators. Parts of Lee's and Hampton's brigades were certainly there, and probably the whole of Lee's. [Footnote:Id., p. 819.] With less than half the numerical strength which was opposed to it, therefore, the Kanawha division had carried the summit, advancing to the charge for the most part over open ground in the storm of musketry and artillery fire, and held the crests they had gained through the livelong day, in spite of all efforts to retake them.

In our mountain camps of West Virginia I had felt discontented that our native Ohio regiments did not take as kindly to the labors of drill and camp police as some of German birth, and I had warned them that they would feel the need of accuracy and mechanical precision when the day of battle came. They had done reasonably well, but suffered in comparison with some of the others on dress parade and in the form and neatness of the camp. When, however, on the slopes of South Mountain I saw the lines go forward steadier and more even under fire than they ever had done at drill, their intelligence making them perfectly comprehend the advantage of unity in their effort and in the shock when they met the foe--when their bodies seemed to dilate, their step to have better cadence and a tread as of giants as they went cheering up the hill,--I took back all my criticisms and felt a pride and glory in them as soldiers and comrades that words cannot express.

It was about noon that the lull in the battle occurred, and it lasted a couple of hours, while reinforcements were approaching the mountain top from both sides. The enemy's artillery kept up a pretty steady fire, answered occasionally by our few cannon; but the infantry rested on their arms, the front covered by a watchful line of skirmishers, every man at his tree. The Confederate guns had so perfectly the range of the sloping fields about and behind us, that their canister shot made long furrows in the sod with a noise like the cutting of a melon rind, and the shells which skimmed the crest and burst in the tree-tops at the lower side of the fields made a sound like the crashing and falling of some brittle substance, instead of the tough fibre of oak and pine. We had time to notice these things as we paced the lines waiting for the renewal of the battle.

Willcox's division reported to me about two o'clock, and would have been up earlier, but for a mistake in the delivery of a message to him. He had sent from Middletown to ask me where I desired him to come, and finding that the messenger had no clear idea of the roads by which he had travelled, I directed him to say that General Pleasonton would point out the road I had followed, if inquired of. Willcox understood the messenger that I wished him to inquire of Pleasonton where he had better put his division in, and on doing so, the latter suggested that he move against the crests on the north of the National road. He was preparing to do this when Burnside and Reno came up and corrected the movement, recalling him from the north and sending him by the old Sharpsburg road to my position. As his head of column came up, Longstreet's corps was already forming with its right outflanking my left. I sent two regiments [Footnote: In my official report I said one regiment, but General Willcox reported that he sent two, and he is doubtless right. For his official report, see Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 428.] to extend my left, and requested Willcox to form the rest of the division on my right facing the summit. He was doing this when he received an order from General Reno to take position overlooking the National road facing northward. [Footnote: Ibid.] I can hardly think the order could have been intended to effect this, as the turnpike is deep between the hills there, and the enemy quite distant on the other side of the gorge. But Willcox, obeying the order as he received it, formed along the Sharpsburg road, his left next to my right, but his line drawn back nearly at right angles to it. He placed Cook's battery in the angle, and this opened a rapid fire on one of the enemy's which was on the bastion-like hill north of the gorge already mentioned. Longstreet's men were now pretty well up, and pushed a battery forward to the edge of the timber beyond Wise's farm, and opened upon Willcox's line, enfilading it badly. There was a momentary break there, but Willcox was able to check the confusion, and to reform his lines facing westward as I had originally directed; Welch's brigade was on my right, closely supporting Cook's battery and Christ's beyond it. The general line of Willcox's division was at the eastern edge of the wood looking into the open ground at Fox's Gap, on the north side of the Sharpsburg road. A warm skirmishing fight was continued along the whole of our line, our purpose being to hold fast my extreme left which was well advanced upon and over the mountain crest, and to swing the right up to the continuation of the same line of hills near the Mountain House.

At nearly four o'clock the head of Sturgis's column approached. [Footnote: Sturgis's Report, Id., pt. i. p. 443.] McClellan had arrived on the field, and he with Burnside and Reno was at Pleasonton's position at the knoll in the valley, and from that point, a central one in the midst of the curving hills, they issued their orders. They could see the firing of the enemy's battery from the woods beyond the open ground in front of Willcox, and sent orders to him to take or silence those guns at all hazards. He was preparing to advance, when the Confederates anticipated him (for their formation had now been completed) and came charging out of the woods across the open fields. It was part of their general advance and their most determined effort to drive us from the summit we had gained in the morning. The brigades of Hood, Whiting, Drayton, and D. R. Jones in addition to Hill's division (eight brigades in all) joined in the attack on our side of the National road, batteries being put in every available position. [Footnote: Longstreet's Report, Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 839.] The fight raged fiercely along the whole front, but the bloodiest struggle was around Wise's house, where Drayton's brigade assaulted my right and Willcox's left, coming across the open ground. Here the Sharpsburg road curves around the hill held by us so that for a little way it was parallel to our position. As the enemy came down the hill forming the other side of the gap, across the road and up again to our line, they were met by so withering a fire that they were checked quickly, and even drifted more to the right where their descent was continuous. Here Willcox's line volleyed into them a destructive fire, followed by a charge that swept them in confusion back along the road, where the men of the Kanawha division took up the attack and completed their rout. Willcox succeeded in getting a foothold on the further side of the open ground and driving off the artillery which was there. Along our centre and left where the forest was thick, the enemy was equally repulsed, but the cover of the timber enabled them to keep a footing near by, whilst they continually tried to extend so as to outflank us, moving their troops along a road which goes diagonally down that side of the mountain from Turner's Gap to Rohrersville. The batteries on the north of the National road had been annoying to Willcox's men as they advanced, but Sturgis sent forward Durell's battery from his division as soon as he came up, and this gave special attention to these hostile guns, diverting their fire from the infantry. Hooker's men, of the First Corps, were also by this time pushing up the mountain on that side of the turnpike, and we were not again troubled by artillery on our right flank.

It was nearly five o'clock when the enemy had disappeared in the woods beyond Fox's Gap and Willcox could reform his shattered lines. As the easiest mode of getting Sturgis's fresh men into position, Willcox made room on his left for Ferrero's brigade supported by Nagle's, doubling also his lines at the extreme right. Rodman's division, the last of the corps, now began to reach the summit, and as the report came from the extreme left that the enemy was stretching beyond our flank, I sent Fairchild's brigade to assist our men there, whilst Rodman took Harland's to the support of Willcox. A staff officer now brought word that McClellan directed the whole line to advance. At the left this could only mean to clear our front decisively of the enemy there, for the slopes went steadily down to the Rohrersville road. At the centre and right, whilst we held Fox's Gap, the high and rocky summit at the Mountain House was still in the enemy's possession. The order came to me as senior officer upon the line, and the signal was given. On the left Longstreet's men were pushed down the mountain side beyond the Rohrersville and Sharpsburg roads, and the contest there was ended. The two hills between the latter road and the turnpike were still held by the enemy, and the further one could not be reached till the Mountain House should be in our hands. Sturgis and Willcox, supported by Rodman, again pushed forward, but whilst they made progress they were baffled by a stubborn and concentrated resistance.

Reno had followed Rodman's division up the mountain, and came to me a little before sunset, anxious to know why the right could not get forward quite to the summit. I explained that the ground there was very rough and rocky, a fortress in itself and evidently very strongly held. He passed on to Sturgis, and it seemed to me he was hardly gone before he was brought back upon a stretcher, dead. He had gone to the skirmish line to examine for himself the situation, and had been shot down by the enemy posted among the rocks and trees. There was more or less firing on that part of the field till late in the evening, but when morning dawned the Confederates had abandoned the last foothold above Turner's Gap and retreated by way of Boonsboro to Sharpsburg. The casualties in the Ninth Corps had been 889, of which 356 were in the Kanawha division. Some 600 of the enemy were captured by my division and sent to the rear under guard.

On the north of the National road the First Corps under Hooker had been opposed by one of Hill's brigades and four of Longstreet's, and had gradually worked its way along the old Hagerstown road, crowning the heights in that direction after dark in the evening. Gibbon's brigade had also advanced in the National road, crowding up quite close to Turner's Gap and engaging the enemy in a lively combat. It is not my purpose to give a detailed history of events which did not come under my own eye. It is due to General Burnside, however, to note Hooker's conduct toward his immediate superior and his characteristic efforts to grasp all the glory of the battle at the expense of truth and of honorable dealing with his commander and his comrades. Hooker's official report for the battle of South Mountain was dated at Washington, November 17th, when Burnside was in command of the Army of the Potomac, and when the intrigues of the former to obtain the command for himself were notorious and near their final success. In it he studiously avoided any recognition of orders or directions received from Burnside, and ignores his staff, whilst he assumes that his orders came directly from McClellan and compliments the staff officers of the latter, as if they had been the only means of communication. This was not only insolent but a military offence, had Burnside chosen to prosecute it. He also asserts that the troops on our part of the line had been defeated and were at the turnpike at the base of the mountain in retreat when he went forward. At the close of his report, after declaring that "the forcing of the passage of South Mountain will be classed among the most brilliant and satisfactory achievements of this army," he adds, "its principal glory will be awarded to the First Corps." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 214-215.]

Nothing is more justly odious in military conduct than embodying slanders against other commands in an official report. It puts into the official records misrepresentations which cannot be met because they are unknown, and it is a mere accident if those who know the truth are able to neutralize their effect. In most cases it will be too late to counteract the mischief when those most interested learn of the slanders. All this is well illustrated in the present case. Hooker's report got on file months after the battle, and it was not till the January following that Burnside gave it his attention. I believe that none of the division commanders of the Ninth Corps learned of it till long afterward. I certainly did not till 1887, a quarter of a century after the battle, when the volume of the official records containing it was published. Burnside had asked to be relieved of the command of the Army of the Potomac after the battle of Fredericksburg unless Hooker among others was punished for insubordination. As in the preceding August, the popular sentiment of that army as an organization was again, in Mr. Lincoln's estimation, too potent a factor to be opposed, and the result was the superseding of Burnside by Hooker himself, though the President declared in the letter accompanying the appointment that the latter's conduct had been blameworthy. It was under these circumstances that Burnside learned of the false statements in Hooker's report of South Mountain, and put upon file his stinging response to it. His explicit statement of the facts will settle that question among all who know the reputation of the men, and though unprincipled ambition was for a time successful, that time was so short and things were "set even" so soon that the ultimate result is one that lovers of justice may find comfort in.
[Footnote: The text of Burnside's supplemental report is as follows:--

"When I sent in my report of the part taken by my command in the battle of South Mountain, General Hooker, who commanded one of the corps of my command (the right wing), had not sent in his report, but it has since been sent to me. I at first determined to pass over its inaccuracies as harmless, or rather as harming only their author; but upon reflection I have felt it my duty to notice two gross misstatements made with reference to the commands of Generals Reno and Cox, the former officer having been killed on that day, and the latter now removed with his command to the West.

"General Hooker says that as he came up to the front, Cox's corps was retiring from the contest. This is untrue. General Cox did not command a corps, but a division; and that division was in action, fighting most gallantly, long before General Hooker came up, and remained in the action all day, never leaving the field for one moment. He also says that he discovered that the attack by General Reno's corps was without sequence. This is also untrue, and when said of an officer who so nobly fought and died on that same field, it partakes of something worse than untruthfulness. Every officer present who knew anything of the battle knows that Reno performed a most important part in the battle, his corps driving the enemy from the heights on one side of the main pike, whilst that of General Hooker drove them from the heights on the other side.

"General Hooker should remember that I had to order him four separate times to move his command into action, and that I had to myself order his leading division (Meade's) to start before he would go." Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 422.]
The men of the First Corps and its officers did their duty nobly on that as on many another field, and the only spot on the honor of the day is made by the personal unscrupulousness and vainglory of its commander.

Franklin's corps had attacked and carried the ridge about five miles further south, at Crampton's Gap, where the pass had been so stubbornly defended by Mahone's and Cobb's brigades with artillery and a detachment of Hampton's cavalry as to cause considerable loss to our troops. The principal fighting was at a stone wall near the eastern base of the mountain, and when the enemy was routed from this position, he made no successful rally and the summit was gained without much more fighting. The attack at the stone wall not far from Burkettsville was made at about three o'clock in the afternoon. The Sixth Corps rested upon the summit at night.

Leaving this little band to protect their right, the main line, which had come up on the left, leaped the fence at the south edge of the cornfield, and charged up hill across the open at the enemy in front. But the concentrated fire of artillery and musketry was more than they could bear. Men fell by scores and hundreds, and the thinned lines gave way and ran for the shelter of the corn. They were rallied in the hollow on the north side of the field. The enemy had rapidly extended his left under cover of the West Wood, and now made a dash at the right flank and at Gibbon's exposed guns. His men on the right faced by that flank and followed him bravely, though with little order, in a dash at the Confederates who were swarming out of the wood. [Footnote: Id., p. 91.] The gunners double-charged the cannon with canister, and under a terrible fire of artillery and rifles Lawton's division broke and sought shelter. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 248.]

Patrick's brigade had now come up in support of Gibbon, and was sent across the turnpike into the West Wood to cover that flank, two regiments of Gibbon's going with him. [Footnote: Id., p. 243.] His men pushed forward, the enemy retiring, until they were in advance of the principal line in the cornfield upon which the Confederates of Jackson's division were now marching to attack. Patrick faced his brigade to the left, parallel to the edge of the wood and to the turnpike, and poured his fire into the flank of the enemy, following it by a charge through the field and up to the fence along the road. Again the Confederates were driven back, but their left came forward in the wood again, attacking Patrick's right, forcing him to resume his original direction of front and to retire to the cover of a rocky ledge in the open at right angles to the turnpike not far from the northern end of the timber. Phelps's brigade had gone forward with Gibbon's, pushing nearly to the Confederate lines, and being driven back with great loss when they charged over open ground against the enemy.

Ricketts's division advanced from the wood in which it had spent the night, passed through Seymour's skirmishers and entered the East Wood, swinging his left forward as he went. This grove was open, but the rocks made perfect cover for Jackson's men, and every stone and tree blazed with deadly fire. Hartsuff endeavored to reconnoitre the ground, but was wounded and disabled immediately. Ricketts pushed on, suffering fearfully from an enemy which in open order could fall back from rock to rock and from tree to tree with little comparative loss. He succeeded at last in reaching the west edge of this wood, forming along the road and fences that were just within its margin. Here he kept up a rapid fire till his ammunition was exhausted. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 258.]

When Doubleday's men had been finally repulsed, our line on the right curved from the ledge where Patrick took refuge, forward in front of Miller's orchard and garden, part of Gibbon's men lying down along the turnpike fence facing to the west. Meade's two brigades in reserve were sent forward, but when they reached Gibbon and Phelps, Ricketts was calling for assistance in the East Wood and Magilton's brigade was sent to him, leaving a gap on the left of Anderson. Another gallant effort was now made, Seymour's depleted brigade striving to cover the opening, but the enemy dashed at it as Anderson came up the slope, and the left being taken in flank, the whole broke again to the rear. [Footnote: Id., pp. 269, 270.] Ricketts's right was also imperilled, and he withdrew his exhausted lines to reorganize and to fill their empty cartridge-boxes. There was a lull in the battle, and the combatants on both sides were making desperate efforts to reform their broken regiments.

Mansfield had called the Twelfth Corps to arms at the first sound of Hooker's battle and marched to his aid. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 475.] It consisted of two divisions, Williams's and Greene's, the first of two and the other of three brigades. There were a number of new and undrilled regiments in the command, and in hastening to the front in columns of battalions in mass, proper intervals for deployment had not been preserved, and time was necessarily lost before the troops could be put in line. Indeed, some of them were not regularly deployed at all. They had left their bivouac at sunrise which, as it was about the equinox, was not far from six o'clock. They had marched across the country without reference to roads, always a very slow mode of advancing, and doubly so with undrilled men. The untrained regiments must, in the nature of things, have been very much like a mob when their so-called columns-in-mass approached the field of battle. It is impossible to reconcile the statements of the reports as to the time they became engaged. General Williams says they were engaged before seven o'clock. [Footnote: Id., p. 476.] General Meade says they relieved his men not earlier than ten or eleven. [Footnote: Id., p. 270.] It seems to be guesswork in both cases, and we are forced to judge from circumstantial evidence. Ricketts thinks he had been fighting four hours when he retired for lack of ammunition, and the Twelfth Corps men had not yet reached him. [Footnote: Id., p. 259.] Patrick, on the extreme right, says that his men had made their coffee in the lull after his retreat to the sheltering ledge of rocks, and had completed their breakfast before the first of Mansfield's men joined him there. [Footnote: Id., p. 244.] The circumstantial details given by several officers make the interval between the attack by the Twelfth Corps and the arrival of Sumner a very short one. It may be regarded as probable, therefore, that Hooker's battle covered the larger part of the time between six o'clock and the arrival of Sumner at about ten.

On reaching the field, Mansfield had a brief consultation with Hooker, resulting in his ordering Williams to form his division nearly as Doubleday's had been, and to advance with his right upon the turnpike. He himself led forward the left of Crawford's brigade, which was the first to arrive, and pushed toward the East Wood. The regiments were still in columns of companies, and though Williams had ordered them deployed, the corps commander himself, as Crawford says, countermanded this order and led them under fire in column. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 484.] He evidently believed Ricketts's men to be still holding the East Wood, and tried to keep his own from opening fire upon the troops that were seen there. At this moment he was mortally wounded, before the deployment was made.

General Alpheus S. Williams, on whom the command devolved, was a cool and experienced officer. He hastened the deployment of Crawford's and Gordon's brigades of his own division, sending one of the new and large regiments to assist the Pennsylvania regiment in holding the important position covering the right beyond the turnpike. As Greene's division came up, he ordered him to form beyond Gordon's left, and when deployed to move on the Dunker Church through the East Wood, guiding his left by the cloud of smoke from the Mumma house, which had been set on fire by D. H. Hill's men. [Footnote:Id., pp. 475, 1033.] At Doubleday's request, he detached Goodrich's brigade from Greene, and sent it to Patrick on the right with orders to advance into the West Wood from its northern extremity. Patrick says the regiments came separately and at considerable intervals, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 244.] and it is not unlikely that the older regiments were sent in to relieve Hooker's men as fast as they were ready, and the more disorganized ones were obliged to delay till they could be got into some sort of shape. Williams made his first disposition of his troops according to Hooker's suggestion, but the latter received a serious wound in the foot, as it would seem, before the attack by the Twelfth Corps had begun. Hooker turned over the command to Meade, and a formal order confirming this was issued from McClellan's head-quarters later in the day. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. p. 315.]

So many of the regiments were carried under fire while still in column that not only was the formation of the line an irregular one, but the deployment when made was more diagonal to the turnpike than Hooker's had been, and the whole line faced more to the westward. But they advanced with a courage equal to the heroism already shown on that field. The Confederates who now held the open space at the Dunker Church were Hood's two brigades, and the rest of Jackson's corps extended into the West Wood. Stuart had found his artillery position on the hill too far from Jackson's line, and the fighting was so near the church that he could not fire upon our men without hurting his own. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 820.] He therefore moved further to the south and west, and Early carried his brigade (except the Thirteenth Virginia) back toward Ewell's division, which now came under his command by the disabling of General Lawton in the fight. [Footnote: Id., pp. 968, 969.]

Williams's first line was a good deal shortened, and the divisions, guiding as well as they could upon Greene, crowded so far to the south that even Crawford's brigade, which was on the right of all, went partly through the East Wood advancing on a line nearly at right angles to the turnpike. The enemy had followed Ricketts's retiring battalions and were again in occupation of the East Wood. His work was to be done over again, though the stubborn courage of Hood's depleted brigades could not make up for the numbers which the National officers now led against him. But the rocks, the ledges, and the trees still gave him such cover that it was at a fearful cost that the Twelfth Corps men pushed him steadily back and then by a final rush drove him from the roads which skirted the grove on west and south. What was left of Jackson's corps except Early's brigade had come out of the West Wood to meet Crawford's division, and the stout high fences along the turnpike were the scene of frightful slaughter. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 485, 487.] The Confederates tried to climb them, but the level fire of our troops swept over the field so that the top of the fence seemed in the most deadly line of the leaden storm, and the men in gray fell in windrows along its panels. Our own men were checked by the same obstacle, and lay along the ground shooting between the rails and over the fallen bodies of the Confederate soldiers which made a sort of rampart.

In obedience to his original orders, Greene took ground a little more to his left, occupying a line along a fence from the burning Mumma house to the road leading from the East Wood directly to the Dunker Church. [Footnote: Id., p. 505.] The two brigades with thinned ranks barely filled this space, and Crawford's division connected with them as well as it could. Batteries came forward on Greene's left and right, and helped to sweep the grove around the church. Hill attempted to hold him back, and a bold dash was made at Greene, probably by Hill's left brigades which were ordered forward to support Hood. Greene's men lay on the ground just under the ridge above the burning house till the enemy were within a few rods of them, then rose and delivered a volley which an eyewitness (Major Crane, Seventh Ohio) says cut them down "like grass before the mower." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 506.] Those who escaped sought refuge in the wood behind the church, where the crowning ridge is some distance back from the road. Greene now dashed forward and gained the grove immediately about the church, where he held on for an hour or two. Crawford's division, after several ebbs and flows in the tide of battle, was holding the western skirt of the East wood with one or two of its regiments still close to the turnpike fence on his right.

Meanwhile Goodrich had been trying to advance from the north end of the West Wood to attack the flank of the enemy there; but Early with his own brigade held the ledges along the ravine so stubbornly that he was making little progress.

Greene was calling for support about the Dunker Church, for he was close under the ridge on which Hill and Jackson were forming such line as they could, and he was considerably in advance of our other troops. Williams withdrew one regiment from Goodrich's brigade and sent it to Greene, and directed Crawford to send also to him the Thirteenth New Jersey, a new and strong regiment which had been left in reserve, as we have seen, in a bit of wood northeast of the field of battle. [Footnote: Id., pp. 476, 505.] Gordon's brigade was withdrawn by Crawford to enable it to reorganize in rear of the East Wood, and Crawford's own brigade held the further margin of it. It will thus be seen that the Twelfth Corps was now divided into three portions,--Greene's division at the church, Crawford's in the East Wood, and Goodrich's brigade near the north end of the West Wood.

Meade had withdrawn the First Corps to the ridge at Poffenberger's, where it had bivouacked the night before, except that Patrick's brigade remained in support of Goodrich. The corps had suffered severely, having lost 2470 in killed and wounded, but it was still further depleted by straggling, so that Meade reported less than 7000 men with the colors that evening. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 349.] Its organization had been preserved, however, and the story that it was utterly dispersed was a mistake. The Twelfth Corps also had its large list of casualties, increased a little later by its efforts to support Sumner, and aggregating, before the day was over, 1746.

But the fighting of Hooker's and Mansfield's men, though lacking unity of force and of purpose, had also cost the enemy dear. J. R. Jones, who commanded Jackson's division, had been wounded; Starke, who succeeded Jones, was killed; Lawton, who commanded Ewell's division, was wounded. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 956.] Lawton's and Trimble's brigades had been fearfully crippled in the first fight against Hooker on the plateau between the Dunker Church and the East Wood, and Hood was sent back to relieve them. [Footnote: Id., p. 923.] He, in turn, had been reinforced by the brigades of Ripley, Colquitt, and McRae (Garland's) from D. H. Hill's division. [Footnote: Id., p. 1022.] When Greene reached the Dunker Church, therefore, the Confederates on that wing were more nearly disorganized than our own troops. Nearly half their numbers were killed and wounded, and Jackson's famous "Stonewall" division was so completely broken up that only a handful of men under Colonels Grigsby and Stafford remained, and attached themselves to Early's command. [Footnote:Id., p. 969.] Of the division now under Early, his own brigade was all that retained much strength, and this, posted among the rocks in the West Wood and vigorously supported by Stuart and the artillery on that flank, was all that covered the left of Lee's army. Could Hooker and Mansfield have attacked together, or, still better, could Sumner's Second Corps have marched before day and united with the first onset, Lee's left must inevitably have been crushed long before the Confederate divisions of McLaws, Walker, and A. P. Hill could have reached the field. It is this failure to carry out any intelligible plan which the historian must regard as the unpardonable military fault on the National side. To account for the hours between daybreak and eight o'clock on that morning, is the most serious responsibility of the National commander. [Footnote: A distinguished officer (understood to be Gen. R. R. Dawes) who visited the field in 1866 has published the statement that at the Pry house, where McClellan had his headquarters, he was informed that on the morning of the 17th the general rose at about seven o'clock and breakfasted leisurely after that hour. (Marietta, Ohio, Sentinel.)]

Sumner's Second Corps was now approaching the scene of action, or rather two divisions of it, Sedgwick's and French's, for Richardson's was still delayed till his place could be filled by Porter's troops. Although ordered to be ready to move at daybreak, Sumner emphasizes in his report the fact that whilst his command was prepared to move at the time ordered, he "did not receive from headquarters the order to march till 7.20 A. M." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 275.] By the time he could reach the field, Hooker had fought his battle and had been repulsed. The same strange tardiness in sending orders is noticeable in regard to every part of the army, and Richardson was not relieved so that he could follow French till an hour or two later. [Footnote: Ibid.]

Sumner advanced, after crossing the Antietam, in a triple column, Sedgwick's division in front, the three brigades marching by the right flank and parallel to each other. French followed in the same formation. They crossed the Antietam by Hooker's route, but did not march so far to the northwest as Hooker had done. On the way Sumner met Hooker, who was being carried from the field, and the few words he could exchange with the wounded general were enough to make him feel the need of haste, but not enough to give him any clear idea of the situation. When the centre of the corps was opposite the Dunker Church, and nearly east of it, the change of direction was given; the troops faced to their proper front, and advanced in line of battle in three lines, fully deployed and sixty or seventy yards apart, Sumner himself being in rear of Sedgwick's first line and near its left. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 305.] As they approached the position held by Greene's division at the church, French kept on so as to form on Greene's left, [Footnote:Id., p. 323.] but Sedgwick, under Sumner's immediate leading, diverged somewhat to the right, passing through the East Wood, crossing the turnpike on the right of Greene and of the Dunker Church, and plunged into the West Wood. [Footnote: Id., p. 305.] The fences there had been destroyed by the Confederates before the battle began, for the purpose of making room for their own manoeuvres as well as to make barricades in front of the cornfield. Sedgwick's right did not extend far enough north to be obstructed by the fences where the Twelfth Corps men had lain along them in repulsing Jackson. When he entered the wood, there were absolutely no Confederate troops in front of him. The remnants of Jackson's men, except Early's brigade, were clustered at the top of the ridge immediately in front of Greene, and Early was further to the right, opposing Goodrich and Patrick; Early, however, made haste under cover of the woods to pass around Sedgwick's right and to get in front of him to oppose his progress. [Footnote: Id., p. 970.] This led to a lively skirmishing fight in which Early was making as great a demonstration as possible, but with no chance of solid success. Sedgwick pushed him back, and his left was coming obliquely into the open at the bottom of the hollow beyond the wood, when, at the very moment, McLaws's and Walker's Confederate divisions came upon the field. The former had only just arrived by rapid marching from Shepherdstown beyond the Potomac; the latter had been hastily called away by Lee from his position on the lower Antietam opposite the left wing of Burnside's Ninth Corps. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 857, 914.]

Walker charged headlong upon the left flank of Sedgwick's lines, and McLaws, passing by Walker's left, also threw his division diagonally upon the already broken and retreating brigades. Taken at such a disadvantage, these had never a chance; and in spite of the heroic bravery of Sumner and Sedgwick with most of their officers (Sedgwick being severely wounded), the division was driven off to the north with terrible losses, carrying along in their rout Goodrich's brigade of the Twelfth Corps which had been holding Early at bay. Goodrich was killed, and his brigade suffered hardly less than the others. Patrick's brigade of Hooker's corps was in good order at the rocky ledges north of the West Wood which are at right angles to the turnpike, and he held on stubbornly till the disorganized troops drifted past his left, and then made an orderly retreat in line toward the Poffenberger hill. [Footnote: Id., p. 245.] Meade was already there with the remnants of Hooker's men. Here some thirty cannon of both corps were quickly concentrated, and, supported by everything which retained organization, easily checked the pursuers and repulsed all efforts of Jackson and Stuart to resume the offensive or to pass between them and the Potomac. [Footnote:Id., p. 306.]

Sumner did not accompany the routed troops to this position, but as soon as it was plain that the division could not be rallied, he galloped off to put himself in communication with French and with headquarters of the army and to try to retrieve the situation. From the flag station east of the East Wood he signalled to McClellan, "Reinforcements are badly wanted; our troops are giving way." [Footnote: Id., p. 134.] Williams was in that part of the field, and Sumner sent a staff officer to him ordering that he should push forward to Sedgwick's support anything he could. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 477.] Williams in person ordered Gordon's brigade to advance, for this, as we have seen, had been reorganized behind the East Wood. He sent the same order to Crawford for the rest of that division. Crawford had withdrawn his men in the East Wood to let Sedgwick pass diagonally along his front, and now advanced again to the west margin of the grove. [Footnote: Id., p. 485.] Gordon was ahead of him in time and further to the right, and again charged up to the turnpike fences. But the routed troops were already swarming from the wood across his front, and their pursuers were charging after them. Again the turnpike was made the scene of a bloody conflict, and the bodies of many more of the slain of both armies were added to those which already lined those fences. Gordon's men were overpowered and fell back in the direction they had come. [Footnote: Id., p. 495.] The enemy's attack spread out toward Greene and toward Crawford, who was now at the edge of the East Wood again; but both of these held firm, and a couple of batteries on the rise of ground in front poured canister into the enemy till he took refuge again in the wood beyond the church. It was between nine and ten o'clock, probably about ten, [Footnote: The reports on the Confederate side fix ten o'clock as the time McLaws and Walker reached the field, and corroborate the conclusion I draw from all other available evidence.] when Sumner entered the West Wood, and in fifteen minutes or a little more the one-sided combat was over.

Sumner's principal attack was made, as I have already indicated, at right angles to that of Hooker. He had thus crossed the line of Hooker's movement in both the advance and the retreat of the latter. This led to some misconceptions on Sumner's part. Crawford's division had retired to the right and rear to make way for Sedgwick as he came up. It thus happened that Greene's division was the only part of the Twelfth Corps troops Sumner saw, and he led Sedgwick's men to the right of these. Ignorant as he necessarily was of what had occurred before, he assumed that he formed on the extreme right of the Twelfth Corps, and that he fronted in the same direction as Hooker had done. This misconception of the situation led him into another error. He had seen only stragglers and wounded men on the line of his own advance, and hence concluded that Hooker's Corps was completely dispersed and its division and brigade organizations broken up. He not only gave this report to McClellan at the time, but reiterated it later in his statement before the Committee on the Conduct of the War. [Footnote: C. W., vol. i. p. 368.] The truth was that he had marched westward more than a mile south of the Poffenberger hill where Meade was with the sadly diminished but still organized First Corps, and half that distance south of the Miller farm buildings, near which Goodrich's brigade had entered the north end of the West Wood, and in front of which part of Williams's men had held the ground along the turnpike till they were relieved by Sedgwick's advance. Sedgwick had gone in, therefore, between Greene and Crawford, and the four divisions of the two corps alternated in their order from left to right, thus: French, Greene, Sedgwick, Crawford, the last being Williams's, of which Crawford was in command.

It was not Sumner's fault that he was so ill-informed of the actual situation on our right; but it is plain that in the absence of McClellan from that part of the field he should have left the personal leadership of the men to the division commanders, and should himself have found out by rapid examination the positions of all the troops operating there. It was his part to combine and give intelligent direction to the whole, instead of charging forward at haphazard with Sedgwick's division. Both Meade and Williams had men enough in hand to have joined in a concerted movement with him; and had he found either of those officers before plunging into the West Wood, he would not have taken a direction which left his flank wholly exposed, with the terrible but natural results which followed. The original cause of the mischief, however, was McClellan's failure to send Sumner to his position before daybreak, so that the three corps could have acted together from the beginning of Hooker's attack.

But we must return to Sumner's divisions, which were advancing nearer the centre. The battle on the extreme right was ended by ten o'clock in the morning, and there was no more serious fighting north of the Dunker Church. The batteries on the Poffenberger hill and those about the East Wood swept the open ground and the cornfield over which Hooker and Mansfield had fought, and for some time Greene was able to make good his position at the church. The Confederates were content to hold the line of the West Wood and the high ground back of the church, and French's attack upon D. H. Hill was now attracting their attention. French advanced toward Greene's left, over the open farm lands, and after a fierce combat about the Rullett and Clipp farm buildings, drove Hill's division from them. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 323.] At what time the Confederates made a rush at Greene and drove him back to the edge of the East Wood is uncertain; but it must have been soon after the disaster to Sedgwick. It seems to have been an incident of the aggressive movement against Sedgwick, though not coincident with it. It must certainly have been before French's advance reached the Rullett and Clipp houses, for the enemy's men holding them would have been far in rear of Greene at the church, and he must by that time have been back near the burnt house of Mumma and the angle of the East Wood. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 505. Greene says that he held the ground at the church for two hours, and that his men were in action from 6.30 A. M. to 1.30 P. M. The length of time and hours of the day are so irreconcilable as given in different reports that we are forced to trust more to the general current of events than to the time stated.]

Richardson's division followed French after an hour or two, [Footnote: Hancock says the division crossed the Antietam about 9.30. Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 277.] and then, foot by foot, field by field, from fence to fence, and from hill to hill, the enemy was pressed back, till the sunken road, since known as "Bloody Lane," was in our hands, piled full of the Confederate dead who had defended it with their lives. Richardson had been mortally wounded, and Hancock had been sent from Franklin's corps to command the division. Colonel Barlow had been conspicuous in the thickest of the fight, and after a series of brilliant actions had been carried off desperately wounded. On the Confederate side equal courage and a magnificent tenacity had been exhibited. Men who had fought heroically in one position no sooner found themselves free from the struggle of an assault than they were hurried away to repeat their exertions, without even a breathing-spell, on another part of the field. They exhausted their ammunition, and still grimly held crests, as Longstreet tells us, with their bayonets, but without a single cartridge in their boxes. [Footnote:Id., p. 840.] The story of the fight at this part of the field is simpler than that of the early morning, for there was no such variety in the character of the ground or in the tactics of the opposing forces. It was a sustained advance with continuous struggle, sometimes ebbing a moment, then gaining, but with the organization pretty well preserved and the lines kept fairly continuous on both sides. Our men fought their way up to the Piper house, near the turnpike, and that position marks the advance made by our centre. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 279.] The crest of the ridge on which the Hagerstown turnpike runs had been secured from Piper's north to Miller's, and it was held until the Confederate retreat on the 19th.

The head of Franklin's Corps (the Sixth) had arrived about ten o'clock, and had taken the position near the Sharpsburg bridge, which Sumner had occupied in the night. [Footnote:Id., p. 376.] Before noon Smith's and Slocum's divisions were both ordered to Sumner's assistance. As they passed by the farm buildings in front of the East Wood, the enemy made a dash at Greene and French. Smith ordered forward Irwin's brigade to their support, and Irwin charged gallantly, driving the assailants back to the cover of the woods about the church. [Footnote:Id., pp. 402, 409.] Franklin's men then formed under the crest already mentioned, from "Bloody Lane" by the Clipp, Rullett, and Mumma houses to the East Wood and the ridge in front. The aggressive energy of both sides seemed exhausted. French and Richardson's battle may be considered as ended at one or two o'clock. There was no fighting later but that on the extreme left, where Burnside's Ninth Corps was engaged, and we must turn our attention to that part of the field.

Colonel Key has been regarded by many as McClellan's evil genius, whose influence had been dominant in the general's political conduct and who was therefore the cause of his downfall. His influence on McClellan was unquestionably great,--and what he said to me is an important help in understanding the general's conduct and opinions. It accords with other statements of his which have been made public by Judge William M. Dickson of Cincinnati, who at one time was Colonel Key's partner in the practice of the law. [Footnote: I have failed in my efforts to find a communication on the subject in a newspaper, written by Judge Dickson, which he showed to me, reiterating his statements in it.]

General McClellan urged me to come to his headquarters without ceremony, and after the battle of Antietam I had several opportunities of unrestrained discussion of affairs in which he seemed entirely frank in giving me his opinions. It was plainly evident that he was subjected to a good deal of pressure by opponents of the administration to make him commit himself to them. On the other hand, Governor Dennison of Ohio, who was his sincere friend, took every opportunity to counteract such influences and to promote a good understanding between him and Mr. Lincoln. McClellan perfectly knew my own position as an outspoken Republican who from the first had regarded the system of slavery as the stake ventured by the Secessionists on their success in the war, and who held to John Quincy Adams's doctrine that the war powers were adequate to destroy the institution which we could not constitutionally abolish otherwise. With me, the only question was when the ripe time had come for action, and I had looked forward to Mr. Lincoln's proclamation with some impatience at the delay.

The total impression left upon me by the general's conversation was that he agreed with Colonel Key in believing that the war ought to end in abolition of slavery; but he feared the effects of haste, and thought the steps toward the end should be conservatively careful and not brusquely radical. I thought, and still think, that he regarded the President as nearly right in his general views and political purposes, but overcrowded by more radical men around him into steps which as yet were imprudent and extreme. Such an attitude on his part made Governor Dennison and myself feel that there was no need of any political quarrel between him and the administration, and that if he would only rebuff all political intriguers and put more aggressive energy into his military operations, his career might be a success for the country as well as for himself. The portions of his correspondence with Burnside which have become public show that the latter also had, as a true friend, constantly urged him to keep out of political controversy. Burnside himself, like Grant and Sherman, began with a dislike of the antislavery movement; but, also like them, his patriotism being the dominant quality, the natural effect of fighting the Secessionists was to beget in him a hearty acceptance of the policy of emancipation to which Mr. Lincoln had been led by the same educational process.

At the time I am speaking of, I knew nothing of McClellan's famous letter to the President from Harrison's Landing, of July 7, but since it has come to light, I have interpreted it much less harshly than many have done. Reading it in the light of his talk during those Antietam days, I think it fair to regard it as an effort to show Mr. Lincoln that they were not far apart in opinion, and to influence the President to take the more conservative course to which he thought him inclined when taking counsel only of his own judgment. McClellan knew that his "change of base" to the James River in June was not accepted as the successful strategy he declared it to be, and that strong influences were at work to remove him. Under the guise of giving advice to the President, he was in fact assuring him that he did not look to the acknowledgment of the Confederacy as a conceivable outcome of the war; that the "contraband" doctrine applied to slaves was consistent with compensated emancipation; that he favored the application of the principle to the border States so as to make them free States; that concentration of military force as opposed to dispersion of effort was the true policy; that he opposed the rules of warfare which he assumed were announced in General Pope's much criticised orders; and lastly, that he would cordially serve under such general-in-chief as Mr. Lincoln should select.

Compare all this with Mr. Lincoln's known views. It was notorious that he was thought to be too conservative by many of his own party. He had urged a system of compensated emancipation for the border States. He had said that he held the slavery question to be only a part, and an absolutely subordinate part, of the greater question of saving the Union. He had disapproved of a portion of Pope's order regarding the treatment of non-combatants. However ill-advised McClellan's letter was, it may be read between the lines as an attempt to strengthen himself with the President as against Stanton and others, and to make his military seat firmer in the saddle by showing that he was not in political antagonism to Mr. Lincoln, but held, in substance, the conservative views that were supposed to be his. Its purpose seems to me to have been of this personal sort. He did not publish it at the time, and it was not till he was removed from his command that it became a kind of political manifesto. This view is supported by what occurred after the publication of the Emancipation Proclamation, which I shall tell presently; but, to preserve the proper sequence, I must first give another incident.

A few days after the battle of Antietam a prominent clergyman of Hagerstown spent the Sunday in camp, and McClellan invited a number of officers to attend religious services in the parlors of the house where headquarters were. The rooms were well filled, several civilians being also present. I was standing by myself as we were waiting for the clergyman to appear, when a stout man in civilian's dress entered into conversation with me. He stood at my side as we faced the upper part of the suite of rooms, and taking it to be a casual talk merely to pass the time, I paid rather languid attention to it and to him as he began with some complimentary remarks about the army and its recent work. He spoke quite enthusiastically of McClellan, and my loyalty to my commander as well as my personal attachment to him made me assent cordially to what he said. He then spoke of the politicians in Washington as wickedly trying to sacrifice the general, and added, whispering the words emphatically in my ear, "But you military men have that matter in your own hands, you have but to tell the administration what they must do, and they will not dare to disregard it!" This roused me, and I turned upon him with a sharp "What do you mean, sir!" As I faced him, I saw at once by his look that he had mistaken me for another; he mumbled something about having taken me for an acquaintance of his, and moved away among the company.

I was a good deal agitated, for though there was more or less of current talk about disloyal influences at work, I had been sceptical as to the fact, and to be brought face to face with that sort of thing was a surprise. I was a stranger to most of those who were there, and walked a little aside, watching the man who had left me. I soon saw him talking with General Fitz-John Porter, on the opposite side of the room, evidently calling attention to me as if asking who I was. I made inquiries as to who the civilian was, and later came to know him by sight very well. He was John W. Garrett, President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.

Mr. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was published on the 24th of September, and within a very few days I was invited to meet General Burnside and General John Cochrane of New York at a camp dinner in McClellan's tent. General Cochrane was a "War Democrat" in politics, and had been active as a politician in his State. He was also the son-in-law of Gerrit Smith, the well-known abolitionist, and had advocated arming the slaves as early as November, 1861. McClellan told us frankly that he had brought us there for the purpose of asking our opinions and advice with regard to the course he should pursue respecting the Proclamation. He said that he was urged to put himself in open opposition to it by politicians not only, but by army officers who were near to him. He named no names, but intimated that they were of rank and influence which gave weight to their advice. He knew that we were all friends of the administration, and his object seemed to be to learn whether we thought he should say anything or should maintain silence on the subject; for he assumed that we would oppose any hostile demonstration on his part.

This naturally led to inquiries as to his actual attitude to the slavery question, and he expressed himself in substance as I have before indicated; repeating with even stronger emphasis his belief that the war would work out the manumission of the slaves gradually and ultimately, and that as to those who came within our lines as we advanced the liberation would be complete and immediate. He thought, however, that the Proclamation was premature, and that it indicated a change in the President's attitude which he attributed to radical influences at Washington.

There had been no previous understanding between us who were his guests. For my part, I then met General Cochrane for the first time, and had conversed with McClellan himself more freely on political subjects than I had with Burnside. We found ourselves, however, in entire accord in advising him that any declaration on his part against the Proclamation would be a fatal error. We could easily understand that he should differ from us in his way of viewing the question of public policy, but we pointed out very clearly that any public utterance by him in his official character criticising the civil policy of the administration would be properly regarded as a usurpation. He intimated that this was his own opinion, but, by way of showing how the matter was thrust at him by others, said that people had assured him that the army was so devoted to him that they would as one man enforce any decision he should make as to any part of the war policy.

I had so recently gone through the little experience on this subject which I have narrated above, that I here spoke out with some emphasis. I said that those who made such assurances were his worst enemies, and in my judgment knew much less of the army than they pretended; that our volunteer soldiers were citizens as well as soldiers, and were citizens more than soldiers; and that greatly as I knew them to be attached to him, I believed not a corporal's guard would stand by his side if he were to depart from the strict subordination of the military to the civil authority. Burnside and Cochrane both emphatically assented to this, and McClellan added that he heartily believed both that it was true and that it ought to be so. But this still left the question open whether the very fact that there was an agitation in camp on the subject, and intrigues of the sort I have mentioned, did not make it wise for him to say something which would show, at least, that he gave no countenance to any would-be revolutionists. We debated this at some length, with the general conclusion that it might be well for him to remind the army in general orders that whatever might be their rights as citizens, they must as soldiers beware of any organized effort to meddle with the functions of the civil government.

I left the Army of the Potomac before McClellan's general order on this subject, dated October 7, was published, but when I read it in the light of the conference in his tent, I regarded it as an honest effort on his part to break through the toils which intriguers had spread for him, and regretted that what seemed to me one of his most laudable actions should have been one of the most misrepresented and misunderstood.

[Footnote: The order is found in Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 395, and is as follows:--

General Orders. No. 163.
HEAD-QUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, CAMP NEAR SHARPSBURG, MD., October 7, 1862.

The attention of the officers and soldiers of the army of the Potomac is called to General Orders No, 139, War Department, September 24, 1862, publishing to the army the President's proclamation of September 22.

A proclamation of such grave moment to the nation, officially communicated to the army, affords to the general commanding an opportunity of defining specifically to the officers and soldiers under his command the relation borne by all persons in the military service of the United States toward the civil authorities of the Government. The Constitution confides to the civil authorities--legislative, judicial, and executive--the power and duty of making, expounding, and executing the Federal laws. Armed forces are raised and supported simply to sustain the civil authorities, and are to be held in strict subordination thereto in all respects. This fundamental rule of our political system is essential to the security of our republican institutions, and should be thoroughly understood and observed by every soldier. The principle upon which and the object for which armies shall be employed in suppressing rebellion, must be determined and declared by the civil authorities, and the Chief Executive, who is charged with the administration of the national affairs, is the proper and only source through which the needs and orders of the Government can be made known to the armies of the nation.

Discussions by officers and soldiers concerning public measures determined upon and declared by the Government, when carried at all beyond temperate and respectful expressions of opinion, tend greatly to impair and destroy the discipline and efficiency of troops, by substituting the spirit of political faction for that firm, steady, and earnest support of the authorities of the Government, which is the highest duty of the American soldier. The remedy for political errors, if any are committed, is to be found only in the action of the people at the polls.

In thus calling the attention of this army to the true relation between the soldier and the government, the general commanding merely adverts to an evil against which it has been thought advisable during our whole history to guard the armies of the Republic, and in so doing he will not be considered by any right-minded person as casting any reflection upon that loyalty and good conduct which has been so fully illustrated upon so many battle-fields.

In carrying out all measures of public policy, this army will of course be guided by the same rules of mercy and Christianity that have ever controlled its conduct toward the defenceless.

By Command of Major-General McClellan,
JAS. A. HARDIE,
Lieutenant-Colonel, Aide-de-camp, and Act'g Ass't Adj't Gen'l."]

I have always understood that the order was drafted by Colonel Key, who afterward expressed in very strong terms his confidence in the high motives and progressive tendencies of McClellan at the time he issued it.

General Cochrane, some time after the close of the war, in a pamphlet outlining his own military history, made reference to the visit to McClellan which I have narrated, and states that he was so greatly impressed by the anti-slavery sentiments avowed by the general, that he made use of them in a subsequent effort to bring him and Secretary Chase into more cordial relations. [Footnote: The War for the Union, Memoir by General John Cochrane, pp. 29-31.] It is possible that, in a friendly comparison of views in which we were trying to find how nearly we could come together, the general may have put his opinions with a liberality which outran his ordinary statements of belief; but I am very sure that he gave every evidence of sincerity, and that none of us entertained a doubt of his being entirely transparent with us. He has since, in his "Own Story," referred to his taking counsel of Mr. Aspinwall of New York at about the same time, and there is evidence that General W. F. Smith also threw his influence against any opposition by McClellan to the Emancipation Proclamation. [Footnote: Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, vol. vi. p. 180.] McClellan's letters show that his first impulse was to antagonism; but there is no fair reason to doubt that his action at last was prompted by the reasons which he avowed in our conversation, and by the honorable motives he professed. He immediately sent a copy of his order to Mr. Lincoln personally, and this indicates that he believed the President would be pleased with it.

The reference which he made to suggestions that the army would follow him in a coup d'e'tat is supported by what he formally declared in his memoirs. He there tells us that in 1861 he was often approached in regard to a "dictatorship," and that when he was finally removed many in the army were in favor of his marching upon Washington to take possession of the government. [Footnote: Own Story, pp. 85, 652.] It would seem that treasonable notions were rife about him to an extent that was never suspected, unless he was made the dupe of pretenders who saw some profit in what might be regarded as a gross form of adulation. He must be condemned for the weakness which made such approaches to him possible; but we are obliged to take the fact as he gives it, and to accept as one of the strange elements of the situation a constant stream of treasonable suggestions from professed friends in the army and out of it. An anecdote which came to me in a way to make it more than ordinarily trustworthy was that in the summer of 1861 McClellan was riding with an older officer of the regular army, [Footnote: General McCall.] and said to him, "I understand there is a good deal of talk of making a dictatorship." "Ah!" said the other, "Mr. Lincoln, I suppose." "Oh, no," replied McClellan, "it's me they're talking of." Bits of evidence from many sources prove that there had been from the first too much such talk about Washington, and whilst McClellan cannot be held responsible for it, there is no proof that he rebuked it as he should have done. It was part of the fermenting political and military intrigue which is found at the seat of government in such a time, if anywhere, and I take satisfaction in testifying that away from that neighborhood I never even heard the thing mentioned or referred to, that I can recollect. Washington would be spoken of in a general way as a place of intrigues, but I never knew this to have a wider meaning given to it than the ordinary one of political schemes within lawful limits and personal ambitions of no criminal character.

Mr. Lincoln visited our camp on the 1st of October, and remained two or three days. I was with the party of officers invited by McClellan to accompany the President in a ride over the route which Sumner had followed in the battle. We crossed the Antietam in front of Keedysville, followed the hollows and byways to the East Wood, and passed through this and the cornfields which had been the scene of Hooker's and Mansfield's fierce fighting. We visited the Dunker Church and then returned to camp by Bloody Lane and the central stone bridge. The President was observant and keenly interested in the field of battle, but made no display of sentiment. On another day he reviewed the troops which were most accessible from headquarters. As my own corps was among the first on the list, I did not join the escort of the President at the general's quarters, but was with the troops attending to the details of the parade. We were ordered to be under arms at eight o'clock, but it was more than two hours after that when the reviewing cortÈge came on the ground. The officers were very hilarious over some grotesque story with which Mr. Lincoln had seasoned the conversation, and which seemed to have caused some forgetfulness of the appointment with the troops. We were reviewed by divisions, and I met the party with my staff, riding down the lines with them, and answering the inquiries of the President and the general as to the history and the experience of the different organizations as we passed them. The usual march in review was omitted for lack of time, the President contenting himself with riding along the lines formed in parade. I had missed seeing the President in Washington when I paid my respects at the White House, and this was my first meeting with him after his inauguration. His unpretending cordiality was what first impressed one, but you soon saw with what sharp intelligence and keen humor he dealt with every subject which came up. He referred very pleasantly to his knowledge of me through Secretary Chase, showing the kindly instinct to find some compliment or evidence of recognition for all who approached him.

This geniality in Mr. Lincoln made him avoid personal criticism of the campaign, and gave an air of earnest satisfaction to what he said of the work done by McClellan. There was enough to praise, and he praised it heartily. He was also thankful that the threatened invasion of the North had been defeated, and showed his sense of great relief. He had adopted the rule for himself to limit his direct influence upon his generals to the presentation of his ideas of what was desirable, often taking pains even in his written communications to say that he made no order, and left the definite direction to General Halleck. McClellan gave the most favorable interpretation to all that the President said, but could not ignore the anxiety Mr. Lincoln showed that an energetic campaign should be continued. He wrote home: "I incline to think that the real purpose of his visit is to push me into a premature advance into Virginia." [Footnote: O. S., p. 654.]

The President had coupled his earliest telegraphic congratulations with the question, "Can't you beat them some more before they get off?" and McClellan's private correspondence shows that he, on his part, chafed at every suggestion of haste. As early as the 22d of September, the general had written that he looked upon the campaign as substantially ended, and intended to give some time to the reorganization of the army before beginning a new one. The vicinity of Harper's Ferry or Frederick seemed to him the proper place for the camp meanwhile, and he wished for a rise in the Potomac River which should make it impracticable for Lee to ford it again. He delayed in the neighborhood of Sharpsburg, waiting for this. To those of us with whom he talked freely, he spoke of the necessity of incorporating into the Army of the Potomac at least a hundred thousand of the new levies to make it really fit for an aggressive campaign, and argued that it would save time in the end to use some of it now in the work of reorganizing.

Mr. Lincoln was plainly troubled with the apprehension that the delays of 1861 were to be repeated, and that the fine October weather of that region would be again wasted and nothing done till the next spring. There were men enough about him at Washington to remind him of this in irritating ways, and to make him realize that as he had personally restored McClellan to the command he would be personally responsible for keeping him moving. McClellan rightly understood Mr. Lincoln's visit as meaning this. He did not refuse to move; on the other hand, he professed to be anxious to do so at the earliest moment when it should be really practicable. His obstinacy was of a feminine sort. He avoided open antagonism which would have been a challenge of strength, but found constantly fresh obstacles in the way of doing what he was determined from the first not to do. The need of clothing for the men and of horses for the cavalry was a fruitful subject for debate, and the debate, if sufficiently prolonged, would itself accomplish the delay that was desired.

The official correspondence shows that the President went back to Washington determined to cut the knot in a peremptory way, if he was forced to do so. McClellan could not have been blind to this. His private letters show that he thought it not improbable that he would be relieved from command. His desire for military success was a ruling one with him on both public and private grounds. We are forced, therefore, to conclude that he actually lacked faith in success, and regarded the crossing of the Potomac as too perilous until he should reorganize the army with the additional hundred thousand recruits. In this we see the ever-recurring effect of his exaggeration of the enemy's force. We now know that this over-estimate was inexcusable, but we cannot deny that he made it, nor, altogether, that he believed in it. It constituted a disqualification for such a command, and led to what must be regarded as the inevitable result,--his removal. The political questions connected with the matter cut no important figure in it. If he had had faith in his ability to conquer Lee's army, we should never have heard of them.

Whilst I mean what I say in speaking of McClellan's exaggeration of his enemy as constituting incompetence for such a command, it has reference to the necessity in which we were that our army should be aggressively handled. Few men could excel him in strictly defensive operations. He did not lack personal courage, nor did his intellectual powers become obscured in the excitement of actual war. He showed the ordinary evidences of presence of mind and coolness of judgment under fire. His tendency to see his enemy doubled in force was, however, a constitutional one, and no amount of experience seemed to cure it. Had it not been so he would have devised checks upon the reports of his secret-service agents, and corrected their estimates by those more reliable methods which I have already spoken of. McClellan was, even in those days, often compared to Marshal Daun, whose fair ability but studiously defensive policy was so in contrast with the daring strategy of the great Frederick. The comparison was a fair one. The trouble was that we had need of a Frederick.

It may seem strange that his subordinates so generally accepted his view and supported him in his conduct; but it was a natural result of forces always at work in an army. The old maxim that "Councils of war never fight" is only another way of saying that an army is never bolder than its leader. It is the same as the old Greek proverb, "Better an army of deer with a lion for leader, than an army of lions with a deer for leader." The body of men thus organized relies upon its chief for the knowledge of the enemy and for the plan by which the enemy is to be taken at a disadvantage. It will courageously carry out his plans so long as he has faith in them himself and has good fortune in their execution. Let doubt arise as to either of these things and his troops raise the cry "We are sacrificed," "We are slaughtered uselessly." McClellan's arts of military popularity were such that his army accepted his estimate of the enemy, and believed (in the main) that he had shown great ability in saving them from destruction in a contest at such odds. They were inclined, therefore, to hold the government at Washington responsible for sacrificing them by demanding the impossible. Under such circumstances nothing but a cautious defensive policy could be popular with officers or men. If McClellan's data were true, he and they were right. It would have been folly to cross the Potomac and, with their backs to the river, fight a greatly superior enemy. Because the data were not true there was no solution for the problem but to give the army another commander, and painfully to undo the military education it had for a year been receiving. The process of disillusion was a slow one. The disasters to Burnside and Hooker strengthened the error. Meade's standstill after Gettysburg was very like McClellan's after Antietam, and Mr. Lincoln had to deal with it in a very similar way. When Grant took command the army expected him to have a similar fate, and his reputation was treated as of little worth because he had not yet "met Bobby Lee." His terrible method of "attrition" was a fearfully costly one, and the flower of that army was transferred from the active roster to the casualty lists before the prestige of its enemy was broken. But it was broken, and Appomattox came at last.

It will not do to say that the Confederate army in Virginia was in any sense superior to their army in the West. When the superior force of the National army was systematically applied, General Lee was reduced to as cautious a defensive in Virginia as was General Johnston in Georgia. Longstreet and Hood had no better success when transferred to the West than the men who had never belonged to the Army of Virginia. In fact, it was with Joseph E. Johnston as his opponent that McClellan's career was chiefly run. Yet the Confederate army in the West was broken at Donelson and at Vicksburg. It was driven from Stone's River to Chattanooga, and from Missionary Ridge to Atlanta. Its remnant was destroyed at Franklin and Nashville, and Sherman's March to the Sea nearly completed the traverse of the whole Confederacy. His victorious army was close in rear of Petersburg when Richmond was finally won. Now that we have got rid of the fiction that the Confederate government gave to Lee an enormously larger army than it gave to Bragg or to Joseph Johnston, we have to account for the fact that with much less odds in their favor our Western army accomplished so much more. As a military objective Richmond was in easier reach from the Potomac than Nashville from the Ohio. From Nashville to Chattanooga was fully as difficult a task. The vulnerable lines of communication multiplied in length as we went southward, and made the campaign of Atlanta more difficult still. Vicksburg was a harder nut to crack than Richmond. We must put away our esprit de corps, and squarely face the problem as one of military art with the Official Records and returns before us. Our Western army was of essentially the same material as the Eastern. Regiments from nearly all the States were mingled in both. Wisconsin men fought beside those from Maine in the Army of the Potomac, as men who had fought at Antietam and at Gettysburg followed Sherman through the Carolinas. The difference was not in the rank and file, it was not in the subordinates. It was the difference in leadership and in the education of the armies under their leaders during their first campaigns. That mysterious thing, the morale of an army, grows out of its belief as to what it can do. If it is systematically taught that it is hopelessly inferior to its adversary, it will be held in check by a fraction of its own force. The general who indoctrinates his army with the belief that it is required by its government to do the impossible, may preserve his popularity with the troops and be received with cheers as he rides down the line, but he has put any great military success far beyond his reach. In this study of military morale, its causes and its effects, the history of the Army of the Potomac is one of the most important and one of the gravest lessons the world has ever seen.

I have to confess that at Antietam I shared, more or less fully, the opinions of those among whom I was. I accepted McClellan as the best authority in regard to the enemy's numbers, and, assuming that he was approximately right in that, the reasonable prudence of waiting for reinforcements could not be denied. I saw that he had lost valuable time in the movements of the campaign, but the general result seemed successful enough to hide this for the time at least. My own experience, therefore, supports the conclusion I have already stated, that an army's enterprise is measured by its commander's, and, by a necessary law, the army reflects his judgment as to what it can or cannot accomplish.

Mr. Lincoln had told McClellan during his visit to the army that his great fault was "overcautiousness." He had intimated plainly enough that he must insist upon the continuance of the campaign. He had discussed the plans of advance, and urged McClellan to operate upon Lee's communications by marching south on the east side of the Blue Ridge. He had disclaimed any purpose of forcing a movement before the army was ready, but saw no reason why it should take longer to get ready after Antietam than after Pope's last battle. Soon after his return to Washington, Halleck sent a peremptory order to McClellan to cross the Potomac. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 10.] It was dated October 6th, and said: "The President directs that you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him South. Your army must move now while the roads are good. If you cross the river between the enemy and Washington, and cover the latter by your line of operations, you can be reinforced with 30,000 men. If you move up the valley of the Shenandoah, not more than 12,000 or 15,000 can be sent to you. The President advises the interior line between Washington and the enemy, but does not order it." It also required him to report immediately which line he adopted. Halleck, as General-in-chief, ought to have given his own decision as to the line of operations, but his characteristic indecision was shown in failing to do so. He did not even express an opinion as to the relative merits of the two lines, and limited himself to his concurrence in the order to move in one way or the other.

McClellan replied on the 7th, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 11.] saying that he had determined to adopt the Shenandoah line, though he wished to "state distinctly" that he should only use that line till the enemy should retire beyond Winchester, as he did not expect to be able to supply his army more than twenty or twenty-five miles beyond a railway or canal depot. If the enemy retreated, he would adopt some new and decisive line of operations. He objected to the interior line because it did not cover Maryland and Pennsylvania from a return of Lee's army, and because (as he said) the army could not be supplied by it. He indicated three days as the time within which he could move. At the end of that time he complained of still lacking clothing. On the 12th he found it "absolutely necessary" that the cavalry should have more horses. The discussion over these things ran on till the 21st.

Mr. Lincoln made a strong effort to save McClellan from the effects of his mental deficiencies. He exhausted advice and exhortation. He even ventured upon mild raillery on the idleness of the army. On the 13th he had written a remarkable letter to McClellan, in which he reminded him of what had occurred between them at the Antietam and argued in favor of the interior line of movement. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 13.] He showed that Lee at Winchester supplied his army twice as far from his railway depot as McClellan thought possible for the Army of the Potomac. He urged the recognized advantage of operating by a line which attacked the enemy's communications. He pointed out that if Lee should try to cross the Potomac, our army could be in his rear and should destroy him. He showed that McClellan at Harper's Ferry was nearer to Richmond than Lee: "His route is the arc of a circle of which yours is the chord." He analyzed the map and showed that the interior line was the easier for supplying the army: "The chord line, as you see, carries you by Aldie, Haymarket and Fredericksburg, and you see how turnpikes, railroads, and finally the Potomac by Acquia Creek, meet you at all points from Washington." He even gave the figures in miles from gap to gap in the mountains, which would enable McClellan to strike the enemy in flank or rear; and this was of course to be done if Lee made a stand. "It is all easy," his letter concluded, "if our troops march as well as the enemy; and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it." Yet he expressly disclaimed making his letter an order. [Footnote: Since writing this, I have had occasion to treat this subject more fully, as bearing upon Mr. Lincoln's military judgment and intelligence, in a review of Henderson's Stonewall Jackson, "The Nation," Nov. 24, Dec. 1, 1898.]

As a mere matter of military comprehension and judgment of the strategic situation, the letter puts Mr. Lincoln head and shoulders above both his military subordinates. Halleck saw its force, but would not order it to be carried out. McClellan shrank from the decisive vigor of the plan, though he finally accepted it as the means of getting the larger reinforcements. On the 21st of October the discussion of cavalry horses was pretty well exhausted, and McClellan telegraphed Halleck [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 81.] that in other respects he was nearly ready to move, and inquires whether the President desired him to march on the enemy at once or to wait the arrival of the new horses. Halleck answered that the order of the 6th October remained unchanged. "If you have not been and are not now in condition to obey it, you will be able to show such want of ability. The President does not expect impossibilities, but he is very anxious that all this good weather should not be wasted in inactivity. Telegraph when you will move and on what lines you propose to march." This dispatch was plainly a notice to McClellan that he would be held responsible for the failure to obey the order of the 6th unless he could exonerate himself by showing that he could not obey it. In his final report, however, he says that he treated it as authority to decide for himself whether or not it was possible to move with safety to the army; [Footnote: Ibid.] "and this responsibility," he says, "I exercised with the more confidence in view of the strong assurance of his trust in me, as commander of that army, with which the President had seen fit to honor me during his last visit." Argument is superfluous, in view of the correspondence, to show that orders and exhortations were alike wasted.

The movement began in the last days of October, the Sixth Corps, which was in the rear, crossing the Potomac on the 2d of November. McClellan had accepted Mr. Lincoln's plan, but lack of vigor in its execution broke down the President's patience, and on the 5th of November, upon Lee's recrossing the Blue Ridge without a battle, he ordered the general to turn over the command to Burnside, as he had declared he would do if Lee's was allowed to regain the interior line. The order was presented and obeyed on the 7th, and McClellan left the army. The fallen general brooded morbidly over it all for twenty years, and then wrote his "Own Story," a most curious piece of self-exposure, in which he unconsciously showed that the illusions which had misguided him in his campaigns were still realities to him, and that he had made no use of the authentic facts which Confederate as well as National records had brought within his reach. He had forgotten much, but he had learned nothing.

Siber's brigade continued its retreat rapidly to Charleston, passed through the town and crossed the Elk River. Gilbert's brigade also retired, but in better order, and it kept up a skirmish with the advance-guard of Echols's column which was following them. When Gilbert reached the outskirts of Charleston, he checked the advance of the enemy long enough to enable the quartermasters at the post to move their trains across the Elk; but the haste of the evacuation was so great that the stores in depot there were not removed, and were burned to prevent their falling into the enemy's hands. Gilbert retired across the Elk, and the suspension bridge was destroyed. Loring's artillery made a dash for a hill on the left bank of the Kanawha, which commanded the new position taken up by Lightburn's troops, and the Confederate battery soon opened an enfilade fire across the river, taking the line of breastworks along the Elk in flank and in reverse. The trains and the stragglers started in direst confusion on the road to Ravenswood on the Ohio, which offered a line of retreat not subject to the enemy's fire. Siber's brigade followed, Gilbert's continued to bring up the rear. The road down the Kanawha was abandoned because it was in range of artillery from the opposite side of the river throughout its whole course down the valley. The road to Ripley and Ravenswood was therefore taken, and the flying troops were met at those towns on the Ohio by steamboats which conveyed part of them to Point Pleasant at the mouth of the Kanawha, where the whole command was concentrated in the course of a few days. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 1058-1060.] Siber's loss was 16 killed, 87 wounded, and over 100 missing. Gilbert reported 9 men killed and 8 wounded, with about 75 missing; but as the enemy do not enumerate any captured prisoners in their reports except a lieutenant and 10 men, it is evident that the missing were mostly men who outran the others. Loring's losses as reported by his surgeon were 18 killed and 89 wounded. The enemy claim to have captured large numbers of wagons, horses, mules, and stores of all kinds which Loring estimated at a million dollars' worth, besides all that were burned.

It was a panicky retreat after the hot little fight by Siber's brigade at Fayette C. H., and it is not worth while to apply to it any military criticism, further than to say that either of the brigades intrenched at Gauley Bridge could have laughed at Loring. The river would have been impassable, for all the ferry-boats were in the keeping of our men on the right bank, and Loring would not dare pass down the valley leaving a fortified post on the line of communications by which he must return. The topography of the wild mountain region was such that an army could only pass from the lower Kanawha to the headwaters of the James River by the road Loring had used in his advance, or by that leading through the post of Gauley Bridge to Lewisburg and beyond. The Confederate War Department seem to have thought that their forces might have passed from Charleston to the Ohio, thence to Parkersburg, and turning east from this town, have made their way to Beverly and to the Valley of Virginia by the route Garnett had used in the previous year. They would have found, however, as Loring told them, that it would have been easy for the National forces to overwhelm them with numbers while they were making so long and so difficult a march in a vast region most of which was a wilderness.

Lightburn's position had been made more embarrassing by the fact that a cavalry raid under Brigadier-General Jenkins was passing around his left flank while Loring came upon him in front. Jenkins with a light column of horse moved from Lewisburg by way of the Wilderness Road to northwestern Virginia, captured posts and destroyed stores at Weston, Buckhannon, and Roane C. H., and made a circuit to the lower Kanawha, rejoining Loring after Lightburn's retreat. Little real mischief was done by this raid, but it added to the confusion, and helped to disturb the self-possession of the commanding officer. In this way it was one of the causes of the precipitate retreat.

Several circumstances combined to make Lightburn's disaster embarrassing to the government. West Virginia had not been connected with any military department after Pope's command had been broken up. McClellan's authority did not extend beyond his own army and its theatre of operations. Halleck could hardly take personal charge of the affairs of remote districts. Thus the Kanawha valley had dropped out of the usual system and was an omitted case. The embarrassment was increased by the fact that Buell was retreating out of Tennessee before Bragg, Morgan had evacuated Cumberland Gap and was making a painful and hazardous retreat to the Ohio, and the Confederate forces under Kirby Smith were moving directly upon Cincinnati. Lightburn's mishap, therefore, was only the northern extremity of a line of defeats extending through the whole length of the Ohio valley from Parkersburg to Louisville. The governors of West Virginia and Ohio were naturally alarmed at the events in the Kanawha valley, and were earnest in their calls upon the War Department for troops to drive Loring back beyond the mountains and for an officer to command them who knew something of the country.

Halleck seems to have been puzzled at the condition of things, not having realized that Pope's retirement had left West Virginia "in the air." It took a week, apparently, to get satisfactory details of the actual situation, and on the 19th of September the first important step was taken by annexing the region to the Department of the Ohio, then commanded by Major-General Horatio G. Wright, whose headquarters were at Cincinnati. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xvi. pt. ii. p. 328.] Wright was directed to provide for the recovery of lost ground in West Virginia as rapidly as possible, but the campaign in Kentucky was the more important and urgent, so that no troops could be spared for secondary operations until the Confederates had ceased to threaten Cincinnati and Louisville.

On the 1st of October Halleck again called General Wright's attention to the need of doing something for West Virginia. Governor Peirpoint, of that State, represented the Confederates under Loring as about 10,000 in number, and this reflected the opinion which Lightburn had formed during his retreat. It became the basis of calculation in the campaign which followed, though it greatly exaggerated Loring's force. Three days later Brigadier-General George W. Morgan was known to have reached the Ohio River with the division he had brought from Cumberland Gap, and General Halleck outlined a plan of action. He ordered Morgan's division to be sent to Gallipolis to take part in the advance into the Kanawha valley, where some new Ohio regiments were also to join them. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 381.] He at the same time called me to Washington to receive instructions under which I was to take command of the whole force operating on the Kanawha line. Brigadier-General Milroy had already (September 25th) been ordered to proceed thither with his brigade, which was in Washington and was part of Banks's forces garrisoning the capital. [Footnote:Id., pp. 355, 359.] He was moved through Pennsylvania to Wheeling by rail, and thence down the Ohio River to Point Pleasant at the mouth of the Kanawha.

My order to leave the Army of the Potomac reached me on Saturday evening. Much business had to be closed up before I could properly turn over the command of the Ninth Corps, but I was able to complete it and make the journey to Washington so as to report to General Halleck on Monday morning. He received me very kindly, and explained the necessity they were under to send some one to the Kanawha valley who knew the country. He was complimentary as to my former service there, and said my return to that region would meet the earnest wishes of the governors of West Virginia and Ohio, as well as the judgment of the War Department and of himself. To compensate for separating me from the command of the Ninth Corps, it had been decided to make my promotion at once and to put the whole of West Virginia under my command as a territorial district. He inquired into some details of the topography of the Kanawha valley and of my experience there, and concluded by saying that reinforcements would be sent to make the column I should lead in person stronger than the 10,000 attributed to Loring. My task would then be to drive back the enemy beyond the mountains. When that was accomplished, part of the troops would probably be withdrawn. The actual position of Milroy's brigade was not definitely known, and Governor Peirpoint of West Virginia had asked to have it sent to Clarksburg. This gave me the opportunity to urge that my own Kanawha division be detached from the Ninth Corps and sent back to Clarksburg, where with Milroy they would make a force strong enough to take care of that part of the State and to make a co-operative movement toward Gauley Bridge. This also was granted, and immediate promotion was given to Colonel Crook so that he might command the division, and a promise was made to do the like for Colonel Scammon, who would then be available for the command of the division still under Lightburn, whose retreat was strongly condemned as precipitate. No soldier could object to an arrangement so satisfactory as this, and though I still preferred to remain with the Army of the Potomac, I could only accept the new duty with sincere thanks for the consideration shown me. The General-in-Chief accompanied me to the room of the Secretary of War, and Mr. Stanton added to my sense of obligation by warm expressions of personal good-will. His manner was so different from the brusque one commonly attributed to him that I have nothing but pleasant remembrances of my relations to him, both then and later. My own appointment as major-general was handed me by him, the usual promotions of my personal staff were also made, and directions were given for the immediate appointment of Crook to be brigadier.

I called to pay my respects to the President, but he was in Cabinet meeting and could not be seen. I had a short but warmly friendly visit with Mr. Chase later in the day, and was ready to leave town for my new post of duty by the evening train. The Secretary of War directed me to visit Wheeling and Columbus on my way, and then to report to General Wright at Cincinnati before going to the Kanawha valley. This was in fact the quickest way to reach the mouth of the Kanawha River, for the fall rains had not yet come to make the Ohio navigable, and from Columbus to Cincinnati, and thence by the Marietta Railway eastward, was, as the railway routes then ran, the best method of joining my command. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was interrupted between Harper's Ferry and Hancock (about fifty miles) by the Confederate occupation of that part of Virginia. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 393, 394.] General Crook was ordered to march the division from its camp in Pleasant Valley to Hancock, where trains on the western division of the railway would meet him and transport the troops to Clarksburg. For myself and staff, we took the uninterrupted railway line from Washington to Pittsburg, and thence to Wheeling, where we arrived on the evening of October 8th. The 9th was given to consultation with Governor Peirpoint and to communication with such military officers as were within reach. We reached Columbus on the both, when I had a similar consultation with Governor Tod and his military staff in regard to new regiments available for my use. Leaving Columbus in the afternoon, we arrived at Cincinnati late the same night, and on Saturday, the 11th, I reported to General Wright.

He was an officer of the engineer corps of the regular army, a man of fine acquirements and of a serious and earnest character, whose military service throughout the war was marked by solidity and modesty. If there seemed at first a little hauteur in his manner, one soon saw that it was a natural reserve free from arrogance. The sort of confusion in which everything was, is indicated by the fact that he knew nothing of my whereabouts when informed from Washington that I would be ordered to the Kanawha, and on the same day (6th October) addressed a dispatch to me at Point Pleasant whilst I was receiving instructions from General Halleck in Washington. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xvi. pt. ii. p. 579.] Our personal consultation established a thoroughly good understanding at once, and as long as I remained under his orders, I found him thoroughly considerate of my wishes and appreciative of my suggestions and of the conduct of my own part of the work to be done.

Morgan's division, after reaching the Ohio River, had been moved to Portland on the Marietta Railroad, the nearest point to Gallipolis, which was twenty-five miles away and nearly opposite the mouth of the Great Kanawha. His retreat had been through a sparsely settled country, much of which was a wilderness, rugged and broken in the extreme. His wagons had broken down, his teams were used up, his soldiers were worn out, ragged, and barefoot. [Footnote:Id., pt. i. p. 990.] Many arms and accoutrements had been lost, and the command was imperatively in need of complete refitting and a little rest. The men had been largely recruited in East Tennessee and Kentucky, and were unwilling to serve in any other theatre of war. The Tennesseans, indeed, were reported to be mutinous at the news that they were to be sent to the Kanawha valley. General Wright issued orders for the refitting of the command, and promised such delay and rest as might be found practicable. He detached three regiments to serve in Kentucky, and directed their place to be made good by three new Ohio regiments then organizing. The division was permitted to remain at Portland till imperatively needed for my movement.

There were no trains running on the railroad on Sunday, and Monday morning, the 13th October, was the earliest possible start on the remainder of my journey. I left Cincinnati at that time, and with my personal staff reached Portland in the afternoon. Morgan's division was found to be in quite as bad condition as had been reported, but he was in daily expectation of the new equipments and clothing, as well as wagons for his baggage-train and fresh horses for his artillery. It was stated also that a paymaster had been ordered to join the division, with funds to pay part at least of the large arrears of pay due to the men. This looked hopeful, but still implied some further delay. Uneasy to learn the actual condition of affairs with Lightburn's command, I determined to reach Gallipolis the same night. Our horses had been left behind, and being thus dismounted, we took passage in a four-horse hack, a square wagon on springs, enclosed with rubber-cloth curtains. Night fell soon after we began our journey, and as we were pushing on in the dark, the driver blundered and upset us off the end of a little sluiceway bridge into a mud-hole. He managed to jump from his seat and hold his team, but there was no help for us who were buttoned in. The mud was soft and deep, and as the wagon settled on its side, we were tumbled in a promiscuous heap into the ooze and slime, which completely covered us. We were not long in climbing out, and seeing lights in a farm-house, made our way to it. As we came into the light of the lamps and of a brisk fire burning on the open hearth, we were certainly as sorry a military spectacle as could be imagined. We were most kindly received, the men taking lanterns and going to our driver's help, whilst we stood before the fire, and scraped the thick mud from our uniforms with chips from the farmer's woodyard, making rather boisterous sport of our mishap. Before the wagon had been righted and partly cleaned, we had scraped and sponged each other off and were ready to go on. We noticed, however, that the room had filled with men, women, and children from the neighborhood, who stood bashfully back in the shadows, and who modestly explained that they had heard there was a "live general" there, and as they had never seen one, they had "come over." They must have formed some amusing ideas of military personages, and we found at least as much sport in being the menagerie as they did in visiting it. Our mishap made us wait for the moon, which rose in an hour or so, and we then took leave of our entertainers and our audience and drove on, with no desire, however, to repeat the performance. We made some ten miles more of the road, but found it so rough, and our progress so slow, that we were glad to find quarters for the rest of the night, finishing the journey in the morning.

On reaching my field of duty, my first task was to inspect the forces at Point Pleasant, and learn what was necessary to make a forward movement as soon as Morgan's troops should reach me. General Wright had originally expected that inclusive of Milroy's and Morgan's troops, I should find at the mouth of the Kanawha, on arriving there, some 20,000 men. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 402.] In fact, however, Lightburn's diminished command had only been reinforced by three new Ohio regiments (the Eighty-ninth, Ninety-first, and Ninety-second) and a new one from West Virginia (the Thirteenth), and with these his strength was less than 7300, officers and men, showing that his original command was sadly reduced by straggling and desertion during his retreat. [Footnote: Id., p. 522.] The new regiments were made up of good material, but as they were raw recruits, their usefulness must for some time be greatly limited.

Two regiments of infantry and a squadron of cavalry with a howitzer battery were at Guyandotte, under Colonel Jonathan Cranor of the Fortieth Ohio, and the Fifth West Virginia was at Ceredo near the mouth of the Big Sandy River. They had been stationed at these points to protect the navigation of the Ohio and to repel the efforts of the Confederate Cavalry General Jenkins to "raid" that region in which was his old home. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 459, 522.] They formed, a little later, the Third Brigade of the Kanawha division under Crook.

I found General Milroy in command as the ranking officer present, and he had sent Cranor's command down the river. When Governor Peirpoint learned that Milroy's brigade had passed Wheeling on his way to the Kanawha, he applied urgently to General Wright to send him, instead, from Parkersburg by rail to Clarksburg to form the nucleus of a column to move southward from that point upon the rear of Loring's forces. Wright assented, for both he and Halleck accepted the plan of converging columns from Clarksburg and Point Pleasant, and regarded that from the former place as the more important. [Footnote:Id. p. 402.] If directions were sent to Milroy to this effect, they seem to have miscarried. Besides his original brigade, some new Indiana regiments were ordered to report to him. He had, with characteristic lack of reflection and without authority, furloughed the Fifth West Virginia regiment in mass and sent the men home. I gave him a new one in place of this, ordered him to reassemble the other as soon as possible, and to march at once to Parkersburg, proceeding thence to Clarksburg by rail. The new troops added to his command enabled him to organize them into a division of two brigades, and still other regiments were added to him later. Milroy was a picturesque character, with some excellent qualities. A tall man, with trenchant features, bright eyes, a great shock of gray hair standing out from his head, he was a marked personal figure. He was brave, but his bravery was of the excitable kind that made him unbalanced and nearly wild on the battle-field. His impulsiveness made him erratic in all performances of duty, and negligent of the system without which the business of an army cannot go on. This was shown in his furlough of a regiment whilst en route to reinforce Lightburn, who was supposed to be in desperate straits. It is also seen in the absence of Official Records of the organization of his command at this time, so that we cannot tell what regiments constituted it when his division was assembled at Clarksburg. He is described, in the second Battle of Bull Run, as crazily careering over the field, shouting advice to other officers instead of gathering and leading his own command, which he said was routed and scattered. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 342, 362-364.] Under the immediate control of a firm and steady hand he could do good service, but was wholly unfit for independent responsibility. His demonstrative manner, his boiling patriotism, and his political zeal gave him prominence and made him a favorite with the influential war-governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, who pushed his military advancement.

The Kanawha division left the Army of the Potomac on the 8th of October and reached Hancock on the 10th. There it crossed the track of a raid of the Confederate cavalry into Pennsylvania, under Stuart. By McClellan's order one brigade was sent to McConnelsville to intercept the enemy, and the other was halted. [Footnote: Id., vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 62-78.] By the 13th Crook had been allowed to concentrate the division at Hancock again, but was kept waiting for orders, so that he was not able to report to me his arrival at Clarksburg till the 20th. Colonel Scammon was on a short leave of absence during this march, and was promoted. [Footnote: His new rank dated from 15th October, that of Crook from 7th September. Army Register, 1863.] He reported to me in person in his new rank of brigadier a little later. The brigades of the Kanawha division were commanded by the senior colonels present.

The increase of troops in the district made immediate need of transportation and munitions and supplies of all kinds. The Kanawha division had not been allowed to bring away with it its admirably equipped supply train, but its energetic quartermaster, Captain Fitch, came with the troops, and I immediately made him chief quartermaster of the district. Milroy's division had no wagons, neither had Morgan's. The fall rains had not yet raised the rivers, and only boats of lightest draught could move on the Ohio, whilst navigation on the Kanawha was wholly suspended. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 433.] Four hundred wagons and two thousand mules were estimated as necessary to supply two moving columns of ten thousand men each, in addition to such trains as were still available in the district. Only one hundred wagons could be promised from the depot at Cincinnati, none of which reached me before the enemy was driven out of the Kanawha valley. I was authorized to contract for one hundred more to be built at Wheeling, where, however, the shops could only construct thirty-five per week, and these began to reach the troops only after the 1st of November. [Footnote: Id., pp. 535-537.] We hoped for rains which would give us navigation in the Kanawha in spite of the suffering which wet weather at that season must produce, and I ordered wagons and teams to be hired from the country people as far as this could be done. Similar delays and trouble occurred in procuring advance stores and equipments. Part of Morgan's men were delayed at the last moment by their new knapsacks coming to them without the straps which fasten them to the shoulders. General Wright blamed the depot officers for this, and took from me and my subordinates all responsibility for the delays; [Footnote: ., pp. 438, 475.] but the incidents make an instructive lesson in the difficulty of suddenly organizing a new and strong military column in a region distant from large depots of supply. It also shows the endless cost and mischief that may result from an ill-advised retreat and destruction of property at such posts as Gauley Bridge and Charleston. To put the local quartermasters at Gallipolis and other towns on the Ohio side of the river under my command, General Wright enlarged the boundaries of my district so as to include the line of Ohio counties bordering on the river. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 381, 421.]

On visiting Lightburn's command at Point Pleasant, I ordered a brigade to be sent forward next day (15th) to Ten-mile Creek, repairing the road and bridges, whilst a scouting party of experienced men started out at once to penetrate the country by circuitous ways and to collect information. [Footnote: Id., p. 433.] In two or three days bits of news began to arrive, with rumors that Loring was retreating. The truth was that he in fact withdrew his infantry, leaving Jenkins with the cavalry and irregular forces to hold the valley for a time, and then to make a circuit northward by way of Bulltown, Sutton, etc., gaining the Beverly turnpike near the mountains and rejoining the infantry, which would march to join Lee by roads intersecting that highway at Monterey. Such at least was the purpose Loring communicated to the Confederate War Department; but he was not allowed to attempt it. His instructions had been to march his whole command by the route Jenkins was taking and at least to hold the valley stubbornly as far as Charleston. On receipt of the news that he was retreating, orders were sent him to turn over the command to Brigadier-General John Echols, the next in rank, and to report in person at Richmond. [Footnote: ., pp. 661, 667.] Echols was ordered immediately to resume the positions which had been abandoned, and did so as rapidly as possible. Loring had in fact begun his retreat on the 11th, three days before I reached Gallipolis, but the first information of it was got after the scouting had been begun which is mentioned above. By the 18th I was able to give General Wright confirmation of the news and a correct outline of Loring's plan, though we had not then learned that Echols was marching back to Charleston. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 449.] We heard of his return two or three days later. As evidence of the rapidity with which information reached the enemy, it is noteworthy that Lee knew my command had left the Army of the Potomac for West Virginia on the 11th October, three days after Crook marched from camp in Pleasant Valley. He reported to Richmond that four brigades had gone to that region, which was accurate as to the number, though only half right as to identification of the brigades. [Footnote:Id., pp. 662, 663.] On the 13th he sent further information that I had been promoted and assigned to command the district.

By the 20th there had been a slight rise in the Kanawha River, so that it was possible to use small steamboats to carry supplies for the troops, and Lightburn was ordered to advance his whole division to Red House, twenty-five miles, and to remove obstructions to navigation which had been planted there. [Footnote: Id., pp. 456, 459.] One brigade of Morgan's division was in condition to move, and it was ordered from Portland to Gallipolis. The rest were to follow at the earliest possible moment. The discontent of the East Tennessee regiments had not been lessened by the knowledge they had that powerful political influences were at work to second their desire to be moved back into the neighborhood of their home. On the 10th of October a protest against their being sent into West Virginia was made by Horace Maynard, the loyal representative of East Tennessee in Congress, a man of marked character and ability and deservedly very influential with the government. [Footnote:Id., vol. xvi. pt. ii. pp. 604, 635, 651.] Maynard addressed Halleck a second time on the subject on the 22d, and on the 29th Andrew Johnson, then military governor of Tennessee, wrote to President Lincoln for the same purpose. It hardly need be said that the preparation of those regiments would proceed slowly, pending such negotiations. Their distant homes and families were at the mercy of the enemy, and it seemed to them intolerable that their faces should be turned in any other direction. I suggested an exchange for new Ohio regiments, but as these were not yet filled up, it could not be done. General Wright assured them that they should be sent to Kentucky as soon as we were again in possession of West Virginia. Most of these regiments came under my command again later in the war, and I became warmly attached to them. Their drill and discipline were always lax, but their courage and devotion to the national cause could not be excelled.

It was not till the 23d that any of Morgan's men really entered into the forward movement in the valley. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 474, 475.] On that day the brigade of Colonel John F. DeCourcey (Sixteenth Ohio), composed of Ohio and Kentucky troops, reached Ten-mile Creek and was ordered to march to Red House the day after. [Footnote: Colonel DeCourcey was an Irishman of good family, who took service in our army, and was a good officer. He afterwards inherited an Irish baronage.] Lightburn was busy clearing the river of obstructions and preparing to move to Pocataligo River as the next step in advance. Of the other brigades belonging to Morgan, that of Brigadier-General Samuel P. Carter, composed partly of Tennesseans, was at Gallipolis, intending to enter the valley on the 24th. The remaining brigade, under Brigadier-General James G. Spears, was entirely Tennessean, and was still at Portland where the paymaster had just arrived and was giving the regiments part payment.

My purpose was to concentrate the force at Pocataligo, assume the command in person, and attack the enemy in the positions in front of Charleston, in which Wise had resisted me in the previous year. I should have been glad to make the expected movement of a column from Clarksburg under Crook and Milroy co-operate directly with my own, but circumstances made it impracticable. The operations of the Confederate cavalry under Jenkins were keeping the country north of the Kanawha in a turmoil, and reports had become rife that he would work his way out toward Beverly. The country was also full of rumors of a new invasion from East Virginia. Milroy's forces were not yet fully assembled at Clarksburg on the 20th, but he was ordered to operate toward Beverly, whilst Crook, with the old Kanawha division, should move on Summersville and Gauley Bridge. Both had to depend on hiring wagons for transportation of supplies. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 459, 481, 482.] Separated as they were, they would necessarily be cautious in their movements, making the suppression of guerillas, the driving out of raiders, and the general quieting of the country their principal task. Their rÔle was thus, of course, made subordinate to the movement of my own column, which must force its own way without waiting for results from other operations.

Half of Carter's brigade was, at the last moment, delayed at Gallipolis, the clothing and equipments sent to them there being found incomplete. Just half of Morgan's division with two batteries of artillery were in motion on the 24th. On that day Lightburn was moved to Pocataligo, about forty miles from the river mouth, where I joined him in person on the 27th. A cold storm of mingled rain and snow had made the march and bivouac very uncomfortable for a couple of days. General Morgan accompanied me, and during the 28th the active column of three and a half brigades was concentrated, two or three other regiments being in echelon along the river below. Tyler Mountain behind Tyler Creek was, as formerly, the place at which the enemy was posted to make a stand against our further progress, though he had no considerable force on the south side of the river at the mouth of Scary Creek. Reconnoissances showed nothing but cavalry in our immediate front, and it afterwards appeared that Echols began a rapid retreat from Charleston on that day. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 685.] He had called to him Jenkins with the greater part of the cavalry, and entrusted to the latter the duty of holding us back as much as possible. Suspecting this from evidence collected at Pocataligo, I determined to put Siber's brigade and a battery, all in light marching order, on the south side of the river, accompanied by a light-draught steamboat, which the rise in the river after the storm enabled us to use as far as Charleston. This brigade could turn the strong position at Tyler Mountain, and passing beyond this promontory on the opposite side of the river, could command with artillery fire the river road on the other bank behind the enemy in our front. The steamboat would enable them to make a rapid retreat if the belief that no great force was on that side of the river should prove to be a mistake. Siber was also furnished with a battery of four mountain howitzers, which could be carried to the edge of the water or anywhere that men could march. [Footnote:Id., pp. 504, 509, 530.]

On the right bank of the river (north side) the principal column of two brigades (Toland's and DeCourcey's) advanced on the turnpike near the stream, having one six-gun battery and a section of twenty-pounder Parrots with them. What was present of Carter's brigade was sent by the mountain road further from the stream, to cover our left and to turn the flank of the Tyler Mountain position, if a stubborn stand should be made there. A light six-gun battery accompanied it. All moved forward simultaneously on the morning of the 29th. [Footnote: Ibid.] The dispositions thus made rendered it vain for the enemy's cavalry to offer any stubborn resistance, and Jenkins abandoned Tyler Mountain on our approach, thus giving us certain knowledge that he was not closely supported by the infantry. Our advance-guard reached the Elk River opposite Charleston in the afternoon, and I made personal reconnoissance of the means of crossing. The suspension bridge had been ruined in Lightburn's retreat, and the enemy had depended upon a bridge of boats for communication with their troops in the lower valley. These boats had been taken to the further bank of the river and partly destroyed, but as the enemy had continued his retreat, we soon had a party over collecting those that could be used, and other flatboats used in the coal trade, and a practicable bridge was reconstructed before night of the 30th. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 530.] Meanwhile I entered the town with the advance-guard as soon as we had a boat to use for a ferry, and spent the night of the 29th there. We had friends enough in the place to put us quickly in possession of all the news, and I was soon satisfied that Echols had no thought of trying to remain on the western side of the mountains. [Footnote: Id., pp. 515, 520.]

The column crossed the Elk late in the afternoon of the 30th, and I pushed Toland's and Carter's brigades to Malden and Camp Piatt that evening, Siber's brigade advancing to Brownstown on the other side of the Kanawha River. Lightburn's division was ordered forward next day to Gauley Bridge, Carter's brigade at Malden was ordered to send strong parties southward into Boone County, to reconnoitre and to put down guerilla bands. [Footnote: Id., p. 530.] DeCourcey's brigade was halted at Charleston, and Spears' Tennessee brigade was directed to remain at Gallipolis till further orders. Communication was opened with Crook, who was ordered to press forward via Summersville to Gauley Bridge as quickly as possible. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 520.] The retreating enemy had burned the bridges, obstructed the roads with fallen timber, and cut and destroyed the flatboats along the river; so that the first and most pressing task was to reopen roads, make ferries and bridges, and thus renew the means of getting supplies to the troops. [Footnote:Id., p. 536.] The river was still low, unusually so for the season, and the water was falling. Every energy was therefore necessary to get forward supplies to Gauley Bridge and the other up-river posts, for if the river should freeze whilst low, the winter transportation would be confined to the almost impassable roads. [Footnote: Id., p. 537.] I reported to General Wright the re-occupation of the valley, our lack of wagon-trains for further advance, and all the facts which would assist in deciding whether anything further should be attempted. I did not conceal the opinion which all my experience had confirmed, that no military advantage could be secured by trying to extend operation by this route across the mountains into the James River valley.

On the 2d of November Brigadier-General Scammon reported for duty, and I ordered him to Gauley Bridge to assume command of the division which was then under Colonel Lightburn, who resumed the command of his brigade. [Footnote: Ibid.] Scammon was directed to inspect carefully all our old positions as far as Raleigh C. H., to report whether the recent retreat of troops from Fayetteville had been due to any improper location of the fortifications there, to examine the road up Loup Creek, and any others which might be used by the enemy to turn our position at Gauley Bridge, to state the present conditions of buildings at all the upper posts, and whether any storehouses had escaped destruction. In short, we needed the material on which to base intelligent plans for a more secure holding of the region about the falls of the Kanawha, or for a further advance to the eastward if it should be ordered.

The information which came to me as soon as I was in actual contact with the enemy, not only satisfied me that Loring's forces had been greatly exaggerated, but led me to estimate them at a lower figure than the true one. In reporting to General Wright on 1st November, I gave the opinion that they amounted to about 3500 infantry, but with a disproportionate amount of artillery, some twenty pieces. The cavalry under Jenkins numbered probably 1000 or 1500 horse. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 531.] About the first of October Loring, in a dispatch to Richmond, stated his force at "only a little more than 4000," [Footnote: Id., p. 635.] which probably means that the 5000 with which he entered the valley were somewhat reduced by the sick and by desertions. He seems to refer to his infantry, for Jenkins's command had been an independent one. It would be reasonable, therefore, to put his total strength at some 6000 or a little higher. On our side, the column with which I actually advanced was just about 9000 men, with 2000 more of Morgan's command within reach, had there been need to call them up from the Ohio River.

On the 8th of November Halleck telegraphed to General Wright that no posts need be established beyond Gauley Bridge, and that about half of my command should be sent to Tennessee and the Mississippi valley. [Footnote: Id., pp. 556, 557.] On the same day General Wright formally approved my views as submitted to him, and ordered Morgan's division to be sent to Cincinnati at once. [Footnote: Id., p. 537.] It was thus definitively settled that my task for the winter would be to restore the condition of affairs in West Virginia which had existed before Loring's invasion, and organize my district with a view to prompt and easy supply of my posts, the suppression of lawlessness and bushwhacking, the support of the State authorities, and the instruction and discipline of officers and men. My first attention was given to the question of transportation, for the winter was upon us and wagons were very scarce. The plan of using the river to the utmost was an economy as well as a necessity, and I returned to my former arrangement of using batteaux for the shallow and swift waters of the upper river, connecting with the movable head of steamboat navigation. A tour of inspection to Gauley Bridge and the posts in that vicinity satisfied me that they were in good condition for mutual support, and for carrying on a system of scouting which could be made a useful discipline and instruction to the troops, as well as the means of keeping thoroughly informed of the movements of the enemy.

The line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was kept under the control of General Kelley, and his authority extended to active co-operation with the Army of the Potomac in keeping open communication with Washington. In case of need, the commander of that army was authorized to give orders to General Kelley direct, without waiting to transmit them through my headquarters. General Milroy was established on the Beverly front, communicating on his left with General Kelley and on his right with General Crook, at Gauley Bridge. General Scammon had his station at Fayette C. H., covering the front on the south side of New River, whilst Crook watched the north side and extended his posts in Milroy's direction as far as Summersville. Colonel Cranor remained on the Ohio near Guyandotte, scouting the valley of the Guyandotte River and communicating with Charleston and other posts on the Kanawha.

On the 12th of November reports were received from General Kelley that authentic information showed that Jackson was advancing from the Shenandoah valley upon West Virginia. Similar information reached army headquarters at Washington, and in anticipation of possible necessity for it, I directed Milroy to hold himself in readiness to march at once to join Kelley, if the latter should call upon him. I telegraphed General Wright that I did not think the report would prove well founded, but it put everybody upon the alert for a little while. Kelley had beaten up a camp of Confederates under Imboden about eighteen miles above Moorefield on the south branch of the Potomac, causing considerable loss to the enemy in killed and wounded and capturing fifty prisoners. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 572, 573, 578, 585, 586.] Some movement to support Imboden probably gave rise to the story of Jackson's advance, but Lee kept both corps of his army in hand and moved the whole down the Rappahannock soon afterward, to meet Burnside's advance upon Fredericksburg.

The invasion of the Kanawha valley by Loring had stirred up much bitter feeling again between Union men and Confederates, and was followed by the usual quarrels and recriminations among neighbors. The Secessionists were stimulated to drop the prudent reserve they had practised before, and some of them, in the hope that the Confederate occupation would be permanent, persecuted loyal men who were in their power. The retreat of the enemy brought its day of reckoning, and was accompanied by a fresh emigration to eastern Virginia of a considerable number of the more pronounced Secessionists. I have said [Footnote: Ante, p. 154.] that Mr. George Summers, formerly the leading man of the valley, had studiously avoided political activity after the war began; but this did not save him from the hostility of his disloyal neighbors. Very shortly after my re-occupation of Charleston he called upon me one evening and asked for a private interview. He had gone through a painful experience, he said, and as it would pretty surely come to my ears, he preferred I should hear it from himself, before enemies or tale-bearers should present it with such coloring as they might choose. During the Confederate occupation he had maintained his secluded life and kept aloof from contact with the military authorities. Their officers, however, summoned him before them, charged him with treason to Virginia and to the Confederate States, and demanded of him that he take the oath of allegiance to the Southern government. He demurred to this, and urged that as he had scrupulously avoided public activity, it would be harsh and unjust to force him to a test which he could not conscientiously take. They were in no mood to listen to argument, and charged that his acquiescence in the rule of the new state government of West Virginia was, in his case, more injurious to the Confederate cause than many another man's active unionism. Finding Mr. Summers disposed to be firm, they held him in arrest; and as he still refused to yield, he was told that he should be tied by a rope to the tail of a wagon and forced to march in that condition, as a prisoner, over the mountains to Richmond.

He was an elderly man, used to a refined and easy life, somewhat portly in person, and, as he said, he fully believed such treatment would kill him. The fierceness of their manner convinced him that they meant to execute the threat, and looking upon it as a sentence of death, he yielded and took the oath. He said that being in duress of such a sort, and himself a lawyer, he considered that he had a moral right to escape from his captors in this way, though he would not have yielded to anything short of what seemed to him an imminent danger of his life. The obligation, he declared, was utterly odious to him and was not binding on his conscience; but he had lost no time in putting himself into my hands, and would submit to whatever I should decide in the matter. It would be humiliating and subject him to misconstruction by others if he took conflicting oaths, but he was willing to abjure the obligation he had taken, if I demanded it, and would voluntarily renew his allegiance to the United States with full purpose to keep it.

He was deeply agitated, and I thoroughly pitied him. My acquaintance with him in my former campaign gave me entire confidence in his sincerity, and made me wish to spare him any fresh embarrassment or pain. After a moment's reflection, I replied that I did not doubt anything he had told me of the facts or of his own sentiments in regard to them. His experience only confirmed my distrust of all test oaths. Either his conscience already bound him to the National government, or it did not. In either case I could not make his loyalty more sure by a fresh oath, and believing that the one he had taken under duress was void in fact as well as in his own conscience, I would leave the matter there and ask nothing more of him. He was greatly relieved by my decision, but bore himself with dignity. I never saw any reason to be sorry for the course I took, and believe that he was always afterward consistent and steady in his loyalty to the United States.

It would be unjust to assume that members of Congress and the President were not guided by patriotic motives. The reform of the public service in matters of appointment had not then attracted much attention. Patronage was used for political purposes with complete frankness and openness. In civil offices this custom was boldly defended and advocated. There was some consciousness shown that promotions in the army ought to be controlled by a somewhat different rule, but it seemed to be thought that enough was done in the way of safeguard when the choice was confined to officers already in service, and appointments for the highest grades were not given to entirely new men from civil life. Each aspirant could find friends to sound his praises, and it was easy to assert that it was only giving preference to one's friends among officers of equal merit. Many excellent appointments were in fact made, and the proportion of these would have been greater if the judgment of military superiors had been more controlling in determining the whole list. Mr. Lincoln's humorous way of explaining his actions may give an impression of a lower standard than he actually acknowledged; but it cannot be denied that he allowed himself to be pressed into making military promotions, at times, upon purely political or personal reasons. [Footnote: Colonel Fry, who was assistant adjutant-general at Washington and in personal intercourse with the President, gives the following as a memorandum made by Mr. Lincoln himself in reference to an application to have a regular-army officer made a brigadier-general of volunteers. "On this day Mrs. ----- called upon me: she is the wife of Major ----- of the regular army. She is a saucy little woman, and I think she will torment me till I have to do it." Colonel Fry adds, "It was not long till that little woman's husband was appointed a brigadier-general." Miscellany, pp. 280, 281.]

It did not seem to occur to the authorities that the judgment of superior officers in the field should be called for and carefully considered when it was a question of promoting one of their subordinates. An instance which occurred in General Buell's army carried this beyond the verge of the grotesque. Colonel Turchin, of an Illinois regiment, was a Russian, an educated officer who had served in the Russian staff corps. An excellent soldier in many respects, his ideas of discipline were, unfortunately, lax, and in the summer of 1862 he was courtmartialled for allowing his men to pillage a town in Tennessee. The court was an intelligent one, of which General Garfield was president. The story current in the army at the time, and which I believe to be true, is that after the court had heard part of the testimony it became apparent that they must convict, and Mrs. Turchin, who usually accompanied her husband in the field, started to the rear to procure political "influences" to save him. With various recommendations she went to Washington, and was so successful that although the sentence of the court dismissing him from the service was promulgated on the 6th of August, he had been appointed a brigadier-general of volunteers on the 5th, and he was not one of those who were dropped from the list on March 3, 1863. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xvi. pt. ii. p. 277.] The trial was one of considerable notoriety, yet it is probable that it was overlooked by the President and Secretary of War at the time the appointment was made; but it cannot need to be said that whatever grounds for leniency might have existed, it turns the whole business into a farce when they were made the basis of a promotion in the revised list six months later. To add to the perfection of the story, Mrs. Turchin had acted on her own responsibility, and the colonel did not know of the result till he had gone home, and in an assembly of personal friends who called upon him ostensibly to cheer him in his doleful despondency, his wife brought the little drama to its dÉnouement by presenting him with the appointment in their presence.

One of the worst features of the method of appointment by "slate" made up between congressmen and the executive was that it filled up every place allowed by law, and left nothing to be used as a recognition for future services in the field, except as vacancies occurred, and these were few and far between. The political influences which determined the appointment were usually powerful enough to prevent dismissal. Whoever will trace the employment of officers of the highest grades in the last half of the war, will find large numbers of these on unimportant and nominal duty, whilst their work in the active armies was done by men of lower grade, to whom the appropriate rank had to be refused. The system was about as bad as could be, but victory was won in spite of it. It was fortunate, on the whole, that we did not have the grades of lieutenant-general and general during the war, as the Confederates had. They made the one the regular rank of a corps commander and the other of the commander of an army in the field. With us the assignment of a major-general by the President to command a corps gave him a temporary precedence over other major-generals not so assigned, and in like manner for the commander of an army. [Footnote: Our system was essentially that of the first French Republic and the Consulate, under which any general of division was assignable to an army command in chief.] If these were relieved, they lost the precedence, and thus there was a sort of temporary rank created, giving a flexibility to the grade of major-general, without which we should have been greatly embarrassed. Grant's rank of lieutenant-general was an exceptional grade, made for him alone, when, after the battle of Missionary Ridge, he was assigned to the command of all the armies.

These opinions of mine are not judgments formed after the fact. The weak points in our army organization were felt at the time, and I took every means in my power to bring them to the attention of the proper authorities, State and National. At the close of 1862 a commission was appointed by the Secretary of War to revise the articles of war and army regulations. Of this commission Major-General Hitchcock was chairman. They issued a circular calling for suggestions as to alterations supposed to be desirable, and a copy was sent to me among others. I took occasion to report the results of my own experience, and to trace the evils which existed to their sources in our military system. I called attention to the striking parallel between our practices and those that had been in use in the first French Republic, and to the identical mischiefs which had resulted. Laxity of discipline, straggling, desertion, demagoguery in place of military spirit, giving commissions as the reward of mere recruiting, making new regiments instead of filling up the old ones, absence of proper staff corps,--every one of these things had been suffered in France till they could no longer be endured, and we had faithfully copied their errors without profiting by the lesson.

In the freedom of private correspondence with Mr. Chase I enlarged upon the same topics, and urged him to get the serious attention of the President and the cabinet to them. I gave him examples of the mischiefs that were done by the insane efforts to raise new regiments by volunteering when we ought to apply a conscription as the only fair way of levying a tax on the physical strength of the nation. I said: "I have known a lieutenant to be forced by his captain (a splendid soldier) to resign on account of his general inefficiency. I have seen that same lieutenant take the field a few months later as lieutenant-colonel of a new regiment, whilst the captain still stood at the head of his fraction of a company in the line. This is not a singular instance, but an example of cases occurring literally by the thousand in our vast army during the year past.... Governor Tod (of Ohio) said to me some time ago, with the deepest sorrow, that he was well aware that in raising the new regiments by volunteering, the distribution of offices to the successful recruiters was filling the army with incompetent men whom we should have to sift out again by such process as we could!.... Have we time for the sifting process? Even if we had, how inefficient the process itself when these officers have their commissions in their pockets, and cannot be brought before a court or a military commission till much of the mischief they can do is accomplished, bad habits amongst the soldiers formed, and the work of training them made infinitely more difficult than with absolutely raw recruits. It was in view of such probable results that I expressed the hope that no more new regiments would be raised by volunteering, when, in July last, the levy of an additional force was mooted. It seemed to me that the President could well say to the world, 'Our people have shown abundant proof of their enthusiasm in support of the government by volunteering already to the number of more than half a million, a thing unprecedented in the world's history: we now, as a matter of military expediency, call for a draft to fill up the broken battalions.'" [Footnote: From private letter of Jan. 1, 1863.]

I urged with equal frankness the need of giving unity to the army by abolishing the distinction between regulars and volunteers, and by a complete reorganization of the staff. I said it seemed absurd that with nearly a million of men in the field, the Register of the Army of the United States should show an organization of some twenty regiments only, of which scarce a dozen had been in active service. "If a volunteer organization is fit to decide the great wars of the nation, is it not ridiculous to keep an expensive organization of regulars for the petty contests with Indians or for an ornamental appendage to the State in peace?" The thing to be aimed at seemed to me to be to have a system flexible enough to provide for the increase of the army to any size required, without losing any of the advantage of character or efficiency which, in any respect, pertained to it as a regular army. Circumstances to which I have already alluded, probably prevented Mr. Chase from taking any active part again in the discussion of army affairs in the cabinet. Probably many of the same ideas were urged upon the President from other quarters, for there was much agitation of the subject in the army and out of it. But nothing came of it, for even the draft, when it became the law, was used more as a shameful whip to stimulate volunteering than as an honorable and right way to fill the ranks of the noble veteran regiments. General Sherman found, in 1864, the same wrong system thwarting his efforts to make his army what it should be, and broke out upon it in glorious exasperation. [Footnote: Letter to Halleck, Sept. 4, 1864. "To-morrow is the day for the draft, and I feel more interested in it than in any event that ever transpired. I do think it has been wrong to keep our old troops so constantly under fire. Some of these old regiments that we had at Shiloh and Corinth have been with me ever since, and some of them have lost seventy per cent in battle. It looks hard to put these brigades, now numbering less than 800 men, into battle. They feel discouraged, whereas, if we could have a steady influx of recruits, the living would soon forget the dead. The wounded and sick are lost to us, for once at a hospital, they become worthless. It has been a very bad economy to kill off our best men and pay full wages and bounties to the drift and substitutes." Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 793.]

When Burnside reached Cincinnati and applied himself practically to the task of organizing his little army for a march over the mountains, his first requisitions for wagons and mules were a little startling to the Quartermaster-General and a little surprising to himself. He began at once an engineering reconnoissance of the country south of Lexington and Danville, as far as it was within our control, and employed an able civil engineer, Mr. Gunn, to locate the preliminary line for a railway. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 610.] These surveys were the starting-points from which the actual construction of the road between Cincinnati and Chattanooga was made after the close of the war.

Burnside also urged that the troops in Kentucky, exclusive of the Ninth Corps, be organized into a new corps with General Hartsuff as its commander. [Footnote: Id., p. 259.] Halleck demurred to this, but the President directed it to be done, and the order was issued by the War Department on 27th April. [Footnote: Id., pp. 269, 283, 400.] Burnside also applied himself earnestly to procuring from Rosecrans a plan of active co-operation for an advance. As soon as Hartsuff assumed command of the new Twenty-third Corps, Burnside sent him, on May 3d, to visit Rosecrans in person, giving him authority to arrange an aggressive campaign. [Footnote: Id., p. 312.] Hartsuff's old relations to Rosecrans made him a very fit person for the negotiation. Rosecrans hesitated to decide, and called a council of his principal officers. He suggested that the Ninth Corps be sent down the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to Glasgow, near the Tennessee line, but did not indicate any immediate purpose of advancing. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. pp. 313, 315.] Burnside meant to take the field with both corps of his command, which he had organized under the name of the Army of the Ohio; but to reassure Rosecrans, he wrote that if in co-operation the two armies should come together, he would waive his elder rank and serve under Rosecrans whilst he should remain in middle Tennessee. [Footnote: Id., p. 331.] It was now the 15th of May, and he sent a confidential staff officer again to Rosecrans to try to settle a common plan of operations. On the 18th Halleck had heard of Bragg's army being weakened to give General Joseph E. Johnston a force with which to relieve Pemberton at Vicksburg, and he became urgent for both Rosecrans and Burnside to advance. [Footnote:Id., p. 337.] He thought it probable that raids would be attempted by the enemy to distract attention from his real object, and pointed out concentration and advance as the best way to protect the rear as well as to reach the enfeebled adversary. Burnside hastened in good faith his preparations for movement. He was collecting a pack mule train to supply the lack of wagons, and put his detachments in motion to concentrate. He begged for the third division of his corps (Getty's), which had been detained in the Army of the Potomac and could not yet be spared, but did not wait for it. [Footnote:Id., p. 338.] By the 1st of June he was ready to leave in person for the front, and on the 3d was at Lexington, definitely committed to the movement into East Tennessee. There he was met by an order from Halleck to send 8000 men at once to reinforce General Grant at Vicksburg. [Footnote: Id., p. 384.] The promise was made that they should be returned as soon as the immediate exigency was over, but the order was imperative. Burnside never hesitated in obedience. The two divisions of the Ninth Corps made about the number required, and they were immediately turned back and ordered to the Ohio River to be shipped on steamboats. Sorely disappointed, Burnside asked that he might go with his men, but was told that his departmental duties were too important to spare him from them. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. pp. 384, 386.] Major-General Parke was therefore sent in command of the corps. Burnside returned to Cincinnati, grieving at the interruption of his plans, yet hoping it would not be for long. His duties at the rear were not agreeable, especially as this was just the time when he was directed to recall his order suppressing disloyal newspapers, and to refrain from arrests of civilians without explicit authority from Washington.

We may safely assume that the President and his War Secretary were as little pleased at having to order the Ninth Corps away as Burnside was to have them go. In fact the order was not made till they entirely despaired of making Rosecrans advance with the vigor necessary to checkmate the Confederates. On the receipt of Halleck's dispatch of the 18th May, Rosecrans entered into a telegraphic discussion of the probable accuracy of Halleck's information, saying that whatever troops were sent by the enemy to Mississippi were no doubt sent from Charleston and Savannah and not from Bragg. [Footnote:Id., p. 337.] He insisted that it was not good policy to advance at present. On the 21st he said, "If I had 6000 cavalry in addition to the mounting of the 2000 now waiting horses, I would attack Bragg within three days." [Footnote: Id., p. 351.] He also interposed the unfavorable judgment of his corps commanders in regard to an advance. Military history shows that this is pretty uniformly an excuse for a delay already fully resolved on by a commanding general. Halleck had no more cavalry to send, and could only say so. Burnside notified Rosecrans on the 22d that his columns had begun the movements of concentration and that they would be complete in three or four days. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 355.] On the 28th Mr. Lincoln himself telegraphed Rosecrans, "I would not push you to any rashness, but I am very anxious that you do your utmost, short of rashness, to keep Bragg from getting off to help Johnston against Grant." [Footnote: Id., p. 369.] Rosecrans curtly answered, "Dispatch received. I will attend to it." In his dispatches to Mr. Stanton of similar date there is no intimation of any purpose whatever to move. [Footnote: Ibid.] In telegraphing to Burnside, Rosecrans said that he was only waiting for the development of the former's concentration, and that he wished to advance by the 4th of June. [Footnote:Id., pp. 372, 376.] Burnside had already informed him that he would be ready by June 2d, and repeated it. On the date last named Rosecrans telegraphed Burnside that his movement had already begun, and that he wanted the Army of the Ohio to come up as near and as quickly as possible. [Footnote: Id., p. 381.] Still he gave no intimation to the authorities at Washington of an advance, for none had in fact been made by his army, nor even of any near purpose to make one. On June 3d, Halleck telegraphed him: "Accounts received here indicate that Johnston is being heavily reinforced from Bragg's army. If you cannot hurt the enemy now, he will soon hurt you." He followed this by his dispatch to Burnside ordering reinforcements to be sent to Grant, and the remainder of the troops in the Department of the Ohio to be concentrated defensively in Kentucky. [Footnote:Id., pp. 383, 384.] The only move that Rosecrans made was to send on the 8th to his general officers commanding corps and divisions, a confidential circular asking their opinion in writing in answer to the following questions, in substance,--

1. Has the enemy been so materially weakened that this army could advance on him at this time with strong reasonable chances of fighting a great and successful battle?

2. Is an advance of our army likely to prevent additional reinforcements being sent against General Grant by Bragg?

3. Is an immediate or early advance of our army advisable? [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 395.]

With substantial unanimity they answered that it was not advisable to move, though they seem generally to have been aware that Breckinridge with about 10,000 men of all arms had gone from Bragg to Johnston. When Rosecrans reported the result of this council to Halleck, the latter reminded him of the maxim that "councils of war never fight," and that the responsibility for his campaign rests upon a commanding general and cannot be shared by a council of war.

The careful study of the correspondence elicited by Rosecrans's circular would make a most valuable commentary upon the theme, "Why Councils of War never fight." The three questions were addressed to sixteen general officers commanding corps and divisions. [Footnote: Their answers are found in Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. as follows: Davis, p. 395, Johnson, do., McCook, 396, Turchin, 397, Brannan, 402, Crittenden, 403, Granger, 403, Wood, 405, Negley, 407, Palmer, do., Reynolds, 409, Rousseau, 410, Sheridan, 411, Stanley, 412, Thomas, 414, Van Cleve, 415, Mitchell, 417, and Garfield's summing up, 420.] In reading the responses the impression grows strong that there was what may be called a popular feeling among these officers that their duty was to back up their commanding general in a judgment of his on the subjects submitted, which could hardly be other than well known. On the question as to the probable reduction of Bragg's army by detachments sent to Johnston, whilst they nearly all have some knowledge of the diminution of the Confederate army to about the extent mentioned above, most of them answer that they do not think it a material weakening, that being the tenor of the inquiry put to them. Some of them, however, say very naturally that as the secret service is managed from headquarters and all the information received is forwarded there, General Rosecrans should be much better able to answer this question than his subordinates. As to the second part of that question, nearly all seem to assume that the battle would be in the nature of a direct attack on the fortifications at Shelbyville and are not sanguine of a successful result. The few who speak of turning manoeuvres feel that the further retreat of Bragg would only lengthen their own line of communications and do no good. Strangely, too, they argue, many of them, that an advance would not prevent further depletion of Bragg to strengthen Johnston. They consequently and almost unanimously advise against an immediate or early advance.

It is instructive to compare these opinions with the actual facts. The inaction of the summer had led directly to the detachment of two divisions of infantry and artillery and one of cavalry to reinforce Johnston, just as the inactivity of Meade later in the season encouraged the Richmond government to send Longstreet to Bragg from Virginia. If Rosecrans had moved early in the season, not only must Bragg have kept his army intact, but the battle of Chickamauga, if fought at all, must have been decided without Longstreet, and therefore most probably with brilliant success for our arms. It was delay in advancing, both in Tennessee and in Virginia, that thus directly led to disaster. If a brilliant victory at Chickamauga had been coincident with the fall of Vicksburg and Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, it does not seem rash to believe that the collapse of the Confederacy would have been hastened by a year.

Two of the generals who answered these questions attained afterward to such distinction that their replies are an interesting means of learning their mental character and gauging their development. Sheridan answered briefly that he believed Bragg had no more than 25,000 or 30,000 infantry and artillery, with a "large" cavalry force. In this he was very close to the mark. Bragg's report for the latter part of May, before sending reinforcements to Johnston, showed his forces present for duty to be 37,000 infantry, a little less than 3000 artillery, and 15,000 cavalry, in round numbers. Deduct 10,000 from these, and Sheridan is found to be sufficiently accurate.
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 846.

The reference to Bragg's returns of strength to the Adjutant-General's office makes this an appropriate place to note the method of making these returns and its bearing on the much debated question of the "Effective Total" commonly given by Confederate writers as the force of their armies compared with ours. The blanks for these reports were sent out from the Adjutant-and-Inspector-General's office at Richmond, with the order that the numerical returns be made "on the forms furnished and according to the directions expressed on them" (General Orders No. 64, Sept. 8, 1862). The column "Effective Total" in these returns included only enlisted men carrying arms and actually in the line of battle. It excluded all officers, the non-commissioned staff, extra-duty men, the sick in hospital, and those in arrest. To secure uniformity in the method of reporting in his army and to correct some irregularity, General Bragg issued a circular, as follows (Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 619):--

[Circular.]

"HEADQUARTERS, ARMY OF TENNESSEE,
TULLAHOMA, January 29, 1863.

Hereafter, under the column of 'Effective Total' in the reports from this army, extra-duty men and men in arrest will not be included. The 'Effective Total' must include only the fighting field force--those who are carried into the field of battle with fire-arms in their hands.

By command of General Bragg.
GEORGE WM. BRENT,
Assistant Adjutant-General."

Before the publication of the Official Records, I had occasion to call attention to the subject: see "The Nation," May 21, 1874, p. 334; also "Atlanta" (Scribners' Series), pp. 27, 28; and again in "The Nation," February 2, 1893, p. 86. A fair comparison between the Confederate and the National armies, therefore, demands a computation of numbers by the same method; and as we did not use forms containing the "Effective Total" as reported by the Confederates, the columns of officers and men "present for duty" which are computed alike in the returns on both sides are the most satisfactory and fair basis of comparison.]
He did not think Bragg would fight, but would retreat, and thought that in such a case he would not be hindered from sending more help to Johnston. Again, as forage in the country was scarce, he voted against an early advance.

Thomas did not believe Bragg had been materially weakened, for if any troops had been sent away, he thought they had returned or their places had been supplied. He concluded that Bragg was ready to fight with an army at least as large as that of Rosecrans; that to hold our army where it was would sufficiently prevent further reduction of Bragg's; that an advance would give the latter the advantage and was not advisable. His preference for defensive warfare was very evident. He said it was true that Bragg might be reinforced and take the initiative, but that he "should be most happy to meet him here with his reinforcements." In conclusion he indicated the necessity of 6000 more cavalry to be added to the army. [Footnote: See also ante, p. 478.]

When the answers were all received, Garfield summed them up in a paper, which must be admitted to be a remarkable production for a young volunteer officer deliberately controverting the opinions of such an array of seniors. He gave, as the best information at headquarters, the force of Bragg, before sending help to Johnston, as 38,000 infantry, 2600 artillery, and 17,500 cavalry. This made the infantry about 1000 too many, the artillery nearly exactly right, and the cavalry 2500 too many,--on the whole a very close estimate. From these he deducted 10,000, which was right. He stated Rosecrans's force at 82,700 "bayonets and sabres" with about 3000 more on the way, but deducted 15,000 for necessary posts and garrisons. The balancing showed 65,000 to throw against Bragg's 41,500. He further showed that delay would give time for the enemy's detachments to return, whilst we could hope for no further increase during the rest of the season. He then analyzed the military and civil reasons for activity, declared that he believed we could be victorious, and that the administration and the country had the right to expect the army to try.

The result was a curious but encouraging result of bold and cogent reasoning. Although Rosecrans reported to General Halleck on the 11th of June the opinion of his corps and division commanders against an early advance, the logic and the facts pressed upon him by his chief of staff evidently took strong hold of his active intellect, so that when Halleck on the 16th asked for a categorical answer whether he would make an immediate movement forward, he replied, "If it means to-night or to-morrow, no. If it means as soon as all things are ready, say five days, yes." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. i. pp. 8-10.] No doubt the rather plain intimation that a categorical "no" would be followed by action at Washington helped the decision; but it would have helped it to a decided negative if Garfield's paper, reinforced by the personal advice and oral discussions which we now know were of daily occurrence between them, had not had a convincing weight with him, both as to the feasibility of the campaign of turning manoeuvres which he devised and adopted, and as to its probable success. The result is reckoned one of his chief claims to military renown.

But to judge properly the relations of the government to both the commanding generals in Kentucky and Tennessee, it is necessary to go back to the days immediately after the battle of Stone's River, and to inquire what were the tasks assigned these commanders and the means furnished to perform them. The disappointment of the administration at Washington with Rosecrans's conduct of his campaign dated, indeed, much earlier than the time indicated. He had succeeded Buell at the end of October when Bragg was in full retreat to the Tennessee River. The continuance of a vigorous pursuit and the prompt reoccupation of the country held by us in the early summer was regarded as of the utmost importance for political, quite as much as for military reasons. It was not a time to halt and reorganize an army. The question of foreign intervention was apparently trembling in the balance, and to let European powers rest under the belief that we had lost most of what had been gained in the advance from Donelson to Shiloh and Corinth, was to invite complications of the most formidable character. The Washington authorities had therefore a perfect right to decide that to press Bragg vigorously and without intermission was the imperative duty of the commander of the Army of the Cumberland. He would be rightly held to have disappointed the expectations of his government if he failed to do so. Rosecrans had been chosen to succeed Buell because of the belief that his character was one of restless vehemence better adapted to this work than the slower but more solid qualities of Thomas, who was already second in command in that army. [Footnote: Since the text was written the Life of O. P. Morton has appeared, and in it his part in the change from Buell to Rosecrans is given. He urged the change upon Lincoln on the ground that aggressive vigor was imperatively demanded. "Another three months like the last six, and we are lost," said he. "Reject the wicked incapables whom you have patiently tried and found utterly wanting." On October 24th he telegraphed, "The removal of General Buell and the appointment of Rosecrans came not a moment too soon." Life, vol. i. pp. 197, 198.] Halleck was obliged very soon to remind Rosecrans of this, and to claim the right of urging him onward because he himself had given the advice which had been decisive when the question of the choice was under consideration.

Yet as soon as the army was again concentrated about Nashville, Rosecrans's correspondence took the form of urgent demands for the means of reorganization. He insisted that his cavalry force must be greatly increased, that he must have repeating arms for his horsemen, that he must organize a selected corps of mounted infantry and obtain horses for them--in short, that he must take months to put his army in a condition equal to his desires before resuming the work of the campaign. His energy seemed to be wholly directed to driving the administration to supply his wants, whilst Bragg was allowed not only to stop his rather disorganized flight, but to retrace his steps toward middle Tennessee.

On the 4th of December Halleck telegraphed that the President was so disappointed and dissatisfied that another week of inaction would result in another change of commanders. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xx. pt. ii. p. 118.] Rosecrans replied detailing his necessities, but taking a high tone and declaring himself insensible to threats of removal. The next day Halleck patiently but decidedly gave the reasons which made the demand for activity a reasonable one, adding the reminder that no one had doubted that Buell would eventually have succeeded, and that Rosecrans's appointment had been made because they believed he would move more rapidly. [Footnote: Id., p. 124.] Meanwhile every effort was made to furnish him with the arms, equipments, and horses he desired.

The battle of Stone's River had many points of resemblance to that of Antietam, and like that engagement was indecisive in itself, the subsequent retreat of the Confederates making it a victory for the national arms. The condition of the Army of the Cumberland after the battle was a sufficient reason for some delay, and a short time for recuperation and reinforcement was cordially accepted by everybody as a necessity of the situation. Congratulations and thanks were abundantly showered on the army, and promotions were given in more than common number. It was not concealed, however, that the government was most anxious to follow up the success and to make the delays as short as possible. An aggressive campaign was demanded, and the demand was a reasonable one because the means furnished were sufficient for the purpose.

At the close of the month of January, Rosecrans's forces present for duty in his department numbered 65,000, [Footnote: Id., vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 29.] the Confederates under Bragg were 40,400. [Footnote: Id., p. 622.] The end of February showed the National forces to be 80,000, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 93.] the enemy 43,600. [Footnote: Id., p. 654.] After this Bragg's army gradually increased till midsummer, when it reached a maximum of about 57,000, and Rosecrans's grew to 84,000. The Confederates had a larger proportion of cavalry than we, but this was at the expense of being much weaker in infantry, the decisive arm in serious engagements. In fact this disproportion was another reason for active work, since experience showed that the enemy kept his cavalry at home when he was vigorously pushed, and sent them on raids to interrupt our communications when we gave him a respite. Our superiority in numbers was enough, therefore, to make it entirely reasonable and in accord with every sound rule of conducting war, that the government should insist upon an active and aggressive campaign from the earliest day in the spring when the weather promised to be favorable. Such weather came at the beginning of March, and the Confederates took advantage of it, as we have seen, by sending Pegram into Kentucky. Their cavalry under Wheeler attacked also Fort Donelson, but were repulsed. A reconnoissance by a brigade under Colonel Coburn from Franklin toward Spring Hill resulted in the capture of the brigade by the Confederates under Van Dorn. [Footnote: Id., p. 115.] In the same month Forrest made a daring raid close to Nashville and captured Colonel Bloodgood and some 800 men at Brentwood. [Footnote: Id., pp. 171, 732.] Rosecrans organized a raid by a brigade of infantry mounted on mules, commanded by Colonel Streight, with the object of cutting the railroad south of Chattanooga. It was delayed in starting till near the end of April, and was overtaken and captured near Rome in Georgia. [Footnote: Id., pp. 232, 321.] These exasperating incidents were occurring whilst the Army of the Cumberland lay still about Murfreesboro, and its commander harassed the departments at Washington with the story of his wants, and intimated that nothing but carelessness as to the public good stood between him and their full supply. He was assured that he was getting his full share of everything which could be procured,--rifles, revolvers, carbines, horses, and equipments,--but the day of readiness seemed as far off as ever.

On the 1st of March the President, feeling that the time had come when his armies should be in motion, and plainly discouraged at the poor success he had had in getting Rosecrans ready for an advance, authorized General Halleck to say to him that there was a vacant major-generalcy in the regular army which would be given to the general in the field who should first win an important and decisive victory. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 95.] The appeal to ambition was treated as if it had been an insult. It was called an "auctioneering of honor," and a base way to come by a promotion. [Footnote:Id., p. 111.] Halleck retorted conclusively that Rosecrans himself had warmly advocated giving promotion in the lower grades only for distinguished services in the field, and said: "When last summer, at your request, I urged the government to promote you for success in the field, and, again at your request, urged that your commission be dated back to your services in West Virginia, I thought I was doing right in advocating your claim to honors for services rendered." [Footnote: Id., p. 138.] In view of this unique correspondence it is certainly curious to find Rosecrans a few days later enumerating his personal grievances to Mr. Lincoln, and putting among them this, that after the battle of Stone's River he had asked "as a personal favor" that his commission as major-general of volunteers should be dated back to December, 1861, and that it was not granted. [Footnote:Id., p. 146.] It was considerably antedated, so as to make him outrank General Thomas, much to the disgust of the latter when he learned it; but the date was not made as early as Rosecrans desired, which would have made him outrank Grant, Buell, and Burnside as well as Thomas.

Persuasion and exhortation having failed, Grant must either be left to take the chances that part of Bragg's army would be concentrated under Johnston in Mississippi, or he must be strengthened by sending to him that part of our forces in Kentucky and Tennessee which could most easily be spared. There can be no doubt that it was well judged to send the Ninth Corps to him, as it would be less mischievous to suspend Burnside's movement into East Tennessee than to diminish the Army of the Cumberland under existing circumstances. It is, however, indisputably clear that the latter army should have been in active campaign at the opening of the season, whether we consider the advantage of the country or the reputation of its commander.

If we inquire what means the administration gave Burnside to perform his part of the joint task assigned him, we shall find that it was not niggardly in doing so. His forces were at their maximum at the end of May, when they reached but little short of 38,000 present for duty in his whole department. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 380.] This included, however, all the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan as well as the eastern half of Kentucky, and there were several camps of prisoners and posts north of the Ohio which demanded considerable garrisons. Eight thousand men were used for this purpose, and nobody thought this an excess. Thirty thousand were thus left him for such posts in Kentucky as would be necessary to cover his communications and for his active column. He expected to make his active army about 25,000, and the advance movements had begun when, as has been stated, he was ordered to suspend, and to send the Ninth Corps to Grant.

The enemy in East Tennessee were under the command of General Dabney Maury at first, but when he was sent to Mobile, General S. B. Buckner was made the commandant. His returns of forces for May 31st show that he had 16,267 present for duty, with which to oppose the advance of Burnside. The information of the latter was that his opponent had 20,000, and he reckoned on having to deal with that number. The passes of the Cumberland Mountains were so few and so difficult that it was by no means probable that his campaign would be an easy one; yet the difficulties in the first occupation were not so serious as those which might arise if Bragg were able to maintain an interior position between the two National armies. In that case, unless he were kept thoroughly employed by Rosecrans, he might concentrate to crush Burnside before his decisive conflict with the Army of the Cumberland. This was the inherent vice of a plan which contemplated two independent armies attempting to co-operate; and if Rosecrans had been willing to open his campaign on the 1st of March, it is almost certain that the troops in Kentucky would have been ordered to him. The President did not determine to send Burnside to the West and to give him a little army of his own till he despaired of the liberation of East Tennessee in that season by any activity of Rosecrans. This cannot be overlooked in any candid criticism of the summer's work.

But this was by no means the whole. He forgot that when he stopped Burnside's movement on 3d June to send the Ninth Corps to Grant, it was with the distinct understanding that it prevented its resumption till the corps should return. He had himself said that this should be as early as possible, and meanwhile directed Burnside to concentrate his remaining forces as much as he could. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p.384.] Burnside had been told on the 8th of July, without inquiry from him, that the corps was coming back to him, and had immediately begun his preparation to resume an active campaign as soon as it should reach him. Not hearing of its being on the way, on the 18th he asked Halleck if orders for its return had been given. To this dispatch no answer was given, and it was probably pigeonholed and forgotten. Burnside continued his campaign against Morgan, and on the 24th, when the last combinations near Steubenville were closing the career of the raider, Halleck again telegraphs that there must be no further delay in the movement into East Tennessee, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p.553.] and orders an immediate report of the position and number of Burnside's troops organized for that purpose! He was still ignorant, apparently, that there had been any occasion to withdraw the troops in Kentucky from the positions near the Cumberland River.

Burnside answered temperately, reciting the facts and reminding him of the actual state of orders and correspondence, adding only, "I should be glad to be more definitely instructed, if you think the work can be better done." Morgan's surrender was on the 26th, and Burnside immediately applied himself with earnest zeal to get his forces back into Kentucky. Judah's division at Buffington was three hundred miles from Cincinnati and five hundred from the place it had left to begin the chase. Shackelford's mounted force was two hundred miles further up the Ohio. This last was, as has been recited, made up of detachments from all the divisions of the Twenty-third Corps, and its four weeks of constant hard riding had used up men and horses. These all had to be got back to the southern part of central Kentucky and refitted, returned to their proper divisions, and prepared for a new campaign. The General-in-Chief does not seem to have had the slightest knowledge of these circumstances or conditions.

On the 28th another Confederate raid developed itself in southern Kentucky, under General Scott. It seemed to be intended as a diversion to aid Morgan to escape from Ohio, but failed to accomplish anything. Scott advanced rapidly from the south with his brigade, crossing the Cumberland at Williamsburg and moving through London upon Richmond. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 568.] Colonel Sanders endeavored to stop the enemy at Richmond with about 500 men hastily collected, but was driven back. He was ordered to Lexington and put in command of all the mounted men which could be got together there, 2400 in all, and advanced against Scott, who now retreated by Lancaster, Stanford, and Somerset. At Lancaster the enemy was routed in a charge and 200 of them captured. Following them up with vigor, their train was destroyed and about 500 more prisoners were taken. At the Cumberland River Sanders halted, having been without rations for four days. The remnant of Scott's force had succeeded in crossing the river after abandoning the train. Scott claimed to have taken and paroled about 200 prisoners in the first part of his raid, but such irregular paroles of captured men who could not be carried off were unauthorized and void. The actual casualties in Sanders's command were trifling. [Footnote:Id., pt. i. pp. 828-843; pt. ii. pp. 568, 589.]

The effect of this last raid was still further to wear out Burnside's mounted troops, but he pressed forward to the front all his infantry and organized a column for advance. In less than a week, on August 4, he was able to announce to the War Department that he had 11,000 men concentrated at Lebanon, Stanford, and Glasgow, with outposts on the Cumberland River, and that he could possibly increase this to 12,000 by reducing some posts in guard of the railway. [Footnote: Id., p. 591.] Upon this, Halleck gave to Rosecrans peremptory orders for the immediate advance of the Army of the Cumberland, directing him also to report daily the movement of each corps till he should cross the Tennessee. On the next day Burnside was ordered in like manner to advance with a column of 12,000 men upon Knoxville, on reaching which place he was to endeavor to connect with the forces under Rosecrans. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. pp.592-593.] The dispatch closed with what was called a repetition of a former order from the Secretary of War for Burnside to leave Cincinnati and take command of his moving column in person. Burnside had never dreamed of doing anything else, as everybody near him knew, though he had in fact been quite ill during the latter part of July. The mention of a former order was another sheer blunder on General Halleck's part, and Burnside indignantly protested against the imputation contained in it. [Footnote:Id., pp.593, 594.] The truth seems to be that Halleck was in such a condition of irritation over his correspondence with Rosecrans, that nothing pertaining to the Department of the Ohio was accurately placed in his mind or accurately stated when he had occasion to refer to it. In cutting the knot by peremptory orders to both armies to move, he was right, and was justified in insisting that the little column of 12,000 under Burnside should start although it could only be got together in greatest haste and with the lack of equipment occasioned by the "wear and tear" of the operations against Morgan. If, in insisting on this, he had recognized the facts and given Burnside and his troops credit for the capture of the rebel raiders and the concentration, in a week, of forces scattered over a distance of nearly a thousand miles, no one would have had a right to criticise him. The exigency fairly justified it. But to treat Burnside as if he had been only enjoying himself in Cincinnati, and his troops all quietly in camp along the Cumberland River through the whole summer,--to ignore the absence of the Ninth Corps and his own suspension of a movement already begun when he took it away,--to assume in almost every particular a basis of fact absolutely contrary to the reality and to telegraph censures for what had been done, under his own orders or strictly in harmony with them,--all this was doing a right thing in as absurdly wrong a way as was possible. A gleam of humor and the light of common sense is thrown over one incident, when Mr. Lincoln, seeing that Burnside had full right from the dispatches to suppose the Ninth Corps was to come at once to him from Vicksburg and that no one had given him any explanation, himself telegraphed that the information had been based on a statement from General Grant, who had not informed them why the troops had not been sent. "General Grant," the President quaintly added, "is a copious worker and fighter, but a very meagre writer or telegrapher. No doubt he changed his purpose for some sufficient reason, but has forgotten to notify us of it." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxiii. pt. ii. p. 561.] The reference to copious work as contrasted with the copia verborum gains added point from a dispatch of Halleck to Rosecrans, quite early in the season, in which the latter is told that the cost of his telegraph dispatches is "as much or perhaps more than that of all the other generals in the field." [Footnote:Id., p. 255.] The form of the reference to Grant enables us also to read between the lines the progress he was making in reputation and in the President's confidence. He kept "pegging away," and was putting brains as well as energy into his work. The records show also that Burnside took the hint, whether intended or not, and in this campaign did not err on the side of copiousness in dispatches to Washington.

To avoid the delay which would be caused by the distribution of his mounted force to the divisions they had originally been attached to, Burnside organized these into a division under Brigadier-General S. P. Carter, and an independent brigade under Colonel F. Wolford. He also reorganized the infantry divisions of the Twenty-third Corps. The first division, under Brigadier-General J. T. Boyle, was to remain in Kentucky and protect the lines of communication. The second was put under command of Brigadier-General M. D. Manson, and the third under Brigadier-General M. S. Hascall. Each marching division was organized into two brigades with a battery of artillery attached to each brigade. Three batteries of artillery were in reserve. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. ii. pp. 553-555.]

On the 11th of August General Burnside went to Hickman's Bridge, and the forward movement was begun. [Footnote:Id., pt. iii. p. 16. Hickman's Bridge, as has already been mentioned, was at the terminus of the Central Kentucky Railroad. There, on the bank of the Kentucky River, Burnside made a fortified depot from which his wagon trains should start as a base for the supply system of his army in East Tennessee. It was called Camp Nelson in honor of the dead Kentucky general.] At this date the Confederate forces in East Tennessee under General Buckner numbered 14,733 "present for duty," with an "aggregate present" of 2000 or 3000 more. Conscious that the column of 12,000 which Halleck had directed him to start with was less than the hostile forces in the Holston valley, Burnside reduced to the utmost the garrisons and posts left behind him. Fortunately the advanced division of the Ninth Corps returning from Vicksburg reached Cincinnati on the 12th, and although the troops were wholly unfit for active service by reason of malarial diseases contracted on the "Yazoo," they could relieve some of the Kentucky garrisons, and Burnside was thus enabled to increase his moving column to about 15,000 men. The earlier stages of the advance were slow, as the columns were brought into position to take up their separate lines of march and organize their supply trains for the road. On the 20th Hanson's division was at Columbia, Hascall's was at Stanford, Carter's cavalry division was at Crab Orchard, and independent brigades of cavalry under Colonels Wolford and Graham were at Somerset and Glasgow. [Footnote:Id., pt. ii. p. 548.] On that day orders were issued for the continuous march. General Julius White relieved Manson in command of the second division, and the two infantry divisions were to move on Montgomery, Tenn., Hascall's by way of Somerset, Chitwoods, and Huntsville, and White's by way of Creelsboro, Albany, and Jamestown. Carter's cavalry, which covered the extreme left flank, marched through Mt. Vernon and London to Williamsburg, where it forded the Cumberland, thence over the Jellico Mountains to Chitwoods where it became the advance of Hascall's column to Montgomery. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. ii. p. 548.] At this point the columns were united and all moved together through Emory Gap upon Kingston. Burnside accompanied the cavalry in person, and sent two detachments, one to go by way of Big Creek Gap to make a demonstration on Knoxville, and the other through Winter's Gap for the same purpose of misleading the enemy as to his line of principal movement.

Map of East Tennessee.

Nothing could be more systematic and vigorous than the march of Burnside's columns. [Footnote: Id., p. 569.] They made from fifteen to twenty or twenty-five miles a day with the regularity of clock-work, though the route in many parts of it was most difficult. There were mountains to climb and narrow gorges to thread. Streams were to be forded, roads were to be repaired and in places to be made anew. On the 1st of September Burnside occupied Kingston, having passed through Emory Gap into East Tennessee and communicated with Crittenden's corps of Rosecrans's army. [Footnote: Itinerary, Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. ii. pp. 576-578.] Here he learned that upon the development of the joint plan of campaign of the National commanders, Bragg had withdrawn Buckner's forces south of the Tennessee at Loudon, there making them the right flank of his army about Chattanooga. There was, however, one exception in Buckner's order to withdraw. Brigadier-General John W. Frazer was left at Cumberland Gap with 2500 men, and though Buckner had on August 30th ordered him to destroy his material and retreat into Virginia, joining the command of Major-General Samuel Jones, this order was withdrawn on Frazer's representation of his ability to hold the place and that he had rations for forty days. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. ii. p. 608.] There being therefore no troops in East Tennessee to oppose its occupation, Burnside's advance-guard entered Knoxville on the 3d of September. Part of the Twenty-third Corps had been sent toward London on the 2d, and upon their approach the enemy burned the great railroad bridge at that place. A light-draught steamboat was building at Kingston, and this was captured and preserved. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 333.] It played a useful part subsequently in the transportation of supplies when the wagon-trains were broken down and the troops were reduced nearly to starvation. No sooner was Burnside in Knoxville than he put portions of his army in motion for Cumberland Gap, sixty miles northward. He had already put Colonel John F. DeCourcey (Sixteenth Ohio Infantry) in command of new troops arriving in Kentucky, and ordered him to advance against the fortifications of the gap on the north side. General Shackelford was sent with his cavalry from Knoxville, but when Burnside learned that DeCourcey and he were not strong enough to take the place, he left Knoxville in person with Colonel Samuel Gilbert's brigade of infantry and made the sixty-mile march in fifty-two hours. Frazer had refused to surrender on the summons of the subordinates; but when Burnside arrived and made the demand in person, he despaired of holding out and on the 9th of September surrendered the garrison. A considerable number got away by scattering after the flag was hauled down, but 2,205 men laid down their arms, and twelve pieces of cannon were also among the spoils. [Footnote:Id., pt. ii. pp. 548, 599, 604, 611.] DeCourcey's troops were left to garrison the fortifications, and the rest were sent to occupy the upper valley of the Holston toward the Virginia line.

On the 10th, and while still at Cumberland Gap, Burnside received a dispatch from General Crittenden with the news that he was in possession of Chattanooga, that Bragg had retreated toward Rome, Ga., and that Rosecrans hoped with his centre and right to intercept the enemy at Rome, which was sixty miles south of Chattanooga. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 523.] Everything was therefore most promising on the south, and Burnside had only to provide for driving back the Confederates under Jones, at the Virginia line, a hundred and thirty miles northeast of Knoxville. It becomes important here to estimate these distances rightly. Knoxville is a hundred and eleven miles distant from Chattanooga by the railroad, and more by the country roads. From Bristol on the northeast to Chattanooga on the southwest is two hundred and forty-two miles, which measures the length of that part of the Holston and Tennessee valley known as East Tennessee. If Rosecrans were at Rome, as General Crittenden's dispatch indicated, he was more than a hundred and seventy miles distant from Knoxville, and nearly three hundred miles from the region about Greeneville and the Watauga River, whose crossing would be the natural frontier of the upper valley, if Burnside should not be able to extend his occupation quite to the Virginia line. It will be seen therefore that the progress of the campaign had necessarily made Rosecrans's and Burnside's lines of operation widely divergent, and they were far beyond supporting distance of each other, since there was no railway communication between them, and could not be for a long time. Burnside captured some locomotives and cars at Knoxville; but bridges had been destroyed to such an extent that these were of little use to him, for the road could be operated but a short distance in either direction and the amount of rolling stock was, at most, very little. Complete success for Rosecrans, with the reopening and repair of the whole line from Nashville through Chattanooga, including the rebuilding of the great bridge at London, were the essential conditions of further co-operation between the two armies, and of the permanent existence of Burnside's in East Tennessee.

Efforts had been made to extend the lines of telegraph as Burnside advanced, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. ii. p. 574; pt. iii. p. 717.] but it took some time to do this, and even when the wires were up there occurred a difficulty in making the electric circuit, so that through all the critical part of the Chickamauga campaign, Burnside had to communicate by means of so long a line of couriers that three days was the actual time of transmittal of dispatches between himself and Washington. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 718.] The news from Rosecrans on the 10th was so reassuring that Burnside's plain duty was to apply himself to clearing the upper valley of the enemy, and then to further the great object of his expedition by giving the loyal inhabitants the means of self-government, and encouraging them to organize and arm themselves with the weapons which his wagon trains were already bringing from Kentucky. He had also to provide for his supplies, and must use the good weather of the early autumn to the utmost, for the long roads over the mountains would be practically impassable in winter. The route from Kentucky by way of Cumberland Gap was the shortest, and, on the whole, the easiest, and a great system of transportation by trains under escort was put in operation. The camp at Cumberland Gap could give this protection through the mountain district, and made a convenient stopping-place in the weary way when teams broke down or had to be replaced. Other roads were also used whilst they seemed to be safe, and the energies and resources of the quartermaster's department were strained to the utmost to bring forward arms, ammunition for cannon and muskets, food and medical supplies, and all the munitions of war. The roads were covered with herds of beeves and swine, and feeding stations for these were established and the forage had to be drawn to them, for nothing could be got, along the greater part of the route. Burnside hoped that the railway by Chattanooga would be put in repair and be open before winter should shut in, but he very prudently acted on the principle of making the most of his present means. It was well he did so, for otherwise his little army would have been starved before the winter was half over.

From Cumberland Gap the courier line was sixty miles shorter than from Knoxville, and the first dispatches of Burnside announcing his capture of Frazer's troops reached Washington more quickly than later ones. At noon of the 11th Mr. Lincoln answered it with hearty congratulations and thanks. This was quickly followed by a congratulatory message from Halleck accompanied by formal orders. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 555.] These last only recapitulated the points in Burnside's further operations and administration which were the simplest deductions from the situation. Burnside was to hold the country eastward to the gaps of the North Carolina mountains (the Great Smokies) and the valley of the Holston up to the Virginia line. Halleck used the phrase "the line of the Holston," which would be absurd, and was probably only a slip of the pen. The exact strength of General Jones, the Confederate commander in southwestern Virginia, was not known, but, to preserve his preponderance, Burnside could not prudently send less than a division of infantry and a couple of brigades of cavalry to the vicinity of Rogersville or Greeneville and the railroad crossing of the Watauga. This would be just about half his available force. The other division was at first divided, one of the two brigades being centrally placed at Knoxville, and the other at Sevierville, thirty miles up the French Broad River, where it covered the principal pass over the Smokies to Asheville, N. C. The rest of his cavalry was at London and Kingston, where it covered the north side of the Tennessee River and communicated with Rosecrans's outposts above Chattanooga.

Halleck further informed Burnside that the Secretary of War directed him to raise all the volunteers he could in East Tennessee and to select officers for them. If he had not already enough arms and equipments he could order them by telegraph. As to Rosecrans, the General-in-Chief stated that he would occupy Dalton or some other point south of Chattanooga, closing the enemy's line from Atlanta, and when this was done, the question would be settled whether the whole would move eastward into Virginia or southward into Georgia and Alabama. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 555.] Burnside's present work being thus cut out for him, he set himself about it with the cordial earnestness which marked his character. He had suggested the propriety of his retiring as soon as the surrender of Frazer had made his occupation of East Tennessee an assured success, but he had not formally asked to be relieved. [Footnote: Id., p. 523.] His reasons for doing so dated back to the Fredericksburg campaign, in part; for he had believed that his alternative then presented to the government, that he should be allowed to dismiss insubordinate generals or should himself resign, ought to have been accepted. His case had some resemblance to Pope's when the administration approved his conduct and his courage but retired him and restored McClellan to command, in deference to the supposed sentiment of the Army of the Potomac. Halleck's persistent ignoring of the officially recorded causes of the delay in this campaign, and his assumption that the Morgan raid was not an incident of any importance in Burnside's responsibilities, had not tended to diminish the latter's sense of discomfort in dealing with army head-quarters. A debilitating illness gave some added force to his other reasons, which, however, we who knew him well understood to be the decisive ones with him. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 523; vol. xxxi. pt. i. p. 757.] Mr. Lincoln's sincere friendship and confidence he never doubted, but his nature could not fully appreciate the President's policy of bending to existing circumstances when current opinion was contrary to his own, so that he might save his strength for more critical action at another time. Burnside had now the Éclat of success in a campaign which was very near the heart of the President and full of interest for the Northern people. This, he felt, was a time when he could retire with honor. Mr. Lincoln postponed action in the kindest and most complimentary words, [Footnote: Id., vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 554. "Yours received. A thousand thanks for the late successes you have given us. We cannot allow you to resign until things shall be a little more settled in East Tennessee. If then, purely on your own account you wish to resign, we will not further refuse you."] and when he finally assigned another to command the department, did not allow Burnside to resign, but laid out other work for him where his patriotism and his courage could be of use to the country.

The advent of the army into East Tennessee was, to its loyal people, a resurrection from the grave. Their joy had an exultation which seemed almost beyond the power of expression. Old men fell down fainting and unconscious under the stress of their emotions as they saw the flag at the head of the column and tried to cheer it! Women wept with happiness as their husbands stepped out of the ranks of the loyal Tennessee regiments when these came marching by the home. [Footnote: Temple's East Tennessee and the Civil War, pp. 476, 478. Humes's The Loyal Mountaineers, pp. 211, 218.] These men had gathered in little recruiting camps on the mountain-sides and had found their way to Kentucky, travelling by night and guided by the pole-star, as the dark-skinned fugitives from bondage had used to make their way to freedom. Their families had been marked as traitors to the Confederacy, and had suffered sharpest privations and cruel wrong on account of the absence of the husband and father, the brother, or the son. Now it was all over, and a jubilee began in those picturesque valleys in the mountains, which none can understand who had not seen the former despair and the present revulsion of happiness. The mountain coves and nooks far up toward the Virginia line had been among the most intense in loyalty to the nation. Andrew Johnson's home was at Greeneville, and he was now the loyal provisional governor of Tennessee, soon to be nominated Vice-President of the United States. General Carter, who had asked to be transferred from the navy to organize the refugee loyalists into regiments, was a native of the same region. It was at the Watauga that the neighboring opponents of secession had given the first example of daring self-sacrifice in burning the railway bridge. For this they were hanged, and their memory was revered by the loyal men about them, as was Nathan Hale's by our revolutionary fathers. East Tennessee was full of such loyalty, but here were good reasons why Burnside should push his advance at least to the Watauga, and if possible to the Virginia line. His sympathies were all alive for this people. The region, he telegraphed the President, is as loyal as any State of the North. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 523.] It threw off all disguise, it blossomed with National flags, it took no counsel of prudence, it refused to think of a return of Confederate soldiers and Confederate rule as a possibility. It exulted in every form of defiance to the Richmond government and what had been called treason to the Confederate States. The people had a religious faith that God would not abandon them or suffer them to be again abandoned. If such an incredible wrong were to happen, they must either leave their country in mass, or they must be ready to die. They could see no other alternative.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF ARIZONA, WHIPPLE BARRACKS,
PRESCOTT, A. T., November 27, 1882.

MY DEAR GENERAL,--Referring to your letter of the 3d instant asking replies to certain queries with reference to the conduct of the Kanawha Division during the Antietam campaign, I can only reply generally. The twenty years which have elapsed make my memory indistinct, and I can now recall only prominent features or particular incidents in which I was especially interested. I remember distinctly, however, that the Kanawha Division compared favorably in discipline and general good conduct with the best troops of the army. In my own brigade there was no straggling, or, if any, so little that it did not come to my notice. I am quite sure there was no pillaging in my brigade. My men probably took fence rails for their bivouac fires, and straw and hay for their beds, but to the best of my belief there was nothing done that could be called pillaging.

I heard, at the time, something with reference to a controversy between Generals Reno and Hayes, but if ever I knew what it was about, I have forgotten it. In this matter it seems as if the statement of General Hayes should be conclusive.

I am very glad that you have interested yourself in refuting the numberless charges which the writers of personal histories have found it convenient to lay against the Kanawha Division, and which in almost every instance are base slanders. The personnel of the division should in itself be a sufficient refutation. The regiments were mainly of '61 men from country districts who enlisted from motives of patriotism, and as a rule were never disgraced by conduct which many of the regiments enlisted in the large cities of the East were notorious for throughout the army.

The Kanawha Division did not belong to the Army of the Potomac, and it was therefore an easy matter to shift responsibility from its own organization by throwing it on the shoulders of the troops serving with it. The subsequent reputation of this division is in itself a sufficient answer, and I challenge history to show an organization which was more distinguished for all soldierly qualities than the one you had the honor to command during the campaign, until the death of Reno gave you the Ninth Corps.

You are at liberty to use this letter in any way you deem best, and I am only sorry that I can do no more to assist you.

Very Sincerely, Your friend,
GEORGE CROOK, Brig. Gen'l.

To General J. D. Cox.