That the French which was learned was not enough to open easily to the young lieutenant the military literature which was then found most abundantly in that language, would seem to be indicated by the following incident. In my first campaign I was talking with a regular officer doing staff duty though belonging in the line, and the conversation turned on his West Point studies. The little work of Jomini's mentioned above being casually referred to as having been in his course, I asked him if he had continued his reading into the History of the Seven Years' War of Frederick the Great, to which it was the introduction. He said no, and added frankly that he had not read even the Introduction in the French, which he had found unpleasantly hard reading, but in the English translation published under the title of the Art of War. This officer was a thoroughly estimable, modest, and intelligent man, and seemed in no way inferior to other line officers of his age and grade. It would of course be true that some men would build industriously upon the foundation laid at the academy, and perfect themselves in those things of which they had only acquired the elements; but the surroundings of frontier life at a post were so unfavorable that I believe few in fact did so. The officers of the engineer corps and the ordnance were specifically devoted to scientific careers, and could go steadily forward to expertness in their specialties. Those who were permanently attached to the staff corps or to bureaus at Washington had also opportunity to enlarge their professional knowledge by study if they were so inclined. But all these were exceptionally situated, and do not help us answer the question What kind and amount of military education was implied in the fact that a man had graduated at West Point and been sent to serve in the line? I have purposely omitted for the present to consider the physical training and the practical instruction in tactics by means of drill, because the question is in terms one of science, not of practice; that will come later. The conclusion is that the intellectual education at the Military Academy was essentially the same, as far as it went, as that of any polytechnic school, the peculiarly military part of it being in the line of engineering. In actual warfare, the laying out and construction of regular forts or the conduct of a regular siege is committed to professional engineers. For field work with an army, therefore, the mental furnishing of the West Point man was not superior to that of any other liberally educated man. In some of our volunteer regiments we had whole companies of private soldiers who would not have shunned a competitive examination with West Point classes on the studies of the Military Academy, excepting the technical engineering of fortifications. [Footnote: It must not be forgotten that my criticisms are strictly confined to the condition of military education in our Civil War period. Since that time some excellent work has been done in post-graduate schools for the different arms of the service, and field manoeuvres have been practised on a scale never known in our army prior to 1861. A good beginning has also been made, both here and in England, toward giving the young soldier a military library of English books.]

Let us look now at the physical and practical training of the cadet. The whole period of his student life at West Point had more or less of this. He was taken as a raw recruit would be, taught the school of the soldier in marching, in the manual of arms, and in personal carriage. He passed on to the drill of the squad, the platoon, the company. The tactics of the battalion came last, and the cadet might become a corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, or captain in the corps if he showed aptitude for drill and tactics. It is noticeable, however, that Grant and Sheridan remained privates during their whole cadetship, and Sherman, though once he became sergeant, was put back in the ranks. The fair conclusion is that this part of the cadet discipline is not very closely connected with generalship, though it is important as preparation for the ready handling of a company or a battalion. Sherman tells us, in his Memoirs, that he studied evolutions of the line out of the books, as a new subject, when he was in camp in front of Washington, after the first battle of Bull Run. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. i. p. 220.] The tactical education of the cadet stopped at the evolutions of the battalion, and for nearly all of them it was, even in that respect, the education of the soldier in the ranks and not of the officer, since a very small proportion became officers in the cadet corps.

This practical drill was, of course, the same as that which was used in organized militia regiments, and the famous Ellsworth Zouaves of Chicago, the New York Seventh Regiment, with a number of other militia regiments in different States, were sufficient proof that this training could be made as exact outside of the cadet corps as in it. It certainly was enough for the practical handling of the company and the regiment under the simplified tactics which not only prevailed during the war itself, but, with Upton's Manual as a basis, has been authoritatively adopted as an improvement upon the older and more complicated methods. It must not be forgotten that although our militia system had fallen into scandalous neglect, the voluntary efforts of citizen soldiers had kept many good independent companies organized everywhere, as well as full regiments in most of the older States; so that there were in fact more well-drilled regiments in the militia than there were in the little regular army. It was the small ratio all these, of both classes, bore to the demands of the gigantic war that was upon us, which made the problem so troublesome. The officers of the organized militia regiments, before the end of the three months' service, did what I have said it was desirable that those of the regular regiments should have done,—they scattered from their original commands and were active in organizing the new volunteer regiments. General De Trobriand, who went out as Colonel of the Fifty-fifth New York, says that the New York Seventh Regiment furnished three hundred officers to volunteer regiments. [Footnote: De Trobriand, Four Years with Potomac Army, p. 64.] In a similar way, though not to the same extent, the other organized and disciplined militia, in both Eastern and Western States, furnished the skeletons of numerous new regiments.

The really distinguishing feature in the experience of the regular officers of the line was their life in garrison at their posts, and their active work in guarding the frontier. Here they had become familiar with duty of the limited kind which such posts would afford. This in time became a second nature to them, and to the extent it reached, was, as other men's employments are, their business. They necessarily had to learn pretty thoroughly the army regulations, with the methods and forms of making returns and conducting business with the adjutant-general's office, with the ordnance office, the quartermaster's and subsistence departments, etc. In this ready knowledge of the army organization and its methods their advantage over the new volunteer officers was more marked, as it seemed to me, than in any and all other things. The routine of army business and the routine of drill had to be learned by every army officer. The regular officer of some years' standing already knew, as a matter of course, what a new volunteer officer must spend some time in learning. There is something of value also in the habit of mind formed in actual service, even if the service is in subaltern grades and on a petty scale. Familiarity with danger and with the expectation of danger is acquired, both by the Indian wars of the frontier and by the hunting and field sports which fill more or less of the leisure of garrison life.

But there were some drawbacks upon the value of the preparation for war which these officers possessed. There was a marked conservatism as to military methods and arms, and an almost slavish reverence for things which were sanctioned by European authority, especially that of the second French Empire. American invention was never more fruitful than when applied to military weapons. Repeating and magazine small arms, breach-loading cannon, and Gatling guns with other repeating artillery, were brought out or improved with wonderful variety of form and of demonstrable excellence. The regular army influence was generally against such innovations. Not once, but frequently, regular army officers argued to me that the old smooth-bore musket with "buck and ball" cartridge was the best weapon our troops could desire. We went through the war with a muzzle-loading musket, the utmost that any commander could do being to secure repeating rifles for two or three infantry regiments in a whole army. Even to the end the "regular" chiefs of artillery insisted that the Napoleon gun, a light smooth-bore twelve-pounder cannon, was our best field-piece, and at a time when a great campaign had reduced our forces so that a reduction of artillery was advisable, I received an order to send to the rear my three-inch rifled ordnance guns and retain my Napoleons. The order was issued by a regular officer of much experience, but I procured its suspension in my own command by a direct appeal to the army commander. There was no more doubt then than there is to-day of the superiority of rifled guns, either for long-range practice with shells or in close work with canister. They were so much lighter that we could jump them across a rough country where the teams could hardly move a Napoleon. We could subdue our adversaries' fire with them, when their smooth-bores could not reach us. Yet we were ordered to throw away our advantages and reduce ourselves to our enemy's condition upon the obstinate prejudice of a worthy man who had had all flexibility drilled out of him by routine. Models of automatic rapid-fire and repeating field-pieces were familiar objects "at the rear," but I saw none of them in action in any army in which I served. The conservatism of the old army must be held responsible for this.

The question of zeal and devotion to the cause for which we fought cannot be ignored in such a war as ours was. It is notorious that comparatively few of the regular officers were political friends of Mr. Lincoln's administration at the beginning. Of those who did not "go with the South" but remained true to the National flag, some were full of earnest patriotism, like the young officers whom I have mentioned as volunteering to assist the governors of States in organizing their contingents and as seeking places in volunteer regiments. There were others who meant to do their duty, but began with little hopefulness or zeal. There were still others who did not hesitate to predict defeat and to avow that it was only for professional honor or advancement that they continued to serve under the National flag. These last were confessedly soldiers of fortune. The war was an education for all who were in it, and many a man began with reluctance and half-heartedness who was abundantly radical before the conflict was over. There was, however, a considerable class who practised on Talleyrand's diplomatic motto, "point de zele," and limited their efforts to the strict requirement of duty. Such men would see disaster occur for lack of a little spontaneity on their part, and yet be able to show that they literally obeyed every order received. I was once ordered to support with my command a movement to be made by another. It was an important juncture in a campaign. Wondering at delay, I rode forward and found the general officer I was to support. I told him I was ordered to support him in doing what we both saw was needing to be done; but he had no explicit orders to begin the movement. I said that my orders to support him were sufficient to authorize his action, and it was plain that it would be unfortunate if the thing were not done at once. He answered cynically, "If you had been in the army as long as I have, you would be content to do the things that are ordered, without hunting up others." The English regulars, also, have a saying, "Volunteering brings bad luck."

There was altogether too much of this spirit in the army, and one who can read between the lines will see it in the history of many a campaign. It did not necessarily mean wavering loyalty. It was sometimes the mental indecision or timidity which shrinks from responsibility. It was sometimes also the result of education in an army on the peace establishment, where any spontaneity was snubbed as an impertinence or tyrannically crushed as a breach of discipline. I would not be understood to make more of these things than is necessary to a just estimate of the situation, but it seems to me an entirely fair conclusion that with us in 1861 as with the first French republic, the infusion of the patriotic enthusiasm of a volunteer organization was a necessity, and that this fully made up for lack of instruction at the start. This hasty analysis of what the actual preparation for war was in the case of the average line officer of the regular army will show, to some extent, the basis of my judgment that there was nothing in it which a new volunteer officer, having what I have called military aptitude, should not learn in his first campaign.

How far the officers of the engineers and of the staff corps applied themselves to general military study, would depend upon their taste and their leisure. Their opportunities for doing so were much better than those of line officers, but there was also a tendency to immerse themselves in the studies of their special department of work. Very eminent officers of engineers have told me since the war that the pressure of their special professional work was such that they had found no time to read even the more noteworthy publications concerning the history of our own great struggle. The surveys of the great lakes and the coast, the engineering problems of our great rivers, etc., have both formerly and in recent years absorbed their time and their strength. The ordnance and the staff corps, also, had abundant special duties. Still it may reasonably be assumed that officers of the classes mentioned have usually made themselves somewhat familiar with the best writings on military art. If we had in the country in 1861 a class of men who could be called educated soldiers in the scientific sense, we certainly should find them in the several corps just referred to.

Here, however, we have to meet the question What is military art as applied to the problem of winning battles or campaigns? We are obliged to answer that outside of the business administration and supply of an army, and apart from the technical knowledge of engineering and the construction of fire-arms and ammunition, it consists in the tactical handling of bodies of men in accordance with very few and very simple principles of strategy. The literature of the subject is found in the history of wars analyzed by competent men like Napoleon, Jomini, the Archduke Charles, Sir William Napier, Clausewitz, Moltke, Hamley, and others; but it may be broadly said that the principles of this criticism and analysis may be so briefly stated as to be printed on the back of a visiting-card. [Footnote: Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, in his admirable "Letters on Strategy," states them in five brief primary axioms. Letters on Strategy, vol. i. pp. 9, 10.] To trace the campaigns of great soldiers under the guidance of such a critic as Jomini is full of interest to any intelligent person, and there is nothing in the subject of the slightest difficulty of comprehension if full and authentic topographical maps are before the reader. To make much instructive use of military history in this way demands a good deal of voluminous reading and the command of charts and maps extensive enough to allow the presentation of the face of a country on a large scale. With these advantages all wars, both ancient and modern, are full of instructive examples of the application of the simple principles of strategy under innumerable varying circumstances and situations; and this union of simple theory in ever-changing practical application is what constitutes the theoretic knowledge of the general as distinguished from the tactical and administrative duties of the subordinate. [Footnote: Jomini expresses it thus: "J'en couclus que l'histoire militaire raisonnee de plusieurs campagnes, seront la meilleure Ecole pour apprendre et par consequent pour enseigner la grande guerre: la science des generaux." Grandes Operations Militaires, vol. i. p. 7.] It was the very simplicity of the principles that made many successful generals question whether there was any art in the matter, except to use courage and natural sagacity in the actual situation in which the commander found himself and the enemy. Marshal Saxe asserted in his "Reveries" that down to his time there had been no formulation of principles, and that if any had been recognized as such in the minds of commanders of armies, they had not made it known. [Footnote: Jomini, in the work already cited, quotes Marshal Saxe thus: "Que toutes les sciences avaient des principes, mais que la guerre seule n'en avait point encore; si ces principes ont existe dans la tete de quelques generaux, nulle part ils n'ont ete indiques ou developpes." The same idea has been put quite as trenchantly by one of the most recent writers of the English Army, Colonel J. F. Maurice, R. A. Professor in the Farnborough Staff College. In the able article on "War" in the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he says, "it must be emphatically asserted that there does not exist, and never except by pedants of whom the most careful students of war are more impatient than other soldiers, has there ever been supposed to exist, an 'art of war' which was something other than the methodic study of military history."]

It was precisely in this department of military history "raisonnee" that frontier garrison life shut the young army officer out from the opportunities of profiting by his leisure. The valuable books were all foreign publications in costly form with folio atlases, and were neither easy to procure nor easily carried about with the limited means and the rigid economy of transportation which marked army life in the far West. That this was true even in the artillery is indicated by General Gibbon before the Committee on the Conduct of the War when questioned in reference to the relative amount of artillery used at Gettysburg as compared with great European battles; that distinguished officer having himself been in the artillery when the Civil War began. [Footnote: "Question. You have studied the history of battles a great deal: Now, in the battles of Napoleon, had they at any time half as many artillery engaged as there were at Gettysburg? Answer. I am not sufficiently conversant with military history to tell you that. I think it very doubtful whether more guns were ever used in any one battle before. I do not believe Napoleon ever had a worse artillery fire." Testimony of General John Gibbon, Committee on Conduct of the War, vol. iv. p. 444. At Gettysburg the whole number of cannon employed was about two hundred. Compare this with Leipzig, for instance, the "battle of the giants," where two thousand were employed! Thiers says, "de Leipzig a Schoenfeld au nord, de Schoenfeld a Probstheyda a l'est, de Probstheyda a Connewitz au sud, une cannonade de deux mille bouches a feu termina cette bataille dit des geants, et jusqu'ici la plus grande, certainement, de tous les siecles." Thiers, Consulat et l'Empire, vol. xvi. p. 607.]

If then the officers of the regular army, as a body, were not in fact deeply read in what, as we have seen, Jomini calls "the science of generals," their advantage over equally well-educated civilians is reduced to a practical knowledge of the duties of the company and the petty post, and in comparison with the officers of well-drilled militia companies it amounted to little more than a better knowledge of the army regulations and the administrative processes. It is no reproach to them that this was so, for it resulted from the operation of law in the course of education at the Military Academy and the insignificant size of our army in times of peace. It had been the peculiar blessing of our country that a great standing army was unnecessary, and it would be foolish to regret that our little army could not have the experience with great bodies of troops and the advantages of theoretical instruction which are part of the life of officers in the immense establishments of Continental Europe. My only purpose is to make an approximately true balance sheet of the actual advantages of the two parts of our National army in 1861. Whilst on the subject, however, I will go a little further and say that prior to our Civil War, the history of European conflicts proves that there also the theoretic preparation of military men had not, up to that time, saved them from the necessity of learning both generalship and army administration in the terrible school of experience, during their first year in the field when a new war broke out after a long interval of peace.

The first volume of Kinglake's "Crimean War" appeared in 1863, and I immediately and eagerly devoured it for the purpose of learning the lesson it could teach. It was one of the memorable sensations of a lifetime, to find that the regular armies of England, of France, and of Russia had had to learn their lesson anew when they faced each other on the shore of the Euxine, and that, whether in matters of transportation, of subsistence, of the hospital, of grand tactics, or of generalship, they had no advantage over our army of volunteers fresh from their peaceful pursuits. The photographic fidelity to detail on the part of the historian, and his apparent unconsciousness of the sweeping conclusions to be drawn from his pictures, made the lesson all the more telling. I drew a long breath of relief, and nothing which happened to me in the whole war so encouraged me to hopeful confidence in the outcome of it, as the evidence I saw that our blunders at the beginning had been no greater than those of old standing armies, and that our capacity to learn was at least as quick as theirs. Their experience, like ours, showed that the personal qualities of a commanding officer counted for much more than his theoretic equipment, and that a bold heart, a cool head, and practical common-sense were of much more importance than anything taught at school. With these, a brief experience would enable an intelligent man to fill nearly any subordinate position with fair success; without them any responsibility of a warlike kind would prove too heavy for him. The supreme qualification of a general-in-chief is the power to estimate truly and grasp clearly the situation on a field of operations too large to be seen by the physical eye at once, [Footnote: Wellington said the great task of his military life was "trying to make out what was behind the hill."] and the undaunted temper of will which enables him to execute with persistent vigor the plan which his intellect approves. To act upon uncertainties as if they were sure, and to do it in the midst of carnage and death when immeasurable results hang upon it,—this is the supreme presence of mind which marks a great commander, and which is among the rarest gifts even of men who are physically brave. The problem itself is usually simple. It is the confusing and overwhelming situation under which it must be solved that causes timidity or dismay. It is the thought of the fearful consequences of the action that begets a nervous state of hesitation and mental timidity in most men, and paralyzes the will. No education will ensure this greatest and most essential quality. It is born in a man, not communicated. With it his acquired knowledge will be doubly useful, but without it an illiterate slave-trader like Forrest may far outshine him as a soldier. Nor does success as a subordinate give any certain assurance of fitness for supreme command. Napoleon's marshals generally failed when trusted with an independent command, as Hooker did with us; and I do not doubt that many men, like McClellan, who failed as generals-in-chief, would have made brave and good subordinates. The test of quality is different in kind, and, as I have said, the only proof of its possession is in the actual trial. It is safe to say that a timid subordinate will not be a good commander, but it cannot be affirmed that a bold one will, though there are more chances in his favor.

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!



CHAPTER X

THE MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT—SPRING CAMPAIGN

Rosecrans's plan of campaign—Approved by McClellan with modification—Wagons or pack-mules—Final form of plan—Changes in commands—McClellan limited to Army of the Potomac—Halleck's Department of the Mississippi—Fremont's Mountain Department—Rosecrans superseded—Preparations in the Kanawha District—Batteaux to supplement steamboats—Light wagons for mountain work—Fremont's plan—East Tennessee as an objective—The supply question—Banks in the Shenandoah valley—Milroy's advance—Combat at McDowell—Banks defeated—Fremont's plans deranged—Operations in the Kanawha valley—Organization of brigades—Brigade commanders—Advance to Narrows of New River—The field telegraph—Concentration of the enemy—Affair at Princeton—Position at Flat-top Mountain.

As the spring of 1862 approached, the discussion of plans for the opening of a new campaign was resumed. Rosecrans had suggested, early in February, that he would prefer to attempt reaching the Virginia and East Tennessee Railroad by two columns moving simultaneously upon Abingdon in the Holston valley. One of these would start from Gauley Bridge and go by way of Fayette, Raleigh, and Princeton; the other would leave some point in the Big-Sandy valley on the common boundary of Kentucky and Virginia, and march by most direct route to Abingdon. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. p. 721.] If this plan were approved, he asked that the west side of the Big-Sandy valley be added to his department. He proposed to depend largely upon pack-mule trains in place of wagons, to substitute the French shelter tent for the larger tents still in use, and to carry hand-mills by which the soldiers might grind into meal the Indian corn to be found in the country. McClellan, as general-in-chief, gave his approval, suggesting a modification in regard to the column to move from the Big-Sandy valley. His information led him to believe that the Big-Sandy River could be relied upon as navigable to Prestonburg, which was seventy miles from Abingdon by what was supposed to be a good road. He thought, therefore, that it would be easier to make Prestonburg the base and to use wagons. [Footnote: O, R., vol. v. p. 722.] On investigation Rosecrans reported that the most feasible route in that region was by steamboat transportation to Pikeville, twenty-five miles above Prestonburg, in the Big-Sandy valley, and thence up the Louisa Fork of the Big-Sandy by way of Pound Gap to the Holston valley; but there would still be eighty-eight miles of marching after leaving the steamboats, and navigation on the Big-Sandy was limited to brief and infrequent periods of high water.

On the 12th of March he submitted his modified plan to the adjutant-general of the army. [Footnote: Id., p. 744.] It had grown more complex with the passage of time. The eastern line of the department had been moved forward so as to bring the South Branch of the Potomac and the Cow-pasture branch of the James River under Rosecrans's command. He now planned four separate columns. The first was to move up the south branch of the Potomac with a view to turn and to capture the enemy's position at Alleghany Summit or Monterey on the Staunton turnpike. The second and third were to be in my district, and to move toward the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad on the two sides of New River. The fourth should march from the Big-Sandy valley on the line indicated above. Rosecrans seems to have limited his plan to the occupation of the mountain valleys as far east as the Blue Ridge, and did not submit any scheme for uniting his columns for further work. He asked for reinforcements to the extent of six regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and two field batteries to enable him to perform his task. The use of pack trains was given up, as they required a greater number of animals than could be procured. In fact, it was never found to be an economical use of mule power, and important movements were always confined to lines upon which wheel vehicles could be used. A rapid cavalry raid could be thus supplied, but heavy columns of infantry and artillery demanded wagon trains.

The weakness of Rosecrans's scheme is found in the wide separation of parallel columns, which could never have co-operated with success, and which had no common object had success been possible. To be sure, it was presumed that McClellan with the Army of the Potomac, and Banks in the Shenandoah valley, would be operating in eastern Virginia; but as McClellan was already bent on making Chesapeake Bay his base, and keeping as far as possible from the mountains, there was no real connection or correlation between his purposed campaign and that of the others. Indeed, had he succeeded in driving Lee from Richmond toward the west, as Grant did three years later, the feeble columns of National troops coming from West Virginia would necessarily have fallen back again before the enemy. If the general scheme had been planned by Lee himself, it could not have secured for him more perfectly the advantage of interior lines. Yet it was in substance that which was tried when the spring opened.

When Rosecrans's letter, enclosing his final plan, reached Washington, McClellan had taken the field, and President Lincoln had made use of the occasion to relieve him from the direction of all other forces, so that he might give undivided attention to his campaign with the Potomac army. This was done by an executive order on March 11, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. p. 54.] which assigned General Halleck to the command of everything west of a line drawn north and south through Knoxville, Tennessee, and formed the Mountain Department from the territory between Halleck and McClellan. This last department was put under the command of Major-General John C. Fremont. General Banks was commanding in the Shenandoah valley, but he was at this time subordinate to McClellan. These changes were unexpected to both McClellan and Rosecrans. The change in McClellan's relations to the whole army was the natural result of his inactivity during the autumn of 1861, and the consequent loss of confidence in him. The union of Buell's and Halleck's commands in the west was the natural counterpart to the concentration of Confederate armies under A. S. Johnston at Corinth, Miss., and was a step in the right direction. There was, however, a little too much sentiment and too little practical war in the construction of the Mountain Department out of five hundred miles of mountain ranges, and the appointment of the "path-finder" to command it was consistent with the romantic character of the whole. The mountains formed a natural and admirable barrier, at which comparatively small bodies of troops could cover and protect the Ohio valley behind them; but, for reasons which I have already pointed out, extensive military operations across and beyond the Alleghanies from west or east were impracticable, because a wilderness a hundred miles wide, crossed by few and most difficult roads, rendered it impossible to supply troops from depots on either side.

Such assurances of other satisfactory employment seem to have been given Rosecrans that he acquiesced without open complaint, and prepared to turn over his command to Fremont when the latter should arrive in West Virginia. Political motives had, no doubt, much to do with Fremont's appointment. The President had lost faith in his military capacity as well as in his administrative ability, but the party which elected Mr. Lincoln had not. The Republicans of the Northern States had a warm side for the man they had nominated for the Presidency in 1856, and there was a general feeling among them that Fremont should have at least another opportunity to show what he could do in the field. I myself shared that feeling, and reported to him as my immediate superior with earnest cordiality. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 35.]

In my own district, preparations had been made during the winter for the expected advance in the spring. I had visited Rosecrans at Wheeling, and he had conversed freely upon his plans for the new campaign. Under his directions the old piers of the turnpike bridge across the Gauley had been used for a new superstructure. This was a wire suspension bridge, hung from framed towers of timber built upon the piers. Instead of suspending the roadway from the wire cables by the ordinary connecting rods, and giving stiffness to it by a trussed railing, a latticed framing of wood hung directly from the cables, and the timbers of the roadway being fastened to this by stirrups, the wooden lattice served both to suspend and to stiffen the road. It was a serviceable and cheap structure, built in two weeks, and answered our purposes well till it was burned in the next autumn, when Colonel Lightburn retreated before a Confederate invasion. [Footnote: Id., p. 99.]

The variable position of the head of steamboat navigation on the Kanawha made it impossible to fix a permanent depot as a terminus for our wagon trains in the upper valley. My own judgment was in favor of placing it at Kanawha Falls, a mile below Gauley Bridge, and within the limits of that post. To connect this with the steamboats wherever the shoaling water might force them to stop, I recommended the use of batteaux or keelboats, a craft which a natural evolution had brought into use in the changeable mountain rivers. They were a canoe-shaped open boat, sixty feet long by eight wide, and were pushed up the stream by quants or poles. They required a crew of five men,—four to do the poling, and a steersman. In the swiftest "chutes" they carried a line ashore and made fast to a tree, then warped the boat up to quieter water and resumed the poling. Each boat would carry eight tons, and, compared with teaming over roads of which the "bottom had dropped out," it proved a most economical mode of transport. The batteaux dropped alongside the steamer wherever she had to stop, the freight was transferred to them directly, covered with tarpaulins, and the boats pushed off. The number of hands was no greater than for teaming, and the whole cost of the teams and their forage was saved. I had built two of these early in the winter and they were in successful operation. Two more were partly done when Fremont assumed command, and I urgently recommended a fleet of fifteen or twenty as an auxiliary to our transportation when active operations should be resumed. By their use Gauley Bridge could be made the practical depot of supply, and from ten to twenty miles of wretched and costly wagoning be saved. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 45-48.]

I became satisfied, also, that the regulation army wagon was too heavy for the difficult mountain roads, and recommended a strong but much lighter farm wagon, in which four mules could draw nearly or quite as much as six usually drew in the heavier wagon. This became a matter of great consequence in a country where forage could not be found, and where the wagon had to be loaded with the food for the team as well as the rations and ordnance stores for the men.

It had already been determined to substitute the shelter tent for other forms in the principal armies, and the change soon became general. We, however, had to wait our turn after more important columns were supplied, and our turn did not come till the campaign was over. Even our requisitions for ammunition were not filled, our artillery was not reduced to uniformity, and we could not secure muskets enough of any one calibre for a single regiment. We made the best of the situation, and whilst keeping "headquarters" informed of our lack, were ready to do our best with the means we had. No attention was paid, perhaps none could be paid, to our recommendations for any special supplies or means adapted to the peculiar character of our work. We received, in driblets, small supplies of the regulation wagons, some droves of unbroken mules, some ordnance stores, and a fair amount of clothing. Subsistence stores had never been lacking, and the energy of the district quartermaster and commissary kept our little army always well fed.

The formal change in department commanders took place on the 29th of March, Fremont having reached Wheeling the day before. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. p. 4.] Mr. Lincoln's desire by some means to free the loyal people of East Tennessee from the oppressive sway of the Confederates showed itself in the instructions given to all the military officers in the West. He had been pressing the point from the beginning. It had entered into McClellan's and Rosecrans's plans of the last campaign. It had been the object of General George H. Thomas's organization of troops at Camp Dick Robinson in Kentucky. For it General Ormsby Mitchell had labored to prepare a column at Cincinnati. It was not accomplished till the autumn of 1863, when Rosecrans occupied Chattanooga and Burnside reached Knoxville; but there had never been a day's cessation of the President's urgency to have it accomplished. It was prominent in his mind when he organized the Mountain Department, and Fremont was called upon to suggest a plan to this end as soon as he was appointed. His choice was to assemble the forces of his department in Kentucky at the southern terminus of the Central Kentucky Railroad, at Nicholasville, and to march southward directly to Knoxville, upon what was substantially the line taken by Burnside a year and a half later. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. p. 7.] Fremont was mistaken, however, in saying that from Nicholasville to Knoxville supplies could be "transported over level and good roads." General Buell had, on the 1st of February, [Footnote: Id., vol. vii. p. 931.] reported that line to be some two hundred miles long from the end of the railway to Knoxville, the whole of it mountainous, and the roads bad. He estimated a train of a thousand wagons, constantly going and returning, as needful to supply ten thousand men at Knoxville after allowance was made for what could be gathered from the country. General Buell was unquestionably correct in his view of the matter, but the strong political reasons for liberating East Tennessee made the President unwilling to be convinced that it was then impracticable. He, however, could not furnish the transportation required for the movement proposed by Fremont, and hesitated to interfere further with the conduct of military affairs within Buell's territorial limits. Besides this, Rosecrans's plan had found such favor with the Secretary of War that it was laid before Fremont with official approval. [Footnote: Id., vol. xii. pt, iii. p. 8.] The stripping of West Virginia of troops to make a column in Kentucky seemed too hazardous to the government, and Fremont changed his plan so as to adopt that of Rosecrans with some modifications.

He proposed to leave General Kelley with sufficient troops to protect the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and with Blenker's division (which was taken from the Army of the Potomac and given to him) to advance from Romney in the valley of the South Branch of the Potomac, ascending this valley toward the south, picking up Schenck's and Milroy's brigades in turn, the latter joining the column at Monterey on the great watershed by way of the Cheat Mountain pass. From Monterey Fremont purposed to move upon Staunton, and thence, following the southwestern trend of the valleys, to the New River near Christiansburg. Here he would come into communication with me, whose task it would have been to advance from Gauley Bridge on two lines, the principal one by Fayette and Raleigh C. H. over Flat-top Mountain to Princeton and the Narrows of New River, and a subordinate one on the turnpike to Lewisburg. His plan looked to continuing the march with the whole column to the southwest, down the Holston valley, till Knoxville should be reached, the last additions to the force to be from the troops in the Big-Sandy valley. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. p. 7.]

General Garfield (then colonel of the Forty-second Ohio) had already been sent by General Buell with a brigade into the Big-Sandy valley, and General George W. Morgan was soon to be sent with a division to Cumberland Gap. Although these were in Fremont's department, the War Department issued an order that they should continue under General Buell's command at least until Fremont should by his operations come into their vicinity and field of work. [Footnote: Id, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 14, 119.] They would, of course, co-operate with him actively if he should reach the Holston valley. When he should form his junction with me, he expected to supply the whole column from my depots in the Kanawha valley, and when he reached Knoxville he would make his base on the Ohio River, using the line of supply he first suggested, by way of central Kentucky.

The plan was an improvement upon Rosecrans's in arranging for a progressive concentration of his forces into one column led by himself; but it would probably have failed, first, from the impossibility of supplying the army on the route, and second, because the railroads east of the mountains ran on routes specially well adapted to enable the enemy quickly to concentrate any needed force at Staunton, at Lynchburg, at Christiansburg, or at Wytheville, to overpower the column. The Union army would be committed to a whole season of marching in the mountains, while the Confederates could concentrate the needed force and quickly return it to Richmond when its work was done, making but a brief episode in a larger campaign. But the plan was not destined to be thoroughly tried. Stonewall Jackson, after his defeat by Kimball at Kernstown, March 23d, had retired to the Upper Shenandoah valley with his division, numbering about 10,000 men; Ewell, with his division, was waiting to co-operate with him at the gaps of the Blue Ridge on the east, and Edward Johnson was near Staunton with a similar force facing Milroy. In April General N. P. Banks, commanding the National forces in the Shenandoah valley, had ascended it as far as Harrisonburg, and Jackson observed him from Swift-Run Gap in the Blue Ridge, on the road from Harrisonburg to Gordonsville. Milroy also pushed eastward from Cheat Mountain summit, in which high region winter still lingered, and had made his way through snows and rains to McDowell, ten miles east of Monterey, at the crossing of Bull-Pasture River, where he threatened Staunton. But Banks was thought to be in too exposed a position, and was directed by the War Department to fall back to Strasburg. On the 5th of May he had retired in that direction as far as New-Market. Blenker's division had not yet reached Fremont, who was waiting for it in Hardy County at Petersburg. Jackson saw his opportunity and determined to join General Johnson by a rapid march to Staunton, to overwhelm Milroy first, and then return to his own operations in the Shenandoah. Moving with great celerity, he attacked Milroy at McDowell on the 8th, the latter calling upon Fremont for help. Schenck was sent forward to support him, and reached McDowell after marching thirty-four miles in twenty-four hours. Jackson had not fully concentrated his forces, and the Union generals held their ground and delivered a sharp combat in which their casualties of all kinds numbered 256, while the Confederate loss was 498, General Johnson being among the wounded. Schenck, as senior, assumed the command, and on the 9th began his retreat to Franklin, abandoning the Cheat Mountain road. Franklin was reached on the 11th, but Jackson approached cautiously, and did not reach there till the 12th, when, finding that Fremont had united his forces, he did not attack, but returned to McDowell, whence he took the direct road to Harrisonburg, and then marched to attack Banks at Strasburg, Ewell meeting and joining him in this movement.

Fremont resumed preparations for his original campaign, but Banks's defeat deranged all plans, and those of the Mountain Department were abandoned. A month passed in efforts to destroy Jackson by concentration of McDowell's, Banks's, and Fremont's troops; but it was too late to remedy the ill effects of the division of commands at the beginning of the campaign. On the 26th of June General John Pope was assigned to command all the troops in northern Virginia, Fremont was relieved at his own request, and the Mountain Department ceased to exist.

My own operations in the Kanawha valley had kept pace with those in the northern portion of the department. The early days of April were spent by Fremont in obtaining reports of the condition of the several parts of his command. My report of the condition of affairs in the Kanawha valley was made on the 5th of April. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 45.] In it I called attention to the necessities of my troops and to the equipment necessary for any extended campaigning. Requisitions for supplies and transportation had been sent to the proper staff departments during the winter, but had not yet been filled. My forces consisted of eleven regiments of Ohio infantry, three new and incomplete regiments of West Virginia infantry, one regiment of cavalry (the Second West Virginia) with three separate cavalry troops from other commands, and, nominally, three batteries of artillery. One of the batteries was of mountain howitzers, and the other two of mixed smooth-bore and rifled guns of different calibres. My force at the opening of the campaign numbered 8500 present for duty. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 121. The regiments of the command were the 11th, 12th, 23d, 28th, 30th, 34th, 36th, 37th, 44th, 47th Ohio, the 4th, 8th, 9th West Virginia, the 2d West Virginia Cavalry. Of these the 11th Ohio had only nine companies and did not get the tenth till the autumn following. The 8th West Virginia passed from the command before active operations. The batteries were McMullin's Ohio battery, Simmonds's Kentucky battery, and a battery of mountain howitzers at Gauley Mount, manned by a detachment of the 47th Ohio Infantry. Simmonds's company was originally of the 1st Kentucky Infantry assigned by me to man the guns I first took into the Kanawha valley, and subsequently transferred to the artillery service by the Secretary of War. The guns were two 20-pounder Parrott rifles, five 10-pounder Parrotts, two bronze 10-pounder rifles altered from 6-pounder smooth-bores, three bronze and one iron 6-pounder smooth-bores, and ten mountain howitzers to be packed on mules. Some of these guns were left in position at posts, and three small field batteries were organized for the marching columns. Besides the regiment of freshly recruited West Virginia cavalry, there were Schambeck's Independent troop of Illinois cavalry, and Smith's (originally Pfau's) Independent troop of Ohio cavalry, both German troops.] Detachments were at the mouth of the Big-Sandy River, at Guyandotte, at the mouth of the Kanawha on the Ohio River, at several points in the Kanawha valley below Gauley Bridge, at Summersville on the upper Gauley, at Gauley Bridge, at Gauley Mount or Tompkins farm on New River, and at Fayette C. H. The last-named post had the only brigade organization which had been retained in winter quarters, and was commanded by Colonel Scammon of the Twenty-third Ohio. The post at Summersville had been brought into my command for the winter, and was garrisoned by the Thirty-sixth Ohio under Colonel George Crook. At Gauley Bridge was the Twenty-eighth Ohio (a German regiment), under Colonel August Moor.

When the decision of General Fremont to have my command advance on both sides of the New River was received, I immediately submitted my plan of organization to that end. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 127.] I proposed to leave the West Virginia Infantry regiments with half the Second West Virginia Cavalry to guard the Kanawha valley and our depots of supply, with Colonel J. A. J. Lightburn of the Fourth West Virginia in command. The Ohio regiments were to be moved forward so that the Eleventh, Forty-fourth, and Forty-seventh could be quickly concentrated on the Lewisburg turnpike in front of Gauley Bridge, where Colonel Crook could join them with the Thirty-sixth by a diagonal road and take command of this column. I assigned to him a mixed battery of field-pieces and mountain howitzers. Colonel Scammon's brigade was to advance from Fayette C. H. to Flat-top Mountain as soon as the weather would permit, and thus secure the barrier covering our further movement southward. The brigade consisted of the Twelfth, Twenty-third, arid Thirtieth Ohio, with McMullin's battery, and one half the Second Virginia Cavalry. When Scammon advanced, the remaining Ohio regiments (Twenty-eighth, Thirty-fourth, and Thirty-seventh), with Simmonds's battery should concentrate at Fayette C. H. and form a new brigade under Colonel Moor. This organization was approved by Fremont, and the preliminary steps were quietly taken. By the 20th of April Scammon's brigade was at Raleigh, only awaiting the settling of the roads to advance to Flat-top. A week later he held the passes of the mountain, with a detachment on the New River at the mouth of the Blue-stone, where he communicated with the right of Crook's brigade. The front was thus covered from Summersville to Flat-top Mountain, and the regiments in rear were moving into their assigned positions.

My brigade commanders were all men of marked character. Colonel Moor was a German of portly presence and grave demeanor, a gentleman of dignity of character as well as of bearing, and a brave, resolute man. He had been long a citizen of the United States, and had, as a young man, seen some military service, as was reported, in the Seminole War in Florida. He was a rigid disciplinarian, and his own regiment was a model of accuracy in drill and neatness in the performance of all camp duties. He was greatly respected by his brother officers, and his square head, with dark, smooth-shaven face, and rather stern expression, inspired his troops with something very like awe, insuring prompt obedience to his commands. At home, in Cincinnati, he was a man of influence among the German residents, and his daughter was the wife of General Godfrey Weitzel of the regular army. My association with him was every way agreeable and satisfactory.

Colonel Crook was an officer of the regular army who had taken early advantage of the relaxation of the rule preventing such from accepting a volunteer appointment. A man of medium size, with light hair and sandy beard, his manner was rather diffident and shy, and his whole style quiet and reticent. His voice was light rather than heavy, and he was so laconic of speech that this, with his other characteristics, caused it to be commonly said of him that he had been so long fighting Indians on the frontier that he had acquired some of their traits and habits. His system of discipline was based on these peculiarities. He aimed at a stoical command of himself as the means of commanding others, and avoided noisy bluster of every sort, going, perhaps, to an excess in brevity of speech and in enforcing his orders by the consequences of any disobedience. His subordinates recognized his purpose to be just, and soon learned to have the greatest confidence in him as a military officer. Unless common fame did him injustice, he was one of those officers who had, at the beginning, no deep sympathy with the National cause, and had no personal objection to the success of the Rebellion. But he was a Northern man, and an ambitious professional soldier who did not mean to let political opinions stand in the way of military success. [Footnote: A romantic story is told of his experience a little later. He was in command on the Upper Potomac with headquarters at Cumberland, where he fell in love with the daughter of the proprietor of the hotel at which he had his headquarters, and whom he subsequently made his wife. The family was of secession proclivities, and the son of the house was in the Confederate army. This young man led a party of the enemy who were able, by his knowledge of the surroundings of his home, to capture General Crook in the night, and to carry him away a prisoner without any serious collision with the troops encamped about. Crook was soon exchanged, and in the latter part of the war served with distinction as division commander under Sheridan.] In his case, as in many others, I believe this attitude was modified by his service under the flag, and that in 1864 he voted for Mr. Lincoln's re-election; he, with General Sheridan, casting at the improvised army ballot-box, what was understood to be their first vote ever cast in a civil election.

Colonel Lightburn was one of the loyal West Virginians whose standing and intelligence made him naturally prominent among his people. He was a worthy man and an honorable officer, whose knowledge of the country and of the people made him a fit selection to preserve the peace and protect our communications in the valley during our forward movement. As his duties thus separated him from the principal columns, I saw less of him than of the other brigade commanders. The two West Virginia regiments which remained in the district were freshly organized, and were distributed in camps where they could practise company drill and instruction whilst they kept the country in order. Of Colonel Scammon, my senior brigade commander, I have already spoken in a former chapter. [Footnote: Ante, pp. 110, 111.]

Fremont limited our advance to the line of Flat-top Mountain until he should himself be ready to open the campaign in the north. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 89, 108.] Blenker's division had been given to him from the Potomac army when McClellan began his movement to the peninsula, but on the 12th of April it had only reached Salem, a station on the Manassas Gap Railway between the Bull-Run Mountains and the Blue Ridge. [Footnote: Id., p. 71.] The War Department now sent General Rosecrans to conduct the division with speed to Fremont, but extraordinary delays still occurred, and the command did not reach Fremont at Petersburg till the 11th of May, when he immediately moved forward with it to the support of Schenck and Milroy at Franklin. [Footnote: Id., pp. 168, 177, pt. i. pp. 8, 9.] This delay was one of a series of misfortunes; for could Fremont have been at McDowell with this strong reinforcement added to Schenck's and Milroy's brigades, there can be no reasonable doubt that Jackson's attack, if delivered at all, would have proven a disaster for the Confederates. This, however, would not have ensured success for the general campaign, for Banks might still have been driven back in the Shenandoah valley, and Fremont's position would have been compromised. Nothing but a union of the two columns would have met the situation.

At the beginning of May, the additional transportation necessary for my advance beyond Flat-top had not arrived, but we did not wait for it. [Footnote: .Id., pt. iii. pp. 108, 112, 114, 127.] The regiments were ordered to leave tents behind, and to bivouac without shelter except such as they could make with "brush," for the expected shelter tents also were lacking. The whole distance from the head of navigation to the railroad at Newberne was one hundred and forty miles. Flat-top Mountain and Lewisburg were, respectively, about halfway on the two routes assigned to us. Some two thousand of the enemy's militia were holding the mountain passes in front of us, and a concentration of the regular Confederate troops was going on behind them. These last consisted of two brigades under General Henry Heth, as well as J. S. Williams's and Marshall's brigades, under General Humphrey Marshall, with the Eighth Virginia Cavalry. General Marshall appears to have been senior when the commands were united. Looking south from Flat-top Mountain we see the basin of the Blue-stone River, which flows northeastward into New River. This basin, with that of the Greenbrier on the other side of New River, forms the broadest stretch of cultivated land found between the mountain ranges, though the whole country is rough and broken even here. The crest of Flat-top Mountain curves southward around the headwaters of the Blue-stone, and joins the more regular ranges in Tazewell County. The straight ridge of East-River Mountain forms a barrier on the southern side of the basin, more than thirty miles away from the summit of Flat-top where Scammon's camp was placed on the road from Raleigh C. H. to Princeton, the county-seat of Mercer. The Narrows of New River were where that stream breaks through the mountain barrier I have described, and the road from Princeton to Giles C. H. passes through the defile. Only one other outlet from the basin goes southward, and that is where the road from Princeton to Wytheville passes through Rocky Gap, a gorge of the wildest character, some thirty miles south-westward from the Narrows. These passes were held by Confederate forces, whilst their cavalry, under Colonel W. H. Jenifer, occupied Princeton and presented a skirmishing resistance to our advance-guard.

On the 1st of May a small party of the Twenty-third Ohio met the enemy's horse at Camp Creek, a branch of the Blue-stone, six miles from the crest of Flat-top, and had a lively engagement, repulsing greatly superior numbers. On hearing of this, Lieutenant-Colonel R. B. Hayes marched with part of the Twenty-third Ohio and part of the West Virginia cavalry, and followed up the enemy with such vigor that Jenifer was driven through Princeton too rapidly to permit him to remove the stores collected there. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. pp. 449, 450.] To avoid their falling into our hands, Jenifer set fire to the town. Hayes succeeded in saving six or eight houses, but the rest were destroyed. Jenifer retreated on the Wytheville road, expecting us to follow by that route; but Hayes, learning that the Narrows were not strongly held, and being now reinforced by the rest of his regiment (the Twenty-third), marched on the 6th to the Narrows which he held, [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 140.] whilst he sent Major Comly with a detachment into Pearisburg, the county-seat of Giles. [Footnote: James M. Comly, later Brevet Brigadier-General, and since the war at one time United States minister to the Sandwich Islands.] The affair at Camp Creek had cost Jenifer some twenty in killed and wounded, and an equal number were captured in the advance on Giles C. H. Our casualties were 1 killed and 20 wounded. Our line, however, was getting too extended, and the utmost exertions were needed to supply the troops in their present positions. Princeton, being at the forking of the roads to Pearisburg and Wytheville, was too important a point to be left unguarded, and I at once sent forward Colonel Scammon with the Thirtieth Ohio to hold it. [Footnote: Id., p 148.] On the 9th of May the Twelfth Ohio was put in march from Raleigh to join him, and Moor's brigade was approaching the last-named place where my headquarters were, that being the terminus, for the time, of the telegraph line which kept me in communication with Fremont. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p 157.] The same day the department commander informed me of the attack by Jackson on Milroy on the 7th, and ordered me to suspend movements in advance until my forces should be concentrated. [Footnote: Id., p. 158.] The weather was rainy, and the roads suffered badly from cutting up by the wagons, but I had hoped to push forward a strong advanced guard to the great railway bridge near Newberne, and destroy it before the enemy had time to concentrate there. This made it necessary to take some risk, for it was not possible to move the whole command till some supplies could be accumulated at Raleigh and at Flat-top Mountain.

As fast as the supplies would permit, Moor went forward, taking no tents beyond Raleigh, and all of the troops on this line now faced the continuing rains without shelter. Guerilla parties were set actively at work by the Confederates in the region of the Guyandotte and at other points in our rear. Colonel Lightburn was directed to keep his forces actively moving to suppress these outbreaks, and the forward movement was pressed. On the 10th of May Heth's two brigades of the enemy attacked our advance-guard at Pearisburg, and these, after destroying the enemy's stores, which they had captured there, retired skirmishing, till they joined Scammon, who had advanced from Princeton to their support. [Footnote: Id., p. 176.] Scammon's brigade was now together, a mile below the Narrows of New River, with the East River in front of him, making a strong, defensible position. The telegraph reached Flat-top Mountain on the 13th, [Footnote: Id., p. 184.] even this being delayed because wagons to carry the wire could not be spared from the task of supplying the troops with food. I moved my headquarters to Princeton on this day, and pressed forward Moor's brigade in the hope of being able to push again beyond the barrier at the Narrows of New River, where Heth's brigades had now taken position. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 188.] Neither Scammon nor Moor was able to take with him ammunition enough for more than a slight engagement, nor was any accumulation of food possible. We were living "from hand to mouth," no additional transportation had reached us, and every wagon and pack-mule was doing its best. As fast as Moor's regiments reached Princeton they were hurried forward to French's Mill, five miles in rear of Scammon, on the road running up East River, and intersecting the Wytheville road so as to form a triangle with the two going from Princeton. During the 14th and 15th Moor's regiments arrived, and were pushed on to their position, except one half regiment (detachments of the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-seventh Ohio), under Major F. E. Franklin, and one troop of cavalry, which were kept at Princeton as a guard against any effort on the enemy's part to interrupt our communications. Moor was ordered to send a detachment up the East River to the crossing of the Wytheville road, so as to give early warning of any attempt of the enemy to come in upon our flank from that direction. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. p. 505.] My purpose was to attack Heth with Scammon's and Moor's brigades, drive him away from the Narrows of New River, and prevent him, if possible, from uniting with Marshall's command, which was understood to be somewhere between Jeffersonville (Tazewell C. H.) and Wytheville. If we succeeded in beating Heth, we could then turn upon Marshall. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. pp. 197-199.]

On the afternoon of the 15th Moor threw a detachment of two companies over East River Mountain as a reconnoissance to learn whether the roads in that direction were practicable for a movement to turn the left of Heth. It attacked and handsomely routed a post of the enemy on Wolf Creek. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 505.] The few wagons and pack-mules were hurrying forward some rations and ammunition; but the 17th would be the earliest possible moment at which I could lead a general advance. The telegraph wire would reach Princeton by the evening of that day, and I waited there for the purpose of exchanging messages with Fremont before pushing toward Newberne, the expected rendezvous with the other troops of the department. But all our efforts could not give us the needed time to anticipate the enemy. They had railway communication behind a mountain wall which had few and difficult passes. Marshall and Williams were already marching from Tazewell C. H. to strike our line of communications at Princeton, and were far on the way. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 199.]

About noon of the 16th Colonel Moor reported that his detachment on the Wytheville road was attacked by a force of the enemy estimated at 1500. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. pp. 505, 509.] This seems to have been the command of Colonel Wharton, marching to join Marshall, who was coming from the west by a road down the head-waters of East River. Of this, however, we were ignorant. I ordered Moor to take the remainder of his command (leaving half a regiment only at French's) to drive off the force at the cross-roads, and if he were overpowered to retreat directly upon Princeton by the western side of the triangle of roads, of which each side was twelve or fifteen miles long. Colonel Scammon reported no change in Heth's positions or force in front of him. Patrols were sent out on all the roads west and south of Princeton, our little force of horsemen being limited to Smith's troop of Ohio cavalry which was acting as headquarters escort. About two o'clock the patrol on the Wyoming road, five miles out of Princeton, was fired upon by the enemy's cavalry, and came rapidly in with the report. The four companies of infantry under Majors Franklin and Ankele were moved out on that road, and soon developed the infantry of Marshall's command. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 506.] He and Williams had marched across from the Tazewell to the Wyoming road, and were coming in upon our flank and rear. I reconnoitred them personally with care, and satisfied myself of their overwhelming superiority to the little detachment I had in hand. Franklin and Ankele were ordered to deploy their whole force as skirmishers and to hold the enemy back as long as possible. Some of our troopers were shown on the flanks, and so imposing a show was made that Marshall advanced cautiously. Our men behaved beautifully, holding every tree and rock, delaying the enemy for more than three hours from reaching the crests of the hills looking down upon the town. I had sent orderlies to stop and turn back our wagon trains on the way from Flat-top, and had directed headquarters baggage and the few stores in Princeton to be loaded and sent on the road toward Moor and Scammon. Our only tents were three or four wall tents for headquarters (the adjutant-general's, quartermaster's, and commissary's offices), and these I ordered to be left standing to impose upon the enemy the idea that we did not mean to retire. As evening approached, the hostile force occupied the summits of surrounding hills, and directing the infantry slowly to fall back and follow me, I galloped with my staff to bring back Scammon and restore our broken communications. At French's, twelve miles from Princeton, I found that Moor had not had time to execute the orders of the afternoon, and that ten companies from the Twenty-eighth and Thirty-seventh Ohio were all that he had been able to send to Wytheville road crossing. These, we learned later in the night, had succeeded in re-occupying the cross-roads. They were ordered to hold fast till morning, and if the enemy still appeared to be mainly at Princeton, to march in that direction and attack them from the rear. Scammon was ordered to send half a regiment to occupy Moor's position at French's during the night, and to march his whole command at daybreak toward Princeton. There was but one and a half regiments now with Moor, and these were roused and ordered to accompany me at once on our return to Princeton. It was a dark and muddy march, and as we approached the town we deployed skirmishers in front, though they were obliged to move slowly in the darkness. Day was just breaking as we came out of the forest upon the clearing, line of battle was formed, and the troops went forward cheering. The enemy made no stubborn resistance, but retired gradually to a strong position on rough wooded hills about a mile from the village, where they covered both the Wytheville and the Wyoming road. They had artillery on both flanks, and could only be reached over open and exposed ground. We recovered our headquarters tents, standing as we had left them. We had captured a few prisoners and learned that Marshall and Williams were both before us. Whilst pushing them back, Lieutenant-Colonel Von Blessingh with the ten companies of Moor's brigade approached on the Wytheville road and attacked; but the enemy was aware of their approach and repulsed them, having placed a detachment in a very strong position to meet them. Von Blessingh withdrew his men, and later joined the command by a considerable detour. With less than two regiments in hand, and with the certainty of the enemy's great superiority, there was nothing for it but to take the best position we could and await Scammon's arrival. We made as strong a show of force as possible, and by skirmishing advances tempted the enemy to come down to attack; but he also was expecting reinforcements, and a little artillery firing was the only response we provoked. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 506, 507.] As some evidence of the physical exhaustion from the continuous exertions of the preceding day and night, I may mention the fact that during the artillery firing I threw myself for a little rest on the ground, close beside the guns; and though these were firing at frequent intervals, I fell asleep and had a short but refreshing nap almost within arm's length of the wheels of a gun-carriage.

Toward evening Scammon arrived with his brigade, reporting that Heth's force had followed his retiring movement as far as French's, and confirming the information that four brigades of the enemy were before us. Shortly after dark the officer of the day, on the right, reported the noise of artillery marching around that flank. Our last day's rations had been issued, and our animals were without forage. Small parties of the enemy had gone far to our rear and cut the telegraph, so that we had had no news from the Kanawha valley for two days. The interruption was likely to create disturbance there and derange all our plans for supply. It was plain that we should have to be content with having foiled the enemy's plan to inflict a severe blow upon us, and that we might congratulate ourselves that with two brigades against four we had regained our line without serious loss. I therefore ordered that the troops be allowed to rest till three o'clock in the morning of the 18th, and that the column then retire behind the Blue-stone River. The movement was made without interruption, and a camp on Flat-top Mountain was selected, from which the roads on every side were well guarded, and which was almost impregnable in itself. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 209.] Our casualties of all kinds in the affairs about Princeton had been only 113, as the enemy had not delivered any serious attack, and the contest on our side had been one of manoeuvre in which our only chance of important results was in attacking either Heth or Marshall when they were so far separated that they could not unite against us on the field of battle. After the 15th this chance did not exist, and wisdom dictated that we should retire to a safe point from which we could watch for contingencies which might give us a better opportunity. Our experience proved what I have before stated, that the facility for railway concentration of the enemy in our front made this line a useless one for aggressive movements, as they could always concentrate a superior force after they received the news of our being in motion. It also showed the error of dividing my forces on two lines, for had Crook's brigade been with me, or my two brigades with him, we should have felt strong enough to cope with the force which was actually in our front, and would at least have made it necessary for the enemy to detach still more troops from other movements to meet us. Our campaign, though a little one, very well illustrates the character of the subordinate movements so often attempted during the war, and shows that the same principles of strategy are found operating as in great movements. The scale is a reduced one, but cause and effect are linked by the same necessity as on a broader theatre of warfare.



CHAPTER XI

POPE IN COMMAND—TRANSFER TO WASHINGTON

A key position—Crook's engagement at Lewisburg—Watching and scouting—Mountain work—Pope in command—Consolidation of Departments—Suggestions of our transfer to the East—Pope's Order No. II and Address to the Army—Orders to march across the mountains—Discussion of them—Changed to route by water and rail—Ninety-mile march—Logistics—Arriving in Washington—Two regiments reach Pope—Two sent to Manassas—Jackson captures Manassas—Railway broken—McClellan at Alexandria—Engagement at Bull Run Bridge—Ordered to Upton's Hill—Covering Washington—Listening to the Bull Run battle—Ill news travels fast.

Our retreat to Flat-top Mountain had been made without loss of material, except one baggage-wagon, which broke down irreparably, and was burned by my order. At the crossing of Blue-stone River we were beyond the junction of roads by which our flank could be turned, and we halted there as the end of the first march. As the men forded the stream, the sun broke through the clouds, which had been pretty steadily raining upon us, the brass band with the leading brigade struck up the popular tune, "Aren't you glad to get out of the wilderness?" and the soldiers, quick to see the humorous application of any such incident, greeted it with cheers and laughter. All felt that we were again masters of the situation. Next day we moved leisurely to the mountain summit, a broad undulating table-land with some cultivated farms, where our camp was perfectly hidden from sight, whilst we commanded a most extensive view of the country in front. Outposts at the crossing of the Blue-stone and at Pack's Ferry on New River, with active scouting-parties and patrols scouring the country far and wide, kept me fully informed of everything occurring near us. We had time to organize the new wagon-trains which were beginning to reach us, and, while waiting till Fremont could plan new co-operative movements, to prepare for our part in such work.

The camp on Flat-top Mountain deserved the name of a "key point" to the country in front as well, perhaps, as that much abused phrase ever is deserved. [Footnote: Clausewitz says of the phrases "covering position," "key of the country," etc., that they are for the most part mere words without sense when they indicate only the material advantage which is given by the elevation of the land. "On War," part ii. chap. xvii.] The name of the mountain indicates its character. The northern slope is gentle, so that the approach from Raleigh C. H. is not difficult, whilst the southern declivity falls off rapidly to the Blue-stone valley. The broad ridge at the summit is broken into rounded hills which covered the camp from view, whilst they still permitted manoeuvre to meet any hostile approach. The mountain abutted on the gorge of the New River on the northeast, and stretched also southwestward into the impracticable wilderness about the headwaters of the Guyandotte and the Tug Fork of Sandy. The position was practically unassailable in front by any force less than double our own, and whilst we occupied it the enemy never ventured in force beyond the passes of East River Mountain. We built a flying-bridge ferry at Pack's, on New River, near the mouth of the Blue-stone, where a passable road up the valley of the Greenbrier connected us with Colonel Crook's position at Lewisburg. The post at Pack's Ferry was held by a detachment from Scammon's brigade in command of Major Comly of the Twenty-third Ohio. On the 6th of August a detachment of the enemy consisting of three regiments and a section of artillery under Colonel Wharton made an effort to break up the ferry by an attack from the east side, but they accomplished nothing. Major Comly was quickly supported by reinforcements from Scammon's brigade, and drove off his assailants. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 127; pt. iii. pp. 541, 542.]

I have not yet spoken of the movements of Colonel Crook's brigade on the Lewisburg route, because circumstances so delayed his advance that it had no immediate relation to our movements upon Pearisburg and Princeton. As the march of my own column was beginning, General Fremont, upon information of guerilla raids north of Summersville, directed that Crook be sent into Webster County to co-operate with troops sent southward from Weston to destroy the lawless parties. This involved a march of more than seventy miles each way, and unforeseen delays of various kinds. Two of the guerillas captured were tried and convicted of murder, and Colonel Crook was obliged to remain in that region to protect the administration of justice till the execution of the murderers and the dispersion of the guerilla bands. [Footnote: Id., pp. 127, 159.] The organization and movement of his brigade upon Lewisburg was by this means put back so far that his column could not get within supporting distance of mine. He reached Lewisburg on the day of our affair at Princeton. He had been energetic in all his movements, but the diversion of parts of his command to so distant an enterprise as that into Webster County had been fatal to co-operation. The Confederate General Heth had been able to neglect the Lewisburg route and to carry his brigade to the assistance of Marshall in his opposition to my advance. As it turned out, I should have done better to have waited at Flat-top Mountain till I knew that Crook was at Lewisburg, and then to have made a fresh combination of movements. Our experience only added another to the numerous proofs the whole campaign furnished, of the futility of such combined operations from distant bases,

Major-General Loring took command of all the Confederate forces in southwestern Virginia on the 19th or 20th of May, and Heth was already in march to oppose Crook's forward movement. On the 23d Heth, with some 3000 men, including three batteries of artillery, attacked Crook at Lewisburg, soon after daybreak in the morning. Crook met him in front of the town, and after a sharp engagement routed him, capturing four cannon, some 200 stand of arms and 100 prisoners. His own loss was 13 killed and 53 wounded, with 7 missing. He did not think it wise to follow up the retreating enemy, but held a strong position near Lewisburg, where his communications were well covered, and where he was upon the same range of highlands on which we were at Flat-top, though fifty miles of broken country intervened. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 804-813.] Meanwhile Fremont had been ordered to Banks's relief, and had been obliged to telegraph me that we must be left to ourselves till the results of the Shenandoah campaign were tested. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 264.] Rumors were rife that after Jackson retired from Fremont's front at Franklin, Johnson's division was ordered to march into our part of West Virginia. We were thus thrown, necessarily, into an expectant attitude, awaiting the outcome of Fremont's eastward movement and the resumption of his plans. Our men were kept busy in marching and scouting by detachments, putting down guerilla bands and punishing disorders. They thus acquired a power of sustained exertion on foot which proved afterward of great value.

There was, in a way, a resemblance in our situation and in our work to that of feudal chiefs in the middle ages. We held a lofty and almost impregnable position, overlooking the country in every direction. The distant ridges of the Alleghanies rose before us, the higher peaks standing out in the blue distance, so that we seemed to watch the mountain passes fifty miles away without stirring from our post. The loyal people about us formed relations to us not unlike those of the feudal retainers of old. They worked their farms, but every man had his rifle hung upon his chimney-piece, and by day or by night was ready to shoulder it and thread his way by paths known only to the natives, to bring us news of open movement or of secret plots among the Secessionists. They were organized, also, in their own fashion, and every neighborhood could muster its company or its squad of home-guards to join in quelling seditious outbreaks or in strengthening a little column sent against any of the enemy's outposts. No considerable hostile movement was possible within a range of thirty miles without our having timely notice of it. The smoke from the camp-fires of a single troop of horse could be seen rising from the ravines, and detachments of our regiments guided by the native scouts would be on the way to reconnoitre within an hour. Officers as well as men went on foot, for they followed ridges where there was not even a bridle-path, and depended for safety, in no small degree, on their ability to take to the thickets of the forest-clad hillside if they found themselves in the presence of a body of the Confederate cavalry. Thirty miles a day was an easy march for them after they had become hardened to their work, and taking several days together they could outmarch any cavalry, especially when they could take "short cuts" over hills and away from travelled roads. They knew at what farms they could find "rations," and where were the hostile neighborhoods from which equally enterprising scouts would glide away to carry news of their movements to the enemy. At headquarters there was a constant going and coming. Groups of home-guards were nearly always about, as picturesque in their homely costume as Leather-stocking himself, and many of our officers and men were hardly less expert as woodsmen. Constant activity was the order of the day, and the whole command grew hardy and self-reliant with great rapidity.

General Pope was, on the 26th of June, assigned to command the Army of Virginia, including the forces under McDowell and Banks as well as those in the Mountain Department. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 435.] Fremont was relieved from command at his own request, and the Mountain Department ceased to exist. [Footnote: Id., p. 437.] Pope very wisely determined to unite in one army under his own command as many as possible of the troops reporting to him, and meanwhile directed us to remain on the defensive. [Footnote: Id., p. 471.] I ventured on the 3d of July to suggest by telegraph that my division would make a useful reinforcement to his active army in the field, and reiterated it on the 5th, with some explanation of my views. [Footnote: Id., pp. 451, 457.] I indicated Fayetteville and Hawk's Nest as points in front of Gauley Bridge where moderate garrisons could cover the valley defensively, as I had done in the preceding year. Getting no answer, I returned to the subject on the 13th. [Footnote: Id., p. 471.] Pope, however, did not issue his address upon assuming active command till the 14th, when his much ridiculed manifesto to the army appeared. [Footnote: He had announced his assignment and his headquarters at Washington on June 27 (Id., p. 436), but he now issued the address as he was about to take the field (Id., p. 473).] Since the war General Pope has himself told me that this, as well as the other orders issued at that time and which were much criticised, were drafted under the dictation, in substance, of Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War. He admitted that some things in them were not quite in good taste; but the feeling was that it was desirable to infuse vigor into the army by stirring words, which would by implication condemn McClellan's policy of over-caution in military matters, and over-tenderness toward rebel sympathizers and their property. The Secretary, as he said, urged such public declarations so strongly that he did not feel at liberty to resist. They were unfairly criticised, and were made the occasion of a bitter and lasting enmity toward Pope on the part of most of the officers and men of the Potomac Army. It seems that Mr. Lincoln hesitated to approve the one relating to the arrest of disloyal persons within the lines of the army, and it was not till Pope repeated his sense of the need of it that the President yielded, on condition that it should be applied in exceptional cases only. It was probably intended more to terrify citizens from playing the part of spies than to be literally enforced, which would, indeed, have been hardly possible. No real severity was used under it, but the Confederate government made it the occasion of a sort of outlawry against Pope and his army. [Footnote: It is only fair to recollect that in the following year Halleck found it necessary to repeat in substance Pope's much abused orders, and Meade, who then commanded the Potomac Army, issued a proclamation in accordance with them. (Official Records, vol. xxvii. pt. i. p. 102; pt. iii. p. 786.) For Pope's submission of Order No. 11 to Mr. Lincoln and the limitation placed on it, see Id., vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 500, 540. For general military law on the subject, see Birkhimer's "Military Government and Martial Law," chap. viii. For the practice of the Confederates, see the treatment of the Hon. George Summers, chap. xix. post.] Only two days later he issued an order against pillaging or molestation of persons and dwellings, as stringent as any one could wish. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 573.]

On the 5th of August Pope suggested to Halleck that I should be ordered to leave about 2500 men intrenched near Gauley Bridge, and march with the remainder of my command (say nine regiments) by way of Lewisburg, Covington, Staunton, and Harrisonburg to join him. Halleck replied that it was too much exposed, and directed him to select one more in the rear. Pope very rightly answered that there was no other route which would not make a great circuit to the rear. Halleck saw that Jackson's army near Charlottesville with a probable purpose of turning Pope's right flank might make a junction impossible for me, and stated the objection, but concluded with authority to Pope to order as he deemed best, "but with caution." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 534, 540, 543.]

On the 8th of August Pope telegraphed me, accordingly, to march by way of Lewisburg, Covington, Warm Springs, and Augusta Springs to Harrisonburg, and there join him by shortest route. He indicated Winchester or Romney as my secondary aim if I should find the junction with him barred. [Footnote: Id., pp. 460, 462, 551.] This route avoided Staunton, but by so short a distance that it was scarcely safer, and the roads to be travelled were much harder and longer. At this time several detachments of considerable size were out, chasing guerilla parties and small bodies of Confederate troops, and assisting in the organization or enlistment of Union men. The movement ordered could not begin for several days, and I took advantage of the interval to lay before General Pope, by telegraph, the proof that the march would take fifteen days of uninterrupted travel through a mountainous region, most of it a wilderness destitute of supplies, and with the enemy upon the flank. Besides this there was the very serious question whether the Army of Virginia would be at Charlottesville when I should approach that place. On the other hand, my calculation was that we could reach Washington in ten days or less, by way of the Kanawha and Ohio rivers to Parkersburg, and thence by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to the capital. [Footnote: Id., vol. xiii. pt. iii. pp. 555, 559.] My dispatches were submitted to General Halleck, and on the 11th of August General Pope telegraphed a modified assent to my suggestions. He directed that 5000 men should remain in West Virginia under my command, and the remainder proceed to Washington by river and rail. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xiii. pt. iii. p. 560.] An incursion of the enemy's cavalry into Logan County on my right and rear was at the moment in progress, and we used great activity in disposing of it, so that the change in our dispositions might not be too quickly known to our adversaries nor have the appearance of retreat. [Footnote: I at one time supposed that the orders to march across the country originated with General Halleck, but the Official Records of the War fix the history of the matter as is above stated.]

It is a natural wish of every soldier to serve with the largest army in the most important campaign. The order to remain with a diminished command in West Virginia was a great disappointment to me, against which I made haste to protest. On the 13th I was rejoiced by permission to accompany my command to the East. [Footnote: Id., pp. 567, 570.] Preliminary orders had already been given for making Fayetteville and Hawk's Nest the principal advanced posts in the contracted operations of the district, with Gauley Bridge for their common depot of supply and point of concentration in case of an advance of the enemy in force. I organized two small brigades and two batteries of artillery for the movement to Washington. Colonels Scammon and Moor, who were my senior colonels, were already in command of brigades, and Colonel Lightburn was in command of the lower valley. The arrangement already existing practically controlled. Scammon's brigade was unchanged, and in Moor's the Thirty-sixth Ohio under Crook and the Eleventh were substituted for the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-fourth. The organization therefore was as follows; namely, First Brigade, Colonel Scammon commanding, consisted of the Twelfth, Twenty-third, and Thirtieth Ohio and McMullin's Ohio Battery; Second Brigade, Colonel Moor commanding, consisted of the Eleventh, Twenty-eighth, and Thirty-sixth Ohio and Simmonds's Kentucky Battery. One troop of horse for orderlies and headquarters escort, and another for similar service, with the brigades, also accompanied us. The regiments left in the Kanawha district were the Thirty-fourth, Thirty-seventh, Forty-fourth, and Forty-seventh Ohio, the Fourth and Ninth West Virginia Infantry, the Second West Virginia Cavalry, a battery, and some incomplete local organizations. Colonel J. A. J. Lightburn of the Fourth West Virginia was in command as senior officer within the district. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 567, 570; vol. li. pt. i. pp. 738, 742, 754.]

Portions of the troops were put in motion on the 14th of August, and a systematic itinerary was prepared for them in advance. [Footnote: Id., vol. li. pt. i. p. 738.] They marched fifty minutes, and then rested the remaining ten minutes of each hour. The day's work was divided into two stages of fifteen miles each, with a long rest at noon, and with a half day's interval between the brigades. The weather was warm, but by starting at three o'clock in the morning the heat of the day was reserved for rest, and they made their prescribed distance without distress and without straggling. They went by Raleigh C. H. and Fayetteville to Gauley Bridge, thence down the right bank of the Kanawha to Camp Piatt, thirteen miles above Charleston. The whole distance was ninety miles, and was covered easily in the three days and a half allotted to it. [Footnote: Id., vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 629.] The fleet of light-draft steamboats which supplied the district with military stores was at my command, and I gave them rendezvous at Camp Piatt, where they were in readiness to meet the troops when the detachments began to arrive on the 17th. In the evening of the 14th I left the camp at Flat-top with my staff and rode to Raleigh C. H. On the 15th we completed the rest of the sixty miles to Gauley Bridge. From that point I was able to telegraph General Meigs, the Quartermaster-General at Washington, that I should reach Parkersburg, the Ohio River terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on the evening of the 20th, and should need railway transportation for 5000 men, two batteries of six guns each, 1100 horses, 270 wagons, with camp equipage and regimental trains complete, according to the army regulations then in force. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 577, 619, 629; vol. li. p. 754.]

At Gauley Bridge I met Colonel Lightburn, to whom I turned over the command of the district, and spent the time, whilst the troops were on the march, in completing the arrangements both for our transportation and for the best disposition of the troops which were to remain. The movement of the division was the first in which there had been a carefully prepared effort to move a considerable body of troops with wagons and animals over a long distance within a definitely fixed time, and it was made the basis of the calculations for the movement of General Hooker and his two corps from Washington to Tennessee in the next year. It thus obtained some importance in the logistics of the war. The president of the railway put the matter unreservedly into the hands of W. P. Smith, the master of transportation; Mr. P. H. Watson, Assistant Secretary of War, represented the army in the management of the transfer, and by thus concentrating responsibility and power, the business was simplified, and what was then regarded as a noteworthy success was secured. The command could have moved more rapidly, perhaps, without its wagons and animals, but a constant supply of these was needed for the eastern army, and it was wise to take them, for they were organized into trains with drivers used to their teams and feeling a personal interest in them. It turned out that our having them was a most fortunate thing, for not only were the troops of the Army of the Potomac greatly crippled for lack of transportation on their return from the peninsula, but we were able to give rations to the Ninth Army Corps after the battle of Antietam, when the transportation of the other divisions proved entirely insufficient to keep up the supply of food.