"We leave at 11 A.M., camp to-night at Marrowbone, to-morrow at
Burksville, thence to Albany and Jamestown, Tennessee. I am well and
in good spirits. Do not be uneasy if you do not hear from me very
soon again, as we shall probably draw in our couriers and close our
line of communication to-morrow. The Twenty-third Army Corps has one
cavalry division of three brigades, each brigade consisting of four
regiments and one battery; also one independent brigade of cavalry. The
second brigade is the one in which is our regiment, and is commanded
by Brigadier-General Hobson. You see we have a very strong force of
cavalry, with which we can overrun the whole of East Tennessee and a
good part of North Carolina, if we can ever get through the gaps and
over the mountains, and can manage to take along with us our supply of
forage and rations.
"General Hobson is absent from the brigade sick. I am the senior
colonel of the brigade, and in the absence of the general, I will be
entitled to command. Before I arrived, Colonel Graham, Fifth Indiana,
was commanding, and as I had even more than I could well attend to, and
as General Hobson was expected soon, I did not ask for the command, and
will not do so unless I learn that General Hobson will not be able to
join us soon. My regiment is the largest (and I think the best) in the
brigade, having eight hundred and fifty fighting men with us."