A WINTER RIDE ON THE CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS
Ordered to East Tennessee--Preparation for a long ride--A small
party of officers--Rendezvous at Lexington, Ky.--Changes in my
staff--The escort-A small train--A gay cavalcade--The blue-grass
country--War-time roads--Valley of the Rockcastle--Quarters for the
night--London--Choice of routes--Longstreet in the way--A turn
southward--Williamsburg--Meeting Burnside--Fording the
Cumberland--Pine Mountain--A hard pull--Teamsters' chorus--Big Creek
Gap--First view of East Tennessee--Jacksboro--A forty-mile
trot--Escape from unwelcome duty--In command of Twenty-third
Corps--The army-supply problem--Siege bread--Starved
beef--Burnside's dinner to Sherman.
The order of the War Department directing me to report in person to
the general commanding in East Tennessee was issued on the 2nd of
December. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 314.]
It was to take effect when I should have completed my duties at
Sandusky, but as I had pressed all my work forward to completion
some days before, in the expectation of the order, I was prepared to
leave at once. A copy of the order was telegraphed to me on the 3rd,
and I left for Cincinnati the same evening. On reaching the district
and department headquarters, I learned that Burnside was relieved,
and that General Foster had passed through the city, going on toward
East Tennessee to assume command of the department. Longstreet
raised the siege of Knoxville the very day I reached Cincinnati, but
this was not yet known, and several days passed before we had
authentic information that the way to Knoxville was open. There was
work to do in closing up the business of the district, packing
papers and books pertaining to my headquarters, and providing for
their safe-keeping. A number of officers belonging to Burnside's
command were waiting an opportunity to rejoin the army, and I
arranged a rendezvous for these at Lexington, Ky., where I would
join them. A small troop of cavalry was detailed to act as our
escort, and the quartermaster's department promised wagons for our
baggage and supplies. On the 8th the news of Longstreet's retreat
indicated that the road through Cumberland Gap to Knoxville was
probably open, and sending our horses and baggage to Lexington by
railroad, I left Cincinnati with my staff on Wednesday, the 9th, for
the same place. Reaching there at evening, the next day was spent in
packing our wagons and organizing our little party, and the
cavalcade marched out of the pretty town of Lexington early on the
11th.
My staff was not altogether the same as it was in my Virginia
campaigns. I had lost my friend, Surgeon Holmes, by death. He had
been assigned to duty with me in Cincinnati, but his lungs had
become diseased through exposure in the field, and he had died of
consumption a few weeks before. My aide Captain Christie was
similarly affected, and resigned to prolong his life. He ultimately
died of the illness thus contracted. My aide Lieutenant Conine was
appointed colonel of one of the new colored regiments, and went with
it to Virginia. Major Bascom, my adjutant-general, Major Treat, my
commissary, and Lieutenant Theodore Cox, my aide-de-camp, were
ordered to accompany me, and were all that remained of my old staff.
In the place of Conine I secured the detail of Captain E. D.
Saunders, assistant-adjutant-general, who had served temporarily on
my staff during the preceding season. He was the son of an old
resident of Cincinnati, an excellent officer in his department as
well as a gallant soldier, and he remained with me in closest
relations till he fell by my side in the Atlanta campaign in the
following year. His assignment as aide-de-camp was out of the usual
course, but it was allowed in view of the contingency that Major
Bascom could not remain with me if I should not continue in command
of an army corps. In this case Saunders would become my
adjutant-general, and this was what in fact occurred a little later.
At Lexington I found a group of ten or a dozen officers who were
eager to join my party in the ride over the mountains. The one of
highest rank was Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Strong of General Foster's
staff, who had been allowed a short leave of absence when his chief
started for the West, and was now hastening back to duty. I found a
ground for pleasant acquaintance with him in his relationship to
Bishop Bedell of Ohio, a venerated friend of mine as long as he
lived. Colonel Strong was a brother of Mrs. Bedell, and was a
refined and cultivated gentleman. Lieutenant-Colonel James T.
Sterling of the One Hundred and Third Ohio Infantry was also on his
way to join his regiment at Knoxville. He had been a captain in the
Seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and served with me in my first
campaign in West Virginia, where I had become attached to him for
his military as well as his personal character. He became my
inspector-general in the field. Captain D. W. H. Day, assistant
quartermaster, was also en route to the Twenty-third Corps in the
field, and was directed to take charge of our little train. His
unbounded energy and his power to surmount obstacles so impressed me
that on our reaching Knoxville I had him also assigned to permanent
duty with me in his department. The others passed out of the circle
of permanent acquaintances when the journey was over, but they were
all pleasant travelling companions, and one or two of them would
have been remarkable anywhere for their wit and cheerfulness. It was
as happy and jolly a party as one need wish for in a rough ride of a
couple of hundred miles over the mountains.
Our escort turned out to be only twenty horsemen instead of a full
troop, but these were enough for protection against mere marauders,
and we had to take the chance of meeting organized bodies of the
enemy. Four army wagons were furnished us. One of these was loaded
with oats for our horses, and carried the personal baggage of the
cavalry troop. Another was loaded with ordinary army rations. A
third was devoted to mess supplies of the officers of the party, and
as we were going into a country wasted by war and almost
famine-stricken, we each tried to carry with us a small stock of
choice provisions which might eke out a little comfort to the mess.
The fourth wagon carried our personal baggage. Captain Day had
carefully selected strong and serviceable horses for the teams, and
the wagons were minutely inspected to see that they were fit for the
mountain work in a wilderness where wheelwrights could not be found.
It was our purpose to get both forage and provisions on the road if
we could buy them, and to save the stock in our wagons for a time of
necessity or to carry as much as possible into Knoxville.
I had telegraphed to Burnside as soon as I reached Cincinnati,
formally reporting myself as under his orders for duty in the field
by permission of the Secretary of War. I expressed my regret to hear
of his leaving the command, and urged my assignment to duty before
he laid down his authority. No answer to my dispatch was received,
and the fact was that full communication with Burnside by the
Cumberland Gap route was not opened till the 9th of December, so
that my letter was among the correspondence received by Burnside the
day he turned over the command to Foster. Another cause of
uneasiness to me was the change of department boundaries made in the
order assigning General Foster to command. The States north of the
Ohio were separated from the department, and I was apprehensive that
other changes might occur which would make me fall between two
stools. That there was danger of just such disappointments turned
out to be very true. My anxious determination to get forward to
Knoxville with the least possible delay was justified, and I had
reason to congratulate myself on acting promptly upon it.
Our cavalcade presented a gay appearance as we marched out of
Lexington on Friday morning. There were twelve or fifteen officers,
all well mounted and followed by a group of servants riding and
leading our extra horses. Part of the cavalry troop led the way, the
guidons fluttering in the van. Behind us came an ambulance and the
army wagons with clean white canvas covers and well-groomed teams of
four horses each, driven in army fashion by a driver astride of the
near wheel-horse, a mounted wagon-master superintending the whole.
The little column was closed by a squad of the cavalry acting as
rear-guard. There had not been any severe winter weather as yet, and
though the road was sloppy, the sun was bright overhead, and its
beams flashed from our side-arms and equipments. Our first day's
ride was to take us to Richmond, a thriving town twenty-five miles
away, the county-seat of Madison County, and a good turnpike road
made this an easy day's journey. We were in the rich blue-grass
region, and though all of central Kentucky showed the marks of war's
ravages, this region was comparatively unscathed, and the beautiful
rolling country was neither abandoned nor untilled. Horses and
cattle were noticeably few, for raids like Morgan's had been
frequent enough to teach the peril of having flocks and herds to
tempt the enemy. Farmers gave more attention than before to
agriculture proper and the raising of crops which would directly
support the family. There was nothing dispiriting in the view of the
country on this first day's ride, and though a winter landscape can
hardly be exhilarating when it is leafless and bare, gray, and a
little sombre in color, we found ourselves under no stress of
sympathy with misfortune or want, as is so often the case with the
soldier.
On leaving Richmond our really rough work began. The roads would
have been bad enough at any time, but the hard use by army trains in
bad weather and the entire lack of repair had made them execrable.
All the ordinary methods of keeping highways in order by local
administration were suspended by the war, and the only work done
upon them was what each wagon-master could do with his drivers to
mend the worst places so that his train could get through. As we
could not be sure of finding food for man or beast on the road, it
was necessary to gauge our speed by the distance our wagons could
make, so that we should not be separated from them. About twenty
miles a day was the maximum, and though we sometimes got a little
further, there were days when our journey was much less. South of
Richmond and on the border between Madison and Rockcastle counties,
we crossed Big Hill, the first of the outlying ranges of the
Cumberland Mountains. These great ridges are nearly parallel to each
other, and even the "gaps" in them are so high that there is always
a long and hard pull for wagon teams in surmounting them. Over the
summit we came down into the valleys tributary to the Rockcastle
River. Twenty or twenty-five miles away another summit marks the
boundary between this valley and the principal depression in which
the Cumberland River finds its devious course to the south and west.
The rocks are sandstone through which the Rockcastle River has cut
deep gorges and chasms, and the weathering of the cliffs has left
the strata and crevices exposed with so much of the regularity of
layers of masonry as to tell at once the story of the impression
made on the early explorers of the region, and the suggestion by
Nature herself of a name for the beautiful stream that dashes along
to join the Cumberland many miles below.
Our second day's journey ended far from any village or tavern, in
this romantic valley. A pouring rain had begun about noon, and we
plodded and splashed along till we reached a large log house which
seemed a convenient halting-place as far advanced as our wagons
could be brought. The house belonged to a thrifty widow. Half of it
was simply furnished, and in this part she and her children lived.
The other half was a large unfurnished room with the walls of hewn
logs and a great fireplace of stone in the middle of the long side
of the room. Out of this opened a little bedroom, a mere closet, in
which the spare bed for guests was placed. The widow put these two
rooms at our disposal. A roaring fire was soon burning on the
hearth, our saddles and horse trappings were arranged on the sides
of the room to serve as pillows, and blankets were brought in from
the ambulance. Supper was got, partly from our own stores, cooked
with the help of the family, and we were early ready for bed. The
guest chamber was assigned to me, but it was so small that for the
sake of ventilation the door was kept open, and the ruddy firelight
flashed upon as picturesque and as merry a group as one could wish
to see. A weary day in the saddle made all of us ready for sleep,
and quips and jokes soon died out as one after another seemed to
drop off into forgetfulness. The physical fatigue of the day made
one of the party develop a phenomenal capacity for snoring in his
heavy sleep, and in the quiet his nasal trumpeting grew more
pronounced. It proceeded by phrases, as it were, each effort
stronger than the preceding, till a fortissimo passage came and
ended with a snort which echoed through the room and was followed by
perfect silence. From the corner of the room came a drawling voice
with a sigh as of deep relief, "Thank God _he's_ dead." The shout of
laughter which followed showed that nearly all had roused themselves
for the _finale_, and the badgered performer of the music lost much
of the real comfort of his night's rest by his fear of committing
himself to a complete oblivion which might subject him to another
chaffing bout from his companions.
Another wet and uncomfortable day's ride brought us to London, an
unattractive village at the parting of the ways, the principal road
leading on to Cumberland Gap, and another on the right going to a
ford of the Cumberland River at Williamsburg, where there would be
again a choice of routes up the Elk Fork of the Cumberland between
the ridges known as Jellico Mountain and Pine Mountain. The left
wing of Burnside's column had taken this route in October, and after
crossing the Cumberland had climbed Jellico Mountain on their right
hand, and reached the headwaters of Emory River, a tributary of the
Tennessee which breaks through the mountains at Emory Gap, the
easiest route into East Tennessee. Another road kept in the valley
of Elk Fork till a place was reached where Pine Mountain, on the
left, could be scaled, and once over its summit a hard road led to
Big Creek Gap in the Cumberland Mountains, and thence by way of
Jacksboro to Knoxville.
At London we were met with news from East Tennessee which made me
reconsider the question of our route. We heard from Cumberland Gap
that after General Foster had joined Burnside at Knoxville,
Longstreet had moved in force to Rutledge, where he intercepted this
line of communication, and that Knoxville could not be reached by
that road for some time to come. This seemed to make it necessary to
turn off to the south. As between the road to Emory Gap over Jellico
Mountain and that to Big Creek Gap over Pine Mountain, the best
evidence seemed to indicate the latter as the easier, but with the
qualification which travellers in so wild a region have often to
face, that whichever way you go you will wish you had gone the
other. The name of Williamsburg on the Cumberland sounded as if it
might be a considerable town, but the man who gave us the route
warned us that we should find "it's not much of a 'burg neither when
you git thar." Our ride into London had been on Sunday, and was
surely a work of necessity if not of mercy. Captain B. had found his
horse a little shaky in coming down the steep hills, and at one
little stream the jaded beast came down on his knees in the water.
The captain with affected seriousness argued that it was a
punishment for travelling on the day of rest, but was effectually
silenced by the wag of the party, who humorously remarked, "Ah! if
your horse is so weak on Sunday what would have become of him and
you on a week day?" London did not afford us any lodgings that
tempted us indoors, and we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and
slept on the open veranda of a dilapidated house, building a
camp-fire in the yard in front. The rain had ceased, and we
preferred the frosty air to the narrow and stuffy quarters we should
otherwise have had to take.
The evening of the 14th of December brought us to the Cumberland
River, and as it was rising from the heavy rain of the preceding
week, we should have been glad to get over at once, but the wagons
could not overtake us till night, and we stopped at a country-house
on the north side where we were made quite comfortable. About one
o'clock in the morning, however, I was awakened by voices in the
room below me, and recognized that of Captain French of Burnside's
staff, who was asking the farmer to light a fire and prepare to
receive the general and his party, who were a little behind, wet and
nearly frozen. I got up and dressed myself, went downstairs to greet
the captain, who was soon joined by the rest of the party. The
general had come by the route I was taking, but his wagons had
broken down on the mountain-side, and he had been obliged to abandon
them. The party had picked up somewhere an old-fashioned stage-coach
on thorough braces, and this was drawn by ten mules. They had packed
on the backs of other mules such of their personal effects and
stores as they could, and had left the rest by the roadside. They
had halted for the night on the south side of the river, but at
midnight had been roused by the news that the river was rising, and
that they must pass the ford at once if they expected to get over.
In the darkness of the night it had been both difficult and
perilous, for the ford was diagonal to the course of the stream, and
there was great danger of getting into deep water. They were all
soaking wet and chilled, covered with mud, and as forlorn and
unkempt a set of men as was ever seen. They warmed and partly dried
themselves by the fire, and pushed on as soon as day began to break,
for the general was impatient to get forward. Colonel Goodrich,
Colonel Richmond, Major Van Buren, and the personal staff were with
him, and as my own staff had been well acquainted with them, it was
an interesting rencounter with all the events of the Knoxville
campaign to discuss. The general had sent his proposal to me to join
him, the very day Longstreet reached the Holston River at Loudon,
and when it had become evident that the Confederates were committed
to an active campaign in East Tennessee. General Hartsuff had found
that he could not endure the work, and had decided to leave before
Knoxville should be invested. My regret that I could not start at
once was diminished by the fact that the investment was complete
before I could possibly have reached Knoxville, so that no time had
been lost. But all the circumstances showed that Burnside had
regarded his request to be relieved as indefinitely postponed, and
the appointment of General Foster to succeed him was unexpected. He
had not heard that I was on my way, but after meeting me sent a
dispatch to Foster as soon as he reached the telegraph line. He had
informed Foster at Knoxville of his purpose in having me join him,
and sent this message in a friendly wish to promote my interests.
As soon as the general and his party were off, we began our
preparation to cross the river. Their experience had shown that the
increase of difficulty in keeping the ford at night was more than
would probably come from the rise of the water. I therefore ordered
everything to be ready as soon as it was broad daylight. We had
eaten our breakfast and were in the saddle as soon as we could see
clearly. Captain Day carefully examined the ford with a few of the
cavalrymen, and fixed the landmarks which would guide us to the
shallowest places. With these precautions and by carefully following
directions we got over without mishap. The water did not quite reach
the bodies of the wagons, and by lifting our feet out of our
stirrups we got over dryshod. The stream was swift, and the only way
to keep one's direction safely was to look ahead and not downward.
Had we tried it in the night, we should no doubt have fared as badly
as our friends who had preceded us.
A day's hard journey for the wagon teams brought us to the foot of
Pine Mountain at the point where the road leaves the bed of Elk Fork
to climb the steep ascent. We were now only nineteen miles from
Jacksboro, in the valley of the Clinch, but the distance was
multiplied by the cumulating difficulties of the way. We were not
far from Cross Mountain, a ridge which, as its name indicates,
connects the long parallel ranges of Jellico, Pine, and Cumberland
mountains. We must climb Pine Mountain to its crest, descend along
the shoulders of Cross Mountain near the head of the valley, then
scale the side of Cumberland Mountain to reach Big Creek Gap, from
which the valley of East Tennessee would open before us. We camped
for the night and prepared for an early start in the morning. The
teams were well fed and groomed, and the whole equipment was
carefully inspected to see that everything was ready for the strain
of the rough work of the morrow.
The morning of the 16th was fair and frosty, and we were astir
early. Pine Mountain loomed before us like the steep roof of some
vast gothic cathedral. The ridge seemed as straight as a house
ridge, and we could not see that any natural depression made the
ascent much easier in one place than another. Our road ran up a spur
of the mountain till the regular slope was reached, then turning to
the right it gradually mounted the steep incline by a diagonal
course on a long shelf cut in the hillside, with here and there a
level spot on which the teams could breathe. From where we stood in
the valley the mountain face looked precipitous, and the road a mere
line gradually rising along its front. It would have been bad enough
if it had been a metalled road in good order; but it was only a
rough track alternating in mud and rock, that had never been good
even in mid-summer, and it was now next to impassable. Under the
direction of Captain Day and the wagonmaster the teams were doubled,
two of the wagons being left in the valley till the others should
reach the summit, when the teams were to be brought back. When they
came to the long and hard pull, the drivers gave us a good sample of
army wagoning, their yelling and cracking of whips keeping up a
continual chorus, and at specially hard points the quartermaster and
wagon-master joined in the music like the baying of a pack of
hounds, while the horses seemed to be stimulated to almost frantic
action. This could not be kept up long, and when one of the level
breathing-places was reached all subsided into quiet, while the
steaming and puffing horses regained their wind for another effort.
Five miles of advance was the utmost we could make on that day, but
this was fifteen for the teams, as they had to be brought down the
mountain over the same road and drag up the wagons which had been
left at the foot. Our party of cavaliers waited lazily in the valley
till the first of the wagons were near the summit, and then rode on
to overtake them on the other side of the ridge. It was an easy and
picturesque ride for us who were well mounted, but a wearing labor
and strain for the teamsters and their animals. We congratulated
ourselves on the care with which the "outfit" had been selected at
Lexington, for we came through without accident on a road where
wrecks were plentier than milestones.
We had sweet slumber that night in the keen air of the mountain top,
and were ready for the last day of mountain work. We were fourteen
miles from Jacksboro, and were resolved to reach the little town
before night. The road was unlike the long inclined plane cut in the
side of Pine Mountain. We were in the midst of a mass of irregular
stony hills, all of them part of the highlands between the summits
of the two ranges. It was hard and rough work, but we were not
obliged to double the teams again. The last ascent of the Cumberland
Mountains toward Big Creek Gap was over bare rock much of the way,
the sandstone strata lying horizontal, and the road being a gigantic
staircase in which the steps were sometimes a foot each, but oftener
more, with an occasional rise of fully four feet in the edge of the
rocky outcrop. In the road the sharp edges of these stairs had been
rounded off, partly by wear and a little by mechanical means, but
they distinctly retained the stair-like character and looked
absolutely impracticable. At the worst places the teamsters would
halt and throw together stones or branches of trees to fill the
angle in the rock, then mounting, a whoop and a crack of the whip
was the signal for the team to dash at the obstacle. The horses'
shoes would strike fire from the level rock of the long "treader"
above, the wagon would be bounced up the step, when a little bit of
level would bring them to another rise in the staircase. We
zigzagged along as the road sought the easiest places among the
rocks, and perseverance at last had its reward when we crowned the
summit and looked down into the broad and beautiful valleys of the
Clinch and the Holston, the lovely tributaries which form the
Tennessee River.
Our first look into Big Creek Gap was a startling and pleasurable
surprise which has remained indelibly fixed in memory. Clouds had
been hanging about the top of the mountain, and as we ascended the
last slope and reached the crest, they hung so low over us that we
could almost touch them. It was not like going into a fog, as is
usually the case in climbing mountains, but these seemed smooth as
silk on the under surface and hung over us as well defined as the
covering of a tent. This gave to the prospect an accidental and very
peculiar effect that one might not see again in crossing the pass a
hundred times. As we looked eastward from the depression in the
crest in which our roadway ran, a great circling amphitheatre lay
before us, almost perfect in the symmetry of its curves. The ridge
on right and left which formed its outer margin was higher than the
spot on which we stood, and the silky clouds over our heads rested
on it as on the walls of a natural coliseum, like the _velum_ of
canvas of the ancient gigantic structure in Rome, except that here,
nature outdoing all art, spread the lovely awning over the whole
vast and cavernous auditorium a mile or more across. The gloom of
the interior threw the retreating slopes into a mysterious shadow in
which it were easy to imagine them peopled with ranks of ghostly
auditors gazing upon the stage. It was there, full in our faces,
that the most startling and almost incredible effect was visible.
The circle of the mountains was there broken by an opening flanked
on either side by stupendous perpendicular cliffs, and we looked
through it upon a charming landscape bathed in glorious sunshine. A
blue stream dashed foaming through the great gap and wandered off to
join the river beyond. The broad and undulating valley fifty miles
across was backed by another mountain wall which towered opposite to
that from whose battlements we were gazing, not a long and level
ridge like so many of those in the Alleghanies, but a picturesque
Alpine mountain scene, with peaks snow-clad and dazzling in the
sunlight,--the Great Smokies, the noblest of all the mountain groups
of the Appalachian chain. The gloom and shadow of our vast
amphitheatre held us in awe, while the brilliancy of the scene
beyond the great stage opening seemed to draw us to it as to a
promised land. We sat upon our horses, spellbound, gazing upon what
seemed at once too grand and too beautiful to be real. Had we been
superstitious like soldiers of an ancient time, we might have seen a
miraculous portent in it; and even as it was, such sentiment as may
be permitted in the sceptical spirit of our own day could find a
happy omen in the scene. We were entering upon a new chapter in our
military lives, and it was cheering to us, in entering East
Tennessee, through the great gate that opened before us, to have so
charming a picture to lure us on. We wound down the mountain side,
happy but quiet. There was no one among us so lacking in earnest
character as to be unmoved. We had left the wagons far behind, and
the clinking of our horses' shoes upon the rocks was the only sound
which broke the silence till the roaring and laughing brook that
gives a name to the pass met us and rollicked beside us, as we went
out between the giant cliffs into the broad and cheerful valley.
At Jacksboro we entered the theatre of active warlike operations,
and found ourselves in the usual atmosphere of rumors. It was of
course known that Longstreet had retreated to the northeast after
raising the siege, but some insisted that he was moving down the
valley again, and that Foster was to be shut up in Knoxville as
Burnside had been. It was evident that there was no definite
information on which any of these local opinions were based, and I
was satisfied that our road was open and safe. The only risk was
from some raiding column of cavalry, and we must take our chances as
to that. After a good night's rest, I decided on the morning of the
18th to take with me Colonel Strong of General Foster's staff and
Colonel Sterling, and leaving the wagons behind, to make the forty
miles to Knoxville in a single day's ride. What we had heard of the
destitution in the city made it seem best that most of the party
should remain with the wagons and the supplies, and so avoid the
risk of throwing too many guests upon the hospitality of
headquarters. We took a few of the cavalry as an escort, and both
horses and men were in such good condition and so hardened to the
road that we scarcely broke from a trot in the whole distance,
except to stop for resting and feeding our nags at noon.
We reached Knoxville in the afternoon, and Colonel Strong was warmly
welcomed by those of the staff who were present, but the general was
absent at the front. He was expected back the next night, however,
and comfortable quarters were provided for us meanwhile. My
instinctive fears of complications in regard to my own assignment to
duty proved to be true. The very day I left Lexington General Foster
had issued an order assigning me to command the District of
Kentucky, and it had passed me on the road. [Footnote: Official
Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. pp. 383, 394.] My determination to obey
literally the order from the War Department to report in person, and
the haste with which I had started, proved my salvation from the
kind of duty at the rear which I was bent on escaping. The District
of Kentucky would have been even worse than that of Ohio, for the
strife between political factions embroiled every one who commanded
there, and the order to me had been issued because the officer in
command was obnoxious to one of these factions.
General Foster returned on the 19th, and on my reporting to him I
found at once the benefit of General Burnside's representations in
regard to me. Colonel Strong was also well aware of my earnest wish
for field service, and the friendship which had grown up on the
road, no doubt, made him an influential advocate with his chief. The
general received me very kindly, and said that his action had been
based on the supposition that I would prefer duty in Kentucky during
the winter rather than make the rough journey over the mountains at
that season. On my assuring him that my coming without waiting to
communicate with him was because of my earnest request to the War
Department for service in the field, he was evidently pleased and
immediately revoked the orders already made, and assigned me to the
Twenty-third Corps, to command it as the senior general officer
present. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii, p. 457.]
I had been eight days on the road from Lexington, and the rest of
the party who remained with the wagons were a day longer in reaching
Knoxville. It had given me a vivid appreciation of the impossibility
of supplying an army in East Tennessee by wagon trains over the
mountains. The roads by Cumberland Gap or by Emory Gap were less
precipitous, but they were more muddy. The forage was exhausted
along all the routes, and till grass should grow large trains of
supplies were not to be thought of. The effort to force trains
through in the autumn had been most destructive to the teams.
Noticing how the way was lined by the carcasses of dead horses and
mules, we kept an accurate count one day of the number of these. In
the twenty miles of that day's journey we counted a hundred and
fifty dead draught animals. The movement of wagon-trains had, of
course, been suspended when Longstreet advanced upon Knoxville, and
bad weather had hardly begun then. Beef cattle could be driven in
herds, but the country was so stripped of forage that the danger of
starvation by the way made this mode of supply nearly as hopeless as
the other.
The only permanent solution of the subsistence problem was to be
found in enlarging the facilities for railway communication at
Chattanooga so that that town might become a great depot from which
the East Tennessee troops could draw as soon as the railroad to
Knoxville should be repaired, or light steamboats be brought to the
upper Tennessee and Holston rivers. They showed us at Knoxville
samples of the bread issued to the garrison during the siege. It was
made of a mixture of all the breadstuffs which were in store or
could be procured, but the chief ingredient was Indian corn ground
up cob and all. It was not an attractive loaf, but it would support
life, though the bulk was out of proportion to the nutriment. The
cattle had been kept in corral till they were too thin and weak to
be fit for food, but there was no other, and the commissaries killed
the weakest and issued them as rations because these would otherwise
die a natural death. Sherman and his staff had expressed their
astonishment that an appetizing dinner had been spread for them at
Burnside's headquarters; [Footnote: Sherman's Memoirs, vol. i. p.
368.] but they would have wondered more if they had known of the way
in which the town and vicinity had been ransacked to do honor to the
welcome guests who had relieved the beleaguered army. General Poe
vividly describes the straits they were in, and the heroic sort of
hospitality which had hunted far and wide for something fit to set
before the leader of the column which had raised the siege.
[Footnote: Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. iii. p. 745.]
There had been no danger of actual starvation, but only the coarsest
of bread and the poorest of beef could be distributed. Eating, in
such circumstances, was not a pleasure, and the pangs of real hunger
were necessary to make the ration at all palatable. The withdrawal
of the enemy relieved the situation somewhat, for it opened the
country to foraging parties, and every kind of produce which money
could tempt the people to part with was bought and brought into the
camps. It was little enough at best, and three months of pinching
want were to be endured before anything like regular supplies could
be furnished to the army. It was to such a house of destitution we
had come, but we had come voluntarily to share the labors and the
triumphs of our comrades in the field and we had no regrets.