"Left Florence November 20; arrived at Columbia, Tennessee, and struck the enemy there November 26. Enemy evacuate on the 28th.
"November 30. Battle of Franklin.
"December 2. Reached Nashville.
"December 6. Fenner's Battery was ordered to join General Forrest's command at Murfreesboro'; participated in the battle of Murfreesboro' on the 8th, and was still with Forrest when the battles of Nashville were fought, on the 15th and 16th, and the great retreat commenced.
"In this fight, which is called the second of Murfreesboro', it will be remembered that Bates's Infantry Division was stampeded early in the action, causing the loss of several guns of the Fifth Company, Washington Artillery. On this occasion (one of the few instances, if not the only one during the war) six pieces of field artillery, being four Napoleons of Fenner's Battery and two rifled pieces of Missouri Battery, placed in position by General Forrest,—their horses having been sent to the rear across Stone River,—held the line for three-quarters of an hour against the enemy's entire force until the infantry and wagons had safely crossed the river on the only bridge half a mile in the rear.
"As soon as the news reached Forrest, his command started across from Murfreesboro' to join the main column at Columbia. There was no turnpike, the roads were in awful condition, the horses reduced and broken down, and a continuous rain pouring down. Two of the guns reached Columbia in safety; the other two would have been brought through but for the swelling of a creek by the rain, which it was impossible to cross,—the only guns the battery ever lost. The men remained by them alone till Columbia was evacuated by our forces and the enemy within a mile of them, when they destroyed their pieces, swam Duck River, and started after the army. The terrors of the retreat from Tennessee in midwinter, the men shoeless, without blankets, and almost without clothes, need not be recounted here.
"January 10. The battery reached Columbus, Mississippi.
"January 31. Ordered to Mobile. Remained there as heavy artillery till 11th of April, when it was evacuated; go up the river to Demopolis; from there to Cuba Station, Meridian, where, on the 10th of May, arms are laid down and the battery with the rest of General Taylor's army."
A member of the battery, who was an exceptional soldier, and who still cherishes and venerates everything that reminds him of the glorious past, has kindly placed in my hands some letters which I am permitted to copy and here subjoin, feeling sure that they will prove quite as interesting as the numerous documents of the kind published in the "lives" of those high in authority, although they contain only the experience of a young private soldier, conveyed in dutiful letters to his mother. Some of these will suggest the changes which befell the soldiers who gave the house-warming in Virginia, and the difference between the first and last years of the war.
"Near New Hope Church, Georgia,
"May 26, 1864.