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.