Fortunately for me, our movements were suspended for a week and we made but one change of camp, crossing to the south side of the river, and taking the position in front of Columbia which I have already mentioned. [Footnote: Ante, p. 373.] My medical director, Surgeon Frink, gave me heroic treatment, and by the time we marched again on the 2d of January, I was able to do my ordinary duties, though I did not become quite well again till I reached the sea-coast and got a complete change of climate. At this time we were expecting to go into winter quarters, and when, on 29th December, I learned that orders were issued for the corps to winter at Dalton, I requested and received a leave of absence for thirty days, to go home and recover my health. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. i. p. 361.] My order had been issued, turning over the command to Colonel Doolittle, the senior brigade commander present, [Footnote:Id., pt. ii. p. 476.] when I learned from General Schofield that the active campaign was to be resumed and that he had abandoned the purpose he had formed of going north himself as far as Louisville. I immediately rescinded my own order, and marched with the command. [Footnote: Id., pp. 426, 474, 475, 486.]
During the pursuit of Hood from Nashville, Thomas had followed in person the Fourth Corps, which was in advance of ours, and Schofield had no opportunity of personal conference with him, so that our only knowledge of his purposes was got from the formal correspondence with his headquarters. When Colonel Doolittle sent forward his communication reasserting the capture of the battery in the curtain of the Confederate works on the 16th of December, [Footnote:Ante, p. 366.] it was accompanied by my own and indorsed by General Schofield. It reached Thomas at Duck River, and he made it the occasion of indorsing upon it a recommendation for my promotion to the grade of Major-General. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. pp. 234, 235.] On the 19th, from Franklin, General Schofield made his own recommendation in terms which I may be pardoned for feeling more pride in than in the promotion itself. [Footnote: See Appendix C.] This was earnestly supported by General Thomas and forwarded on the 20th. The only vacancy in the grade was one made by the resignation of General McClernand, and to this I was assigned, as of the 7th of December, the date of General Schofield's report of the battle of Franklin, though the official notice of the promotion did not reach me till the 15th of January, at Clifton, as we were about to take steamboats for our movement to the East. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. pp. 273, 274; Id., pt. i. p. 364. Army Register for 1865, pp. 54, 95. Another vacancy occurred on the 13th December, by the resignation of General Crittenden, and to this General W. B. Hazen was appointed for his assault of Fort McAllister near Savannah. (Ibid.) On December 22d Mr. Stanton asked Thomas to make a list of promotions he desired to recommend, but informed him that there was then no vacancy in the grade of Major-General, and only two in that of Brigadier. (Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 307.) General Schofield thinks that Stanton, in the dispatch last mentioned, referred only to vacancies in the regular army. (Forty-six Years, p. 279.) The circumstances and the whole correspondence seem to me inconsistent with this view. Thomas made out his list on the 25th, and it was for promotions in the volunteer service only. (Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 343.) Thomas's own promotion as Major-General in the regular army was made on the 24th. (Id., pp. 318, 329.)]
Before leaving Columbia, General Schofield had, on the 28th of December, a consultation with his three division commanders in regard to the assignment of the new regiments, to the number of twelve or thirteen, which had been added to the corps. [Footnote: These included two or three which had been temporarily attached at Franklin, but were now made permanent parts of the organization.] It was agreed that it was best to preserve the older organizations of divisions and brigades, and to strengthen these by some new regiments, while the rest of the new regiments were organized into a division under General Ruger. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 409.] Schofield had the promise of several other regiments whenever they should come forward; and by correspondence with Halleck and with the Governor of Illinois, as well as with Thomas, he was actively striving to bring the corps to the proper strength of three full divisions. At the end of the month we had 15,000 men, with at least two other regiments ordered to join us, one of them convalescing from the measles, which was very apt to run through a new organization taking the field. [Footnote:Id., pp. 426, 436, 445, 461, 473, 475.] The new troops were nearly all officered by men of experience, and contained many veterans who had re-enlisted. We thus welcomed back valuable men who had served in the corps, and came to us with increased rank and a renewed zeal which made our reinforcements at once nearly equal to seasoned troops.
Our orders to march from Columbia on the 1st of January were in pursuance of the orders Thomas had received to concentrate his army at Eastport and Tuscumbia for the continuance of the campaign. The Fourth Corps was en route to Huntsville, and Thomas did not change its destination, as he thought it could take part in new movements as well from that position as from Tuscumbia. A. J. Smith's corps had already been ordered to Eastport for winter quarters, and had marched from Pulaski by way of Lawrenceburg and Waynesborough, reaching Clifton on the 2d of January, where it awaited steamboat transportation. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. pp. 396, 410, 420, 427, 486. Clifton is called Carrollville in official Atlas, pl. cxlix. The former name is that used in the dispatches and which we found in use by everybody. The roads and topography in the map are very incorrect.] Thomas himself was at Pulaski, and went back by rail to his headquarters at Nashville, whence he took a steamer to convey his field headquarters and staff by way of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to Eastport. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. pp. 470, 530, 567.]
We marched from Columbia on the morning of the 2d of January, 1865, following the turnpike to Mt. Pleasant, ten miles, through some of the finest farms in the State. The afternoon was spent in organizing the corps to move in separate columns by division, each with its own supply train; for the information we got as to the condition of the roads made it wise to try any country roads which had not been used by the armies. It was arranged that Couch's division should march by the turnpike to Waynesborough, wind by a ridge road through the "barrens" north of the turnpike, and Ruger should follow me some distance, and then take an intermediate road through Laurel-Hill Factory, leaving an interval of a day's march between our columns. Couch's division was preceded by the engineer battalion of the corps, as pioneers to repair the turnpike. [Footnote: Id., pp. 475, 486.] Promptly at six o'clock on the 3d, my division marched from Mt. Pleasant, continuing for five miles on the Waynesborough turnpike, then turning to the right upon the Gordon road, we climbed by a steep and long hill to the barren ridge which is the watershed between the Duck River and Buffalo River. Five miles from the turnpike our way ran into the Beaverdam road, which we kept for five miles further to the fork of the Ashland road, turning to the left. Here we camped and waited for our trains, which had slow work in climbing the ridge, for it had rained all the morning, and the roads were slippery. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 362; pt. ii. p. 498.]
It was noon of the 4th before the trains overtook us, and I then ordered an issue of rations to lighten them, and we started again, with a citizen for a guide. We followed the Perryville road seven miles to the headwaters of Grinder's Creek, a tributary of Buffalo River, and down the creek three miles, the road being a mere track in its bed. We now turned to the right over a ridge and came down into Rockhouse Creek, the course of which we followed to the river. I had learned that we must ford the Buffalo, and from the wet weather it would be whole leg deep. It was getting late in the day, and Rockhouse Creek had to be crossed many times; so I passed the order along the line not to try to bridge, but to march straight through the creek and make the more important crossing of the river before going into camp. This seemed hard, in the month of January, when, as it had cleared and was cold, ice was forming in the still places of the stream; but I heard that open farm lands bordered the river on the other side, and if our wading was done all at once, we could make the men dry their clothes and shoes with less danger to health than if we began another day with a soaking. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. i. p. 362.]
It grew dark several hours before we reached Buffalo River, the column plodding along in the wooded ravine. I had turned out from the road to wait for the brigades to pass, and have a word with the commanders in turn, and was picking my way to the head of column again, when I overheard one of those little colloquies between soldiers which give real pleasure to an officer. A fresh recruit was grumbling at marching in the darkness and in the water, and wondering what generals could mean by putting such hardships upon the soldiers, when a veteran by his side answered cheerily, "When you've been in this division as long as I have, you'll know there's some good reason for pushing us this way; so take it easy, and don't growl. The General knows what he's about." I turned further out into the darkness, with a feeling that it would cheapen the brave man's words to let him learn who had heard him, but the evidence of the trust which is the foundation of soldierly devotion gave a deep satisfaction. When the column reached the river, which was about seventy-five yards wide, fires were lit on both sides as guides to the ford, and though it was near nine o'clock, the men were not permitted to rest till they had thoroughly dried themselves around the great fires of fence-rails. They did not need orders to boil their coffee and cook a hot supper in their bivouac. The broad fields between the hills and the river were illuminated far and wide, and the stillness of the dark valley was transformed into the noisy activity of the armed host. All in the camp were "merry as grigs," and did not need to be told why the march had been prolonged into the night. But the fun of the soldier was the grief and dismay of the farmer.
The place belonged to an elderly man named Churchill. We had to make use of his house for headquarters, and while our boys were cooking our supper, a busy group of officers was seated about the crackling fire in an open fireplace, writing dispatches and orders, receiving reports, and sending messages, while in the shadows of the background the farmer and his wife were moving uneasily about, looking out of door or window, and wringing their hands at the vision of destruction which had suddenly descended upon them. The old man protested at the burning of his fences, naturally enough, and all we could say was that, in the end, if he could prove his loyalty, he would be indemnified for his loss; but this was small consolation, and we pitied him whilst we applied the pitiless code of military necessity to save the troops from worse mischiefs.
The ridge road we had followed had been so completely a wilderness that we saw but one inhabited house for fifteen miles. The hillsides were covered with a young forest, the original woods having been cut off and made into charcoal for the iron furnaces of the region. In good weather it would have been easy marching through the region, for the top of the ridge was fairly level, winding along in a general westerly direction; but as the road had never been "worked," and was a mere wagon track, it soon became muddy, and our wagons cut it so deeply as to spoil it for the use of any who were to follow us, and to make about fifteen miles a day the most we could ourselves accomplish.
Starting again on the 5th, we marched through Ashland, [Footnote: In the Atlas, pl. cxlix., Ashland is erroneously placed north of Buffalo river.] up the valley of Forty-eight-mile Creek and thence along a ridge to Waynesborough, encamping just beyond the town. Our road ran into the turnpike two miles east of the village, and we met Couch's division at the junction of the roads. We took the advance, which we kept during the next day's march to the Tennessee, reaching Clifton toward evening of the 6th, after a very hard day's work, the weather beginning with rain in the morning and turning to sleet and snow after noon. We pitched our tents in the snowstorm, locating the camp more than a mile from the landing-place, as the eligible ground nearer was occupied by Smith's corps, which was waiting for transports to take them up the river.