2. We move to-morrow, at six o'clock in the morning, to Nashville.
9. Nashville. Every thing indicates an early movement. Whether a reconnoissance is intended or a permanent advance, I do not even undertake to guess. The capture of a brigade, at Hartsville, by John Morgan, has awakened the army into something like life; before it was idly awaiting the rise of the Cumberland, but this bold dash of the rebels has made it bristle up like an angry boar; and this morning, I am told, it starts out to show its tusks to the enemy. Our division has been ordered to be in readiness.
The kind of weather we desire now, is that which is generally considered the most disagreeable, namely, a long rain; two weeks of rain-fall is necessary to make the Cumberland navigable, and thus ensure to us abundant supplies.
The whole army feels deeply mortified over the loss of the brigade at Hartsville; report says it was captured by an inferior force. One of our regiments did not fire a gun, and certainly the other two could not have made a very obstinate resistance. I am glad Ohio does not have to bear the whole blame; two-thirds is rather too much.
10. During all of the latter part of last night troops were pouring through Nashville, and going southward. Our division, Rousseau's, moved three miles beyond the city, and went into camp on the Franklin road.
14. Our court has been holding its sessions in the city, but to-day it adjourned to meet at division head-quarters to-morrow at ten o'clock a. m.
The most interesting character of our court-martial is Colonel H. C. Hobart, of the Twenty-first Wisconsin; a gentleman who has held many important public positions in his own State, and whose knowledge of the law, fondness for debate, obstinacy in the maintenance of his opinions, love of fun, and kind-heartedness, are immense. He makes use of the phrase, "in my country," when he refers to any thing which has taken place in Wisconsin; from this we infer that he is a foreigner, and pretend to regard him as a savage from the great West. He has, therefore, been dubbed Chief of the Wisconsins. The court occasionally becomes exceedingly mellow of an evening, and then the favorite theme is the "injin." Such horrible practices as dog eating and cannibalism are imputed to the Chief. To-night we visited the theater to witness Ingomar. On returning to our room at Bassay's restaurant, the members took solemn Irish oaths that the man with the sheep-skin on his back, purporting to be Ingomar, was no other than Hobart, the Wisconsin savage; and the supposition that such an individual could ever reform, and become fitted for civilized society, was a monstrous fiction, too improbable even for the stage.
It should not be presumed from this, however, that the subject of our raillery holds his tongue all the time. On the contrary, he expresses the liveliest contempt for the opinions of his colleagues of the court-martial, and professes to think if it were not for the aid which the Nation receives from his countrymen, the Wisconsins, the effort to restore the Union would be an utter failure.
Bassay's restaurant is a famous resort for military gentlemen. Major-General Hamilton just now took dinner; Major-General Lew Wallace, Brigadier-Generals Tyler and Schoepf, and Major Donn Piatt occupy rooms on the floor above us, and take their meals here; so that we move in the vicinity of the most illustrious of men. We are hardly prepared now to say that we are on intimate terms with the gentlemen who bear these historic names; but we are at least allowed to look at them from a respectful distance. A few years hence, when they are so far away as to make contradiction improbable, if not impossible, we may claim to have been their boon companions, and to have drank and played whist with them in the most genial and friendly way.