xt7cvd6p029g https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7cvd6p029g/data/mets.xml Stevenson, Benjamin Franklin. 1885  books b92e4724s842009 English H.C. Sherick & Co. : Cincinnati, Ohio Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Cumberland Gap Campaign, 1862 Cumberland Gap, a paper read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, June 3, 1885 text Cumberland Gap, a paper read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, June 3, 1885 1885 2009 true xt7cvd6p029g section xt7cvd6p029g 
    
    
    
    
    
    
   Cumberland Gap,

-A PAPER-

read before the ohio commandery

m

-OF THE-

MILITARY ORDER

-OF THE-

JUNE 3, 1BB5,

BY COMPANION

Late Surgeon (Major) 2 2d Kentucky Vol. Infantry.

CINCINNATI H. C. SHERICK & CO. 1888. 
    
   Cumberland Gap

On the 18th day of June, 1861, the rebel military authorities seized and occupied Cumberland Gap, the most available door for military access by the Nation to East Tennessee, and thus held in check the most loyal portion of the people of that State. From this stronghold they made frequent incursions into the contiguous mountain counties of Kentucky, which may also justly be said to have been the stronghold of loyalty to the Nation in that State. These raids were generally undertaken by marauding bands of midnight plunderers, whose chief objects were private gain and the gratification of personal malice engendered in the heated political contests of former years. In the execution of their fell purposes neither property rights nor the sanctity of human life was regarded.

On the 20th day of October, 1861, the rebels received at "Camp Wild Cat," in Laurel county, Ky., the first repulse to an organized command encountered by them in the mountain region of Kentucky. The National troops engaged in this action were nominally under the command of Gen. Sc.hoepff, but they were really commanded by Col. Theophilus T. Garrard, of Clay county, Ky., who had with patriotic ardor during the preceding summer recruited and organized the 7th Regiment of Kentucky Volunteer Infantry. His regiment was made up of mountain boys, thoroughly imbued with sentiments of devotion to the integrity and unity of the Nation.

The 17th Ohio and the 33d Indiana Regiments of Volunteer Infantry were also engaged in the battle.

The Kentucky troops were undrilled and without a knowledge of the first rudiments of military discipline or 
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tactics, but they were patriotic ; they were woodsmen, and accustomed to the use of fire-arms ; they were standing on their own soil, and were familiar with all the mountain passes through which the enemy could approach them ; and, above all, they were burning with anxiety to punish the rebel troops for marauding outrages and wrongs perpetrated on their families and their friends throughout the entire section, and Gen. Schoepff wisely deferred to the opinions and advice of the senior officers commanding the Kentucky troops.

The battle, viewed alone, may be regarded as only a skirmish of outposts, but it was important in the results which speedily followed. It was the fixed purpose of the rebel leaders to drag Kentucky into rebellion against the National authorities in despite of the well-settled convictions of the people expressed at the polls, and with triumphant majorities on three different occasions during the preceding summer. It was the misfortune of the State to have as its chief executive officer, for the time being, one who was but too willing to second all the ulterior designs of the insurgents by claiming sovereign power within the State for all local laws over those enacted by the National Congress.

Acting on this theory of State and of National obligation, he had already appointed S. B. Buckner to the command of the State Guard   a man well known to be a party to the great conspiracy against the National Government, and he had also armed that body in hostility to the Government with arms drawn from the National workshops. Felix K. Zollicoffer, of Tennessee, was chosen by the rebel authorities as the proper agent for the accomplishment of this purpose. He was a man of great natural endowments and mental energy, who had forced his way from the humble walks of life to a commanding position in his State. He had twice represented the Nashville district in the National Congress, where by force of talent and deliberative ability he had won a commanding position. 
   On the stump and before the people he had always vehemently denounced the heresy of secession as preposterous. His popularity with the people in the mountain section of Tennessee and Kentucky before the outbreak of the rebellion was very great. But unfortunately for his fame, when his State, or rather when the official authorities of his State, in violation of constitution and law and the deliberately expressed will of the people, determined to link her fortunes with the fate of the Confederacy, and join issues with the Nation in the impending conflict, Gen. Zollicoffer consented to abandon all the well-settled convictions of his life, and join with his enemies, and the enemies of the Government, in the effort to accomplish its overthrow.

The result of his first essay on the mountain section of Kentucky proved to him that the passes into the State were better guarded than he was before aware of, and that the wrongs which had been perpetrated by prowling bands of midnight plunderers had roused in the people a spirit of stern and determined resistance to rebel misrule.

Following his repulse at Wild Cat, Gen. Zollicoffer fell back on his reserves in Tennessee, and after reorganizing his defeated force, he attempted at a lower point on the Cumberland river to enforce and carry out the programme of the Confederate authorities in Kentucky by an occupation in force and a subjugation of the people to rebel military law. In pursuance of this policj', he met at Mill Spring, in Pulaski county, Ky., on the 19th day of January, 1862, the National forces, under command of Gen. George H. Thomas. Here the first signal defeat of a rebel army was encountered, in the overthrow and rout of an arm}' corps, together with the death of its commander, slain in battle   slain in the prosecution of a cause which had the approval of neither his judgment nor his conscience. And here, too, was first revealed to the earnest gaze of the Nation the great qualities for command in the presence of embattled hosts, and the still rarer attribute of 
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stern and unyielding tenacity of purpose in the progress of battle, which are all possessed by Gen. Thomas in so eminent a degree, and which time has since developed into grand and majestic proportions. "Recorded honors shall o-ather round his monument and thicken over him. It is a solid fabric, and will support the laurels that adorn it."

The rebels still held possession of Cumberland Gap notwithstanding their defeat in the field. As a strategic point it was deemed an indispensable necessity by both of the parties to the great conflict in which the Nation had unfortunately become involved.

On the organization of the Army of the Cumberland, under Gen. D. C. Buell, Gen. Thomas was assigned to one of its divisions. A portion of the troops previous^ under his command was still held in the mountain region to restrain and punish predatory incursions and raids into the State, and to support the loyal sentiment predominant in that section.

The purpose of the Government to take and to hold the position was never relaxed, but was held in abeyance only for the time being, for what were deemed at that moment more urgent and vital considerations.

The intuitions of men often bear to the future the stamp and impress of genius. President Lincoln was a civilian, not an educated military man, but his far-seeing military capacity enabled him to see at a glance the manifest importance of holding with a firm and ui^'ielding grasp this door of entrance to the heart of the Confederacy. It is central in position, and from it blows could have been safely dealt out to the right or left, as occasion might have demanded. It is on the direct and shortest line, "from the Ohio down to the sea," and rebellion could more speedily from this than any other point east of the Mississippi river have been bi-sected and rent in twain. His proposition to Congress to construct a military railroad from Lexington, Ky., to Cumberland Gap was made a butt of by the enemies of the Government and the writ- 
   ings of the day as an impracticable suggestion. No wiser investment of the National resources could have been made at that day. But with all his influence with that body, he failed to induce Congress to adopt his policy. Could that position have been held by the National forces from the day it was occupied by Gen. Morgan, June 18, 1862, few military critics will venture the assertion that it would not have shortened the duration of the war a full twelve months. With it under National control, and linked to the great North by a railroad, Gen. Bragg would never have made his irruption into Kentucky as he did in August, 1862, or if guilty of such temerity he would only have passed from the State into some of the military prisons of the North. In a speech made by that rebel commander at Camp Dick Robinson the day before he issued his order to retreat, he said :

'   Buell is massed on our right and closes access to Nashville. We whipped him at Perryville, but another such a victory will be fatal to us. He is near his supplies and reinforcements ; we are distant from ours. Kentucky won't come to our relief. Wallace is in our rear, with the great North fully roused and at his back. If we attempt to reach Virginia through the mountain passes of Eastern Kentucky, we will starve. We are in a jug and with but a simple outlet, and that is through Cumberland Gap. We must take that route and take it now, or the last man of us all will be captured."

The troops left in the neighborhood of the Gap on the transfer of Gen. Thomas to his new field of operations, were the 1st Brigade of Tennessee Volunteers, under command of Brigadier-General Spears, composed of the 1st, 2d, 3d and 4th Regiments ; 2d Brigade, under command of Brigadier-General Carter, 5th and 6th Tennessee and 7th Kentucky and 49th Indiana Regiments of Infantry; 3d Brigade, under Brigadier-General Absalom Baird, U. S. A., composed of the 14th and 19th Kentucky and 33d Indiana Regiments of Infantry. A fourth brigade, under command of Col. John F. DeCourcey, consisting of 
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the 16th and 43d Ohio and the 22d Kentucky, reached the Cumberland Ford during the first week of Ma}'.

George W. Morgan, of Ohio, was assigned to the command of the districts and honored with a Brigadier's Commission of U. S. Volunteers. He had served with distinction as colonel, commanding a regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the war with Mexico, and in one of the brilliant, dashing battles of that brief contest he won his brevet of Brigadier by gallant action in the field.

Gen. Morgan reached his field of action with his recruits during the first week in May, and at once assumed command. Here the troops were held in camp for daily drill and to accustom them to combined action, until the 7th clay of June, when'the demonstration was made on the Gap by a flank movement into Powell's Valley, which was the source of subsistence supplies for the rebel force in occupation of the post. The brigades of Gens. Spears and Carter entered the valley through Big Creek Gap, a pass thirty miles west of Cumberland Gap. The other brigades, under the immediate command of Gen. Morgan, passed ten miles east of Big Creek, through a mere notch or defile in the [Cumberland range, which had not been guarded. The road on Gen. Morgan's line of march had much of it to be made as the army advanced, as it was but following neighborhood bridle paths over sharp ridges and through deep ravines, where the track of a wheel had never been seen before. The troops, however, had stout arms and willing minds, and the good work went bravely and rapidly on.

At noon on the nth, the crest of the Cumberland Range was attained, and a landscape of unsurpassed beauty was open to view. A fertile, cultivated, blooming valley, land-locked by mountain ridges north and south, but stretching from east to west far as the eye could reach, lay in all the luxuriance of teeming ripening fields of grain immediately below us. Dotted all over with farmhouses and enclosures, with its sylvan-fringed stream coil- 
   ing serpent-like round open fields, now disclosing and now concealing its course behind clumps and groves of trees ; with the golden harvest, ready for the reaper, swaying to the breezes of heaven, catching and giving back light and shadow to the eyes of the gazer. To men who during the long weary, dreary months of winter had been cooped up under canvas, with only bleak and barren hills in view, it was a picture to be seen but once to have it photographed on the memory ever afterward.

Gen. Morgan's strategy was well conceived and promptly executed. While the rebels were kept on the gut vive with the threats of an assault in force on their front, the greater portion of his force had already assumed a position which commanded Powell's Valle)' on their flank, and he had but to descend and assert the national right of domain. But then came the question, Would Gen. Raines, who held the Gap, contest for the mastery of the valley? On the 12th, Gen. Morgan occupied the valley in force, and on the 15th, the brigades of Spears and Carter joined him, and at 1 a. m. on the 18th he was under march with all his force to meet the enemy, who were reported to be entrenched midway between our forces and    the Gap, with the determination to measure swords for the possession of the valley. As the troops advanced, rumors came fast and lister that the post had been abandoned, and as we approached the locality of the reported entrenchments it was manifest that there was to be no passage of arms for the possession of Cumberland Gap. At 4 p. m. , after a march of twenty miles, the advance of Gen. Morgan's force took formal possession of the abandoned works, and with the hearty shouts of the soldiery and the reverberations of cannon, the National flag was unfurled to the breezes of heaven from the topmost peak above the stronghold.

The Cumberland Range, an offshoot from the Allegheny mountains, constitute that series of high hills rather than mountains which form the natural boundary between the 
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States of Kentucky and Tennessee.   It is an elevated plateau, or high range, cut heie and there by deep chasms or channels.   The range reaches a mean elevation of two thousand'feet from the low land and valleys on either side, and trends from northeast to southwest.   Throughout its entire extent the vast power of the upheaval force by which the chain was elevated is displayed in a wonderful degree. It belongs in its formation to the carboniferous period of the  geological  era,  and  presents  strata  of sandstone hundreds of feet in thickness, dislocated, rent and thrown into every imaginable angle and dip to the horizon. The Gap, a cleft in the chain at a point where the convulsive action of the upheaval had left only a narrow spinal ridge as a connecting isthmus between expanded bodies, and so narrow that wagons descending either way lock wheels on the same level space.   The chasm is nine hundred feet below the point of highest elevation on the left, as one approaches it from the north, and it converges to a width barely sufficient for a roadway.   The pinnacles on either side, clearly defined and in bold relief, stand in bleak and barren  grandeur  and desolation, having  been almost entirely denuded of forest  and     shr^ib in obedience to military necessity.   Huge masses of sandstone lie scat- * tered in promiscuous confusion over the surrounding surface, and to the spectator it seemed  as ^f the genii of ruin had here fought out one of their Titanic battles with great masses of sandstone wrenched from the mountain side as missiles.   The roads from the valleys on either side wind and zigzag their way up the eleven hundred feet of elevation to reach the Gap, and are commanded throughout by earthwork fortresses erected at appropriate positions on the heights above.   To a tyro in military science, it presented all the characteristics of an invulnerable natural fortress.   Its strength is its weakness.   Situated in the midst of a bleak, barren, untilled mountain region, and requiring a heavy force to man it, because of its vastness,1 and having to rely on a distant point for its subsistence, its11 
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armament and its munitions of war, it is liable at any moment to have its communications broken and its supplies cut off, when it must of necessity be abandoned or fall an easy prey to a foe powerful enough to invest it.

Roaming over the hills and through the abandoned camps of the enemy in company of a messmate, and before the coming up of our troops, we found the following morceau of rebel humor in one of the abandoned tents. The truth of its most material allegation, our short supplies, gave point to its wit:

FOR A YANKEE SURGEON.

My Last Will and Testament.

Whereas, In the fortunes of war, it may soon be necessary for me to bid adieu to the climate, scenery and crystal fountains of Cumberland Gap ; therefore, to the first Yankee Surgeon who plants his foot on the threshold of my deserted quarters, I will, devise and bequeath,

Item ist.   All my interests and rights to said premises, together with all and singular the tenements, hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging.

Item sd.   \ further desire, and direct that the said Yankee Surgeon shall have free and unmolested control and use of all the old clothes, bottles, blankets and medicines left on the aforesaid premises.

Item jd.   Knowing that the above-mentioned Yankee Surgeon has for some time past subsisted on half rations, badly prepared, and in consequence of which his health may suffer, I further desire and direct that he may have unrestrained control, and be sole proprietor of a small cooking stove, a few paces hence on the hillside, where the testator has often eaten and enjoyed well-cooked biscuit, beef, bacon, mutton, tarts, etc., regretting, however, that the usages of war will not permit me to leave him a supply of these articles.

Item 4th.   I hereby revoke all previous testaments

In witness whereof I hereunto set my hand and affix my seal.

R. B. Gardner, [seal.] Attest: Asst. Swgeon jd Georgia Battalion.

W. J Carmichael.

Henry J, Burton.

If the testator and his subscribing witnesses have escaped the casualties of battle and the diseases of camp life, it may afford them some pleasure to learn that the Jeu d" 'Sprit came direct to the hands of a Kentucky Yankee surgeon, who would esteem it a pleasure to grasp 
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each of them by the hand, and round the social board compare notes of bygone times, fight over our battles again, "show how fields are won," and in the bright hopes of the future greatness and glory of our common country, bury in the deep sea of forgetfulness all memory of past strife, contention and bitterness.

Gen. Morgan held possession of Cumberland Gap just three months, during which period much labor was expended and valuable additions made to the defensive works. Roads were improved and new ones made to facilitate movements from fort to fort. And under the supervision of Lieut. Craighill, of the Engineer Corps, a series of case-mated bomb-proof earthworks were erected at the base of the mountain on the south side of the Gap, guarding all the approaches from that direction, each one of which was in turn commanded by one on its flank and rear up to the defenses of the Gap proper. The task of supplying from ten to twelve thousand men with subsistence, arms, ammunition, clothing, and grain and forage for stock b}' the army wagon, with the base of supply one hundred and thirty miles distant, will never be found a desirable one, and in the then condition of the country it was a most onerous and perplexing duty. During the month of July, John Morgan headed one of his raids into the State, and was on the line of our supplies. The rebels at that early day outnumbered us on the Tennessee side of the Gap, and thus cut off all supplies of forage for animals.

Foraging in force was not unattended with danger, as DeCourcey's Brigade, two thousand strong, came near being surrounded and cut off on the 6th of August, at Tazewell, Tenn. Only gallant fighting and skillful handling prevented its capture by a three-fold greater force of the enemy.

The gravest positions are at times accompanied by ludicrous scenes which tend to relieve their gravity, and occasion amusement to the soldiery. The Battle of Tazewell was fought just south of that town.   In falling back 
   the troops all filed through its main street. The 22d Kentucky was in the rear. It was not running, only making good quick-step time. The town is in a deep valley, and on the hills on each side were the batteries of the opposing hosts, which were worked to their utmost activity, whilst the rear was being pressed by the pursuing enemy. Near the center of the town a great tall, obese, "sable sister," in the undress uniform of the laundry brigade   a sleeveless bodice and a red flannel petticoat, which, like "Wee Nannie's cutty sark," was in "longitude sorely scanty,"   emerged from a side street. Bubbling all over with excitement, and gesticulating wildly, she screamed at the top of her voice, "Oh, oh! you Tanks is skccdadling, is you?" She exposed to the profane gaze of the soldiery an amazing extent of rotund nudities. The grotesque humor of the situation was sufficient to have provoked an audible smile under the ribs of death.

Coincidences of the War.

At the battle of Tazewell the 22d Kentucky and the 22d Tennessee regiments of infantry were arrayed in line of battle against each other. Ten months later, at the siege of Vicksburg   a week before the strife there ended    a truce was called, and the officers in the rebel works immediately in front of the trench occupied by the 22d Kentucky came on the neutral ground, and one of them, addressing Col. Lindsay, asked, " What regiment have you here?" and learning that it was the 22d Kentucky exclaimed : " Now, that beats hell; last year at Tazewell we were in line against each other, and there my regiment received the hardest blow it has had in the service; and now we are face to face again, and in a few da}'s we shall all have to surrender to Grant"

In August, Gen. Bragg made his inroad into Ken-tuck)-. Kirby Smith, passing in through Big Creek Gap, formed the right wing of his army, and he occupied our line of communications with Lexington, Ky., thus cutting 
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off all supplies. On the 29th of that month, he delivered a crushing blow to the troops under command of Gen. M. D. Mason, who confronted him near Richmond, with a few regiments of undrilled recruits. Defeat was inevitable. For weeks anterior to this.date the troops at the Gap had been on half rations, and the horses and mules were making the air resonant with indications that they were suffering with the pangs of hunger. All the fields of growing corn in available distance had already been cut up and fed to the stock, in the milk stage. They could not be turned loose to browse without the danger of having them stampeded and lost in the ravines and dense jungles of undergrowth which covered the surface of the surrounding country.

Gen. Morgan has been censured for the abandonment of the post with acerbity, and the Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army, Gen. Halleck, in his report on the general situation, under date of January 1, 1863, was pleased to refer to it as "the unexpected abandonment" of a post which he was instructed to hold at all hazards. 'Tis easy to condemn in the absence of knowledge, but the proper rule is always to be governed by the lights which the responsible commander had to guide him in the emergency. And then if wrong has been perpetrated, or the honor of the Nation been tarnished, let public justice brand him as recreant to duty who has failed to meet its just expectations. Gen. Morgan, and those engaged with him in that campaign, will be content to abide such an enlightened judgment. But short of this, censure without examination and without trial is a gross mockery and perversion of all the instincts of National justice.

On the 8th of September, DeCourcey's Brigade, two thousand strong, with Capt. Foster's (ist Wisconsin) Battery, were ordered to Manchester, in Clay county, Ky., fifty miles north of the Gap, with orders to accumulate at that point all the subsistence and forage supplies to be procured, but instead of accumulating stores, they had 
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a hard struggle to supply their immediate daily wants. On the 14th, a survey of all the subsistence in store at the Gap was ordered, when it was ascertained that not more than ten days of half rations remained on hand.

Telegrams of the day, purporting to proceed from Gen. Morgan, and saying that he had sixty days of rations, were published. These deluded the world, and may to some extent have deceived high public functionaries.

For weeks previous to the evacuation the rebels held his only line of telegraphic communication in their hands.

Under these circumstances, a conference with the commanders of brigades was called, and the emergencies of the situation was laid before the Board.

Gen. Morgan had at the Gap twelve thousand men to subsist. He held a vast amount of Government property for which he was responsible. He had thirty pieces of cannon, a number of them Parrott guns, much coveted by the rebels, as superior to any possessed by them. He had a ten thousand stand of muskets, with all their accoutrements, in store. He had all the horses, mules, wagons, ambulances incident to the service, with such a body as he commanded. He was shut up, cut off from all communication with the Government, without the remotest intimation from the authorities as to how or when he might probably be succored.

He was two hundred and thirty miles from the Ohio river. If the attempt were made, then and now, to reach that region, while his stock had some remaining strength, they might, peradventure, get through.

If they remained until the animals were further reduced by active starvation, it would be but to surrender, not alone the position, but all his army, as prisoners of war, and all his material into the hands of rebels.

Headquarters, Cumberland Gap, 1 September 14, 1862. J

A Council of War, convened by Brigadier-General Morgan, commanding the forces at Cumberland Gap, assembled at headquarters at 
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ii a. m. to-day. Present, Brigadier-General Morgan, commanding, Brigadier-General Spears, Brigadier-General Baird, Brigadier-General Carter. The brigade of Col. DeCourcey absent on detached service. The proceedings were opened by Gen. Morgan stating in detail the informaton in his possession relating to the position and numbers of the Union and rebel forces in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, and as to the probabilities of succor both of men and supplies reaching this post, and the condition of the troops as to supplies of food, clothing and amunition. Gen. Morgan stated that the council was convened to consider the question of remaining at the Gap or evacuating the position, and that he should be governed by the decision of the council, so far as that question was concerned.

After a free interchange of opinion, it was agreed unanimously that, in view of all the circumstances of the case, the position should be vacated.

(Signed) Geo. W. Morgan, Brigadier-Genetal,

j. G. Spears, Brigadier-General, A. Baird, Brigadier-General, S. P. Carter, Brigadier-General, W. P. Craighill, ist. Lt. Eng's, U.S.A.

Recorder of Council.

Statement of subsistence stores on the 17th day of September, the day of evacuation, submitted to the Council of War by Brigadier-General Morgan :

50,384 lbs. Bacon, .      .   12,000 men, 5^ days' rations.

336 bushels Beans, .      .      .   " "15 9,000 lbs. Rice,      .      .      .      "      " 7^

i, 300 lbs. Sugar, .      .      .   " " 19,230 lbs. Coffee, .      .      " "16

ii, 860 lbs. Mixed Vegetables,       "      " 17 3,630 lbs. Dessicated Potatoes,      "      " 3^ 5,650 lbs. Soap, 73 barre. Salt,

295 galloiis Vinegar. G. M. Adams,

Commissary of Subsistence, U. S. A.

In addition, it should be stated that for three weeks not a pound of subsistence stores had reached the post, and that the horses and mules were absolutely starving.

These were the considerations, and this the pressure under which the conference with his subordinates was called. After a full and free interchange of opinions, it was unanimously decided that the post should be abandoned. This conclusion was reached with reluctance by all, as the position was regarded as of indispensable strategic importance to the National cause.

The troops under Ger>. Morgan trusted with implicit 
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faith in his judgment and skill, and they entertained unbounded confidence in their ability to repulse any direct assault the enemy might make on the stronghold, and to them the order of evacuation was a source of chagrin and mortification.

It may comport with the sense of justice of the author of the "American Conflict," Mr. Greeley, to sneer at Gen. Morgan and his advisers for "engaging in a precipitate race from the post,"* but reasonable, candid men,willing to do justice to all parties, will not be found such swift witnesses to impeach the judgment of cotemporaries in situations calculated to test the discretion and firmness of the most resolute and determined.

On the 15th and 16th the forts were mined and all things held in readiness for the work of destruction. Huge masses of sandstone were at various points detached and made ready for a blast of powder to turn them into the road, and at other points the roads were mined and great pits blown out after the rear guard had passed. During the 17th, the heavy guns captured with the post, together with two thirty-pounder Parrotts. were rendered useless. And at sundown that day the head of the retreating column passed through the Gap from the Tennessee side of the works. At 2 a. m. on the 18th, the re? riled out, leaving only Capt. Wm. F. Patterson and his squad of pioneers to spring the mines and accomplish the work of destruction. His orders were to remain forty minutes after the rear had passed before applying the torch. The night was moonless, and the heavens overcast with clouds, shutting out the feeble rays of the glimmering star-light, and darkness and gloom brooded over mountain and valley.

On the expiration of the appointed time and at an agreed signal, the mines were in rapid succession exploded, and between the detonations which shook mountain and valle}' a debris of earth and sandstone was rained over the

*When this paper was written Mr. Greeley was living. 
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hillsides. The destruction of the commissary buildings and the magazines was left for the last sad act. The burning of these illuminated the road for miles on the retreat. The supply of shot and shell was large, and the intermittent explosion of the latter continued until the head of the column was miles away, and sounded so much like a hotly contested battle that it was repeatedly halted to ascer-taic that the rear was not assailed by pursuing and exulting rebels.

Gen. Morgan reached Manchester on the 19th, and here the first pause in the retreat occurred, the entire column remaining en bivouac for two days to call in all detachments, and to strip for the fight or foot-race, whichsoever it might prove to be.

And here for the first time was witnessed by many of the soldiers the swift, stern, rigorous justice of martial law. A private of the 7th Kentucky Infantry wantonly killed a comrade. He was known to be actuated by malice, as he had indulged in previous threats. The homicide was committed on Friday. Saturday a Court Martial convened, tried, convicted and sentenced him to death, and on Sunday he was shot to death as a murderer in the presence of the assembled army.

Early on Sunday night, the 21st, the work of destruction was resumed. A hundred army wagons had accumulated at Manchester. There were no animals to take them through, and they were burned.

At 1 a. m. on the 22d the march was resumed. The brigade t