further up the river. The Union loss regiment. He was with General Banks was fifty killed, four hundred and ninety- in Virginia, previous to his appearance three wounded, and seventeen missing.* in the army of General Grant, with the Major-General Edward Otto Cresap rank of brigadier. Colonel Joseph L. Ord, the son of an officer in the war of Kirby Smith, a nephew of the confeder1812, was born in Maryland in 1818. ate General Edward Kirby Smith enHe graduated at West Point in 1839 gaged in the invasion of Kentucky, was with an appointment in the 3d artillery. a graduate of West Point of 1857 in He had since been actively employed in the engineer corps. He was in comthe national service in Florida, during mand of the 43d Ohio regiment and had the war with Mexico, in California, and rendered valuable service in the enginthe territories on the Pacific. He was eering operations at Island No. 10. The appointed brigadier-general of volun- confederate general Villipigne was a nateers in the autumn of 1861, command- tive of South Carolina, and a graduate ed a brigade of General McCall's divis- of West Point of 1854. He then held ion before Washington, and led his com- the rank of 1st lieutenant of 2d dragoons, mand in the engagement with Stuart's when in March, 1861, he resigned to entroops at Dranesville in December. He gage in the rebellion. He was wounded was promoted a major-general of volun- at the bombardment of Fort Pickens in teers in the following May, and not long November, was made a brigadier-general, after joined the army of General Hal- and held the command of Fort Wright on leck in the West. General Stephen A. the Mississippi, after the capture of which Hurlbut was a native of Charleston, he acted with the confederate army in South Carolina. Educated to the pro- the Southwest. Subsequently to this fession of the law, he had served in a battle of Corinth he was in command at regiment of his state in the Florida war. Mobile. He died the following month In 1845, at the age of thirty, he re- of pneumonia at Port Hudson, Louisiana. moved to Illinois, practiced his profes- On receipt of the news of the engagesion at Belvidere, Boone county, and ments at Corinth, President Lincoln forwas several times elected to the state warded a brief dispatch to General legislature. At the outbreak of the re- Grant. "I congratulate you and all bellion he was appointed a brigadier- concerned in your recent battles and general of volunteers. He was with the victories. He was with the victories. I especially regret the death army of Grant in its first advance into of General Hackleman, and am very Tennessee, was prominently engaged at anxious to know the condition of GenPittsburg Landing, and, previous to the eral Oglesby, who is an intimate personengagement just noticed, was in com- al friend." The latter officer-Richard mand at Memphis. James Oglesby-who, as we have seen, was wounded in the first day's fight, when he led his force to meet the enemy on the Chewalla road, was a native of Kentucky. He had studied law at Springfield in Illinois, commenced practice, and turned aside from his profession to serve as lieutenant in Colonel Baker's regiment of volunteers in the Mexican war. He had afterward resided in California, returned to Illinois, resumed his profession, been elected to the state senate, and at the breaking out

Brigadier General Pleasant Adam Hackleman, of the Union army, who fell in the engagement at Corinth, was a native of Indiana, and had acquired reputation in the state as a lawyer and editor of the Rushville Republican. A republican in politics, he had been sent to the Peace Conference at Washington in 1861, and when the war broke out, served as colonel of the 10th Indiana

*Report of General Halleck. December, 1862. Ante vol. ii. p. 185.

GENERAL OGLESBY'S FAREWELL TO HIS COMRADES.

Cornyn, and Philips.

Amongst those to act upon the rebel flank. This expe

of former days I well remember Logan, dition, which set out from Helena on the McArthur, Ransom, Lawler, the lamented Wallace, and others equally worthy. With such men to lead and inspire you we cannot fail. The proud army of the Great West, with scarcely a reverse, presents to the nation a bouquet of victories worthy the gratitude and admiration of the whole people. You may well say, this war cannot last much longer. You, who have seen traitors with haughty pretension crouch at your feet for mercy; the mansions of the domineering rich turned into boarding-houses, and the chivalry turned landlord and lady for the entertainment of Yankee officers. Those who have spurned, beg for favors at your hands, and swearing a new allegiance for protection to property, meanly violate it to serve a rebel. It is fit and proper that such a people, who foolishly wage such a war, should at last meet face to face the black race of the South, bend to the rod of the slaves they have so long outraged, and tremble before the men proclaimed by them to have no rights. A just retribution, one they cannot avoid; the humiliation their own bold treason has brought upon them; a resort that needs no justification in the sight of God or man, for it is right."

The second battle at Corinth was followed by no immediate advance of the Union army into Mississippi, General Grant being content to keep open his communications with Columbus, and hold his positions at Jackson and Bolivar in Western Tennessee. At the end of November, however, his army, which had been recruited, was again set in motion southward, and at the beginning of December it had taken possession of Holly Springs on the Mississippi Central railroad, and advanced some miles beyond to confront the enemy, under General Van Dorn, on the Tallahatchie river. To cooperate with this movement, General Curtis sent a detachment from his forces at Helena, on the Mississippi river,

27th November, under General Alvin P. Hovey, an enterprising officer, who had entered the service at the beginning of the war as major of an Indiana regiment, and had rapidly risen to a brigadiership, consisted of about 6,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. The latter were commanded by Brigadier-General C. C. Washburn, a native of Maine, who had made his home in Wisconsin, represented that state in Congress, and on the breaking out of the war raised a regiment of cavalry, from the colonelcy of which he had been elevated to his present rank. Crossing the low alluvial bottom-land from Delta below Helena, on the Mississippi, General Washburn reached the Tallahatchie river at its junction with the Coldwater, the evening of the next day. There Captain Walker, in command of a detachment of the 1st Indiana cavalry, after nightfall, surprised a body of rebel cavalry, with a working party of negroes, encamped on the opposite side of the river. 'They were laughing, talking, singing, and enjoying themselves right merrily," says General Washburn in his report, when "Captain Walker immediately brought his guns to bear at a distance of about three hundred yards, and opened out with all force at once, while the dismounted men poured a volley into them from the river bank. The enemy fled with the utmost precipitation, leaving many horses and arms upon the ground. The next day, five of them, very seriously wounded, were found in houses by the roadside, and the negroes reported that they had three killed during the engagement." The following day, General Washburn having constructed a bridge across the Tallahatchie, set out in the direction of Grenada, fifty-six miles distant, with the intention of breaking up the railway communications of the enemy. At Yockna creek he encountered a rebel picket force which retreated with their main body to

on the country, on its return to the camp
of General Grant, at Oxford, reported
having "marched about two hundred
miles, worked two days at the railroad,
captured about one hundred and fifty
prisoners, destroyed thirty-four miles of
important railroad, and a large amount
of public stores of the enemy, and re-
turned, passing round an enemy of nine
to our one, without having a man killed,
wounded, or captured."*
In this way
confidence was gained by the Union
forces, and a practical knowledge of the
interior of Mississippi, important for fu-
ture operations.

Panola. At daylight, on the 30th, Gen- the bridges between Saltillo and that eral Washburn was at Preston, sixteen place. The expedition, which subsisted miles from Grenada. From this vicinity he sent parties who destroyed several bridges, and the telegraph wires on the Mississippi and Tennessee, and the Mississippi and Central railroad. The latter service was performed by Major Birge, who, with one hundred men of the 9th Illinois cavalry, armed with carbines, crowbars and axes, crossed the country, through the woods and canebrakes. The enemy in their retreat before Grant, being now at Grenada and its approaches, and aroused by General Washburn's proceedings, the latter avoided them by retiring a short distance, to Mitchell's Cross-roads, where he received a reinforcement from General Hovey, of about 1,200 infantry, with four field pieces. With these, a few days after, he came up with a body of Texan cavalry at Oakland, after the first encounter, in which a gun was taken by the enemy, driving them through the town, wounding many severely, and capturing a number of prisoners, horses and arms, and 5,000 rounds of minié ball cartridges. Here General Washburn received a dispatch from General Hovey recalling him to Helena, whither he returned, having in six days marched two hundred miles in a hostile country, surrounded by the enemy in force.*

Another cavalry scout, not inferior in spirit to that of General Washburn, was made in the middle of December, by Colonel T. L. Dickey, at the order of General Grant, on the Mobile and Ohio railroad. His instructions were "to strike the line as far south as practicable, and destroy it as much as possible." Accordingly, while another party was sent to engage the attention of the enemy on the Mississippi Central, Colonel Dickey, on the 14th, with a picked body of Illinois cavalry, took the road for Okolona, and succeeded in destroying

General Washburn to Captain Phillips, A. A. G. December 4, 1862.

The effect of the movements of Grant and his supporters from the Mississippi, had been the withdrawal of the Confederates to Grenada, and even beyond. The pursuit was not continued, Grant finding" the roads too impassable to get up supplies for a longer continuance of it." His long line of communication through Western Tennessee to Columbus, in fact offered a means of annoyance to the enemy, which he was not long in availing himself of. Towards the end of December, simultaneous attacks were made upon various points at Holly Springs, Davis' Mills, in the vicinity of Jackson, Tennessee, at Humboldt, and Trenton. At the last place, and at Holly Springs, a number of prisoners were taken and paroled, and a large quantity of stores destroyed. The attack upon Holly Springs, on the 20th of December, was led by the Confederate General Van Dorn himself, and certainly afforded a very complete illustration of a rebel raid. The enemy in force entered the town at daybreak, and readily overcame the scattered guards and pickets, when Colonel Murphy, who was in command, unprepared for conflict, surrendered the place, not, however, without resistance being made by the Illinois cavalry, a

634

*

portion of whom cut their way through diarrhea, to start with him on the road." the numbers of the foe, and escaped the And it was not till they had fallen in the parole which awaited the infantry. The street, that the continued remonstrances work of pillage and destruction was of the surgeons were listened to. While promptly commenced and systematically the fearful conflagration was going on, carried out. The railway depots and the northern cotton buyers, of whom property, a foundry, the arsenal, full of there were a number in the place, were military stores, a vast quantity of cotton, assembled and compelled to pay over the property of government and private the ample funds with which they were "in provided. The southern ladies, however, owners, and the armory hospital, "in provided. violation of an express promise, and of by their kindness in taking charge of a all rules of civilized warfare," were at portion of this property, saved consideronce consigned to the flames. An at- able sums from the grasp of the insatiate The surrender at Holly tempt was even made to destroy the Van Dorn. general hospital, located in the main Springs was severely censured by Gensquare, and which at the time contained eral Grant, who had warned Colonel over five hundred sick. The report of Murphy of the approach of the enemy, the United States Medical Director, Sur- and who at the very time had sent reingeon Wirtz, narrates the fearful suffering forcements on their way to his aid. Colto which the inmates were exposed. onel Jacob Fry, commanding at Trenton, Barrels of powder and boxes of shells gallantly, though unavailingly, opposed and cartridges were piled up and set fire the attack on Trenton, which was led by to in front of the building. Before the the rebel General Forrest. sick could be removed the walls and windows were riddled with flying balls and shell, and an explosion took place wounding twenty men, and setting fire to a number of buildings on the square. To add to the horrors of this pandemonium, a rebel cavalry officer forced a hundred and fifty sick soldiers from their beds to rise, and fall in line, and notwithstanding the expostulations of the medical officer, "actually made the poor fellows, suffering from typhoid fever, pneumonia and Holly Springs. December 30, 1862.

The effect of these attacks was to confine General Grant to the borders The public, ignorant of Tennessee. of the difficulties in his way, had looked for the immediate reduction of Vicksburg; but that was an undertaking destined to tax the resources of the Union armies in more than one future campaign.

* H. R. Wirtz, Surgeon, U. S. A., Medical Director, 13th Army Corps, to Lieutenant-Colonel Rawlings, A. A. G.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

GENERAL MCCLELLAN'S CAMPAIGN-BATTLES OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN AND ANTIETAM IN

MARYLAND-SEPTEMBER, 1862.

WHEN General Pope at the end of a campaign of unintermitted toil, marked by the persistent and courageous efforts of his overmatched forces, withdrew his wasted army within the defences of Washington he found there General

McClellan in authority; that officer after a brief interval of inaction since his arrival from the James River while his troops were reinforcing the army of Pope, having, on the 2d of September, been ordered by General Halleck to the com