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Page 26
In the mean time the citizens, believing that General Johnson would
make a stand, commenced a fortification, four miles from the city,
on the south side of the Cumberland, for the purpose of resisting
the advance of the gunboats. When it was announced that no defence
would be made, the people were highly indignant, because the
suddenness of this decision left the citizens no time for the
removal of their remaining goods. As the Confederate authorities
could not remove all their commissary stores, the warehouses were
thrown open, and the poor came and carried off thousands of dollars'
worth. Some of these people subsequently set up boarding-houses and
fed Union soldiers from the provisions thus obtained.
At length the railroad bridge and the gunboats were burned, and the
suspension bridge cut down. An act of pure vandalism was this last,
as it neither aided the Rebel retreat nor delayed the Federal
advance. Curses against General Floyd and Governor Harris were loud
and deep for this act, and General A.S. Johnson never recovered the
reputation lost during this retreat.
My company was constantly on scout duty, guarding the roads on the
north side of the river, protecting the rear of the retreating
hosts, and watching for the coming of Buell's advance. This whole
retreat, from Bowling Green to Corinth, a distance of nearly three
hundred miles as traveled by the army, and occupying six weeks, was
one of the most trying that an army was ever called upon to perform
in its own country and among friends. The army was not far from
60,000 strong, after General George B. Crittenden's forces were
added to it at Murfreesboro. The season of the year was the worst
possible in that latitude. Rain fell, sometimes sleet, four days out
of seven. The roads were bad enough at best, but under such
a tramping of horses and cutting of wheels as the march
produced, soon became horrible. About a hundred regiments were
numbered in the army. The full complement of wagons to each
regiment--twenty-four--would give above two thousand wagons. Imagine
such a train of heavily loaded wagons, passing along a single mud
road, accompanied by 55,000 infantry and 5000 horsemen, in the midst
of rain and sleet, day after day, camping at night in wet fields or
dripping woods, without sufficient food adapted to their wants, and
often without any tents, the men lying down in their wet clothes,
and rising chilled through and through; and let this continue for
six weeks of incessant retreat, and you get a feeble glimpse of what
we endured. The army suffered great loss from sickness and some from
desertion; some regiments leaving Bowling Green with six or seven
hundred men, and reaching Corinth with but half of this number. The
towns through which we passed were left full of sick men, and many
were sent off to hospitals at some distance from our route.
One of the most desperate marches men were ever called to encounter,
was performed by General Breckenridge's division between
Fayetteville and Huntsville. They moved at ten A.M., and marched
till one o'clock next morning, making thirty miles over a terrible
road, amid driving rain and sleet during the whole time. The reason
for this desperate work was, that a day's march lay between the
rear-guard and the main body of General Johnson's army, and there
was danger that it would be cut off. It cost the general hundreds of
men. One-fourth of the division dropped out of the ranks unable to
proceed, and were taken up by the guard, until every wagon and
ambulance was loaded, and then scores were deserted on the road, who
straggled in on following days, or made their way back to their
homes in Tennessee or Kentucky.
This retreat left a good deal of desolation in its track; for
although the officers endeavored to restrain their men, yet they
must have wood; and where the forest was sometimes a mile from the
camping ground, and fences were near, the fences suffered; and where
sheep and hogs abounded when we came, bones and bristles were more
abundant after we left. Horses were needed in the army; and after it
left, none were seen on the farms. And then the impressed soldiers,
judging from my own feelings, were not over-scrupulous in guarding
the property of Rebels. The proud old planters, who had aided in
bringing on the rebellion, were unwillingly compelled to bear part
of its burdens.
This long and disastrous retreat was rendered a necessity as soon as
Fort Henry, on the Tennessee river, was taken by the Federal forces,
as this river was opened, and they could throw an army in the rear
of the Confederates as far south as Florence, in Alabama, within a
few days. Indeed the Confederate officers expected this, and
wondered that the Federals failed to do it immediately, as this
movement would have cut off Johnson's retreat, and have forced him
to surrender, fight, or escape eastward through Knoxville, giving up
the whole West to the loyal forces. The delay of the United States
forces to take Fort Donelson allowed General A. Sidney Johnson to
reach Corinth by March. Here General Beauregard, in command of the
army of the Mississippi valley, and already there in person,
determined to make a stand.
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