Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Gen. C. F. Smith's Operations


The army under Gen. C. F. Smith, (Paducah Smith, as he used to be called) which left Fort Henry several days ago, for an expedition up the Tennessee river, has disembarked at Savannah, 14 miles north of the State line.  Reports say that Gen. Lew. Wallace’s division had marched across to Purdy, McNairy County, which is six miles west of Savannah, burning a bridge and taking up the track of the railroad connecting Corinth, Mississippi, with Jackson, Tennessee.  The bridge destroyed we take to be a structure over the Hatchie river.  The railroad referred to must have been lately put in running order by the rebels, as it was still unfinished but a short time ago.  The destruction of the bridge and track seems to have been very timely, preventing a train of the Confederate troops, which Gen. Johnston was sending to the relief of Island No. 10, from going up.

We suppose the next move of Gen. Smith will be overland to Corinth, which is about twenty-two miles from Savannah, on the Memphis and Charleston railroad.  The distance from Corinth to Memphis, we observe is stated in some of the newspapers to be sixty miles, but the time table of the road itself makes it ninety-three.  The possession of Corinth will cut the communication between Johnston’s and Beauregard’s forces, and this will be all that Gen. Smith will need to do until the rebels fall back upon Forts Pillow and Randolph.  The Confederates are already hemmed in on three sides, so far as the Mississippi Valley is concerned, and it is a gone case with them. – Mo. Repub

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 22, 1862, p. 2

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