Norfolk [date torn off.]
The colonel talks some to-night about a forward movement,
and two regiments have come across the river from the Kentucky side this
evening, the Iowa 2d and 7th. The 17th are still opposite us and I have seen
none of them yet. Our cavalry scouts are fighting now more or less every day.
Yesterday a party of the Iowa 7th were out hunting bushwhackers when they were
attacked by a company of horsemen of whom they killed four. One of our men was
shot while returning from a scout. They routed the enemy but came back and
reported four of their men missing, but the lost four have all come in to-day.
Our men think they finished a couple at least but 'tis questionable. We are all
again bored to death with lying still, but patience and we'll get what we want
in time. We have the report here to-day that Colonel Mulligan has capitulated
to Price, Jackson & Co. at Lexington. This, if true, will certainly retard
our movement down the Mississippi. I'm getting perfectly indifferent about
Fremont's being superseded or as to who has the command. It seems to me that
none of our commanders are doing anything. With at least 75,000 troops at
Paducah, Cairo and in Missouri to allow the gallant Mulligan to be forced to
surrender is perfectly shameful. It's disheartening to a soldier, I tell you.
Let them go on, if this war goes against us 'twill be the fault of our
commanders and not of the men, sure. Yesterday information was brought our
colonel that a battery was in course of erection on the Kentucky shore six
miles below us. We were put on steamboats 2,000 or 2,500 strong and preceded by
two gunboats scooted down, when within a mile of the place our regiment was
landed and we marched down but of course found no battery.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an
Illinois Soldier, p. 32-3
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