Harris's (B) and
Ewing's (C) companies arrived from Knoxville and rejoined the rest of McNairy's
Battalion at Camp Buckner.
Besides our
battalion, General Zollicoffer now had with him at Camp Buckner four regiments
of infantry (Statham, Rains, Cummings, and Battle), five cavalry companies
(three of Branner's Battalion and two of Brazelton's), and one artillery
company of six-pounders, commanded by Captain Rutledge. Colonel Newman's
Regiment was at Cumberland Gap. The Sixteenth Alabama (Wood) and the Fourth
Tennessee (Churchwell) Regiments of infantry, and McClellan's Battalion of
cavalry and half of Branner's were left at Knoxville: There were stationed at
various points in East Tennessee some other troops, mostly unarmed.
About six days
previous to this, General Zollicoffer had, according to instructions received
from General A. S. Johnston, ordered the Fourteenth Mississippi (Colonel
Baldwin) and the Third East Tennessee (Colonel Lillard) Regiments of infantry
to move to Camp Trousdale, to reinforce General S. B. Buckner, who was then in
command of the Central Division of Kentucky, with headquarters at Bowling
Green.*
General Zollicoffer
had learned that there was a large quantity of salt at the salt works on Goose
Creek, in Clay County, thirty-five miles north of Camp Buckner and eighteen
miles east of a camp of Home Guards variously estimated at from six hundred to
fifteen hundred—at Laurel Bridge, in Laurel County, some thirty-eight miles
north-west of Camp Buckner and two miles south-east of London. As our General
had decided to send a detachment to capture the salt above named, and also
another detachment in the direction of this Federal encampment at Laurel Bridge
to attract attention and mask the movement of the first, he therefore issued
the following special orders:
- Brigadier-General Felix K. Zollicoffer, September 25, 1861
* The above order
fell into the hands of the Federals (how I know not) and on the 3d October it
was sent by T. T. Garrard, who was Colonel of the Third Kentucky Regiment and
in command at Camp Wildcat, or Rockcastle Hills, to General G. H. Thomas, who
was in command at Camp Dick Robinson, some thirty-five miles beyond Wildcat. At
the same time Garrard wrote to Thomas thus (italics mine):
“I have no
information in regard to the rebels more than I wrote you, except the inclosed
order of General Zollicoffer, which I have no doubt is genuine. I could not
doubt it, because they carried out the instructions to the litter." - Rebellion Records, Vol. IV., p. 291.
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