SIR: On my way here
to-day an express overtook me with your order to send two regiments from my
command to Camp Trousdale. I immediately caused orders to be given to
Fourteenth Mississippi Regiment, Colonel Baldwin, and Third East Tennessee
Regiment, Colonel Lillard, to move to Camp Trousdale, those two regiments being
on the line of the railroad and most readily to be brought to the position
designated.
I have now four
regiments here and one at Cumberland Gap. I have here one 6-pounder field
battery of six guns and four companies of cavalry—eight other cavalry companies
on the way. There are now but two infantry regiments left in East Tennessee;
one, the Alabama regiment, with more than 400 sick. There are five cavalry
companies left for that service.
An advanced force
sent out last night, about 800 strong, entered Barboursville, 18 miles from
here, about daylight, where they found about 300 of the enemy, and a fight
ensued, in which we killed 12 and took 2 prisoners. We lost I killed,
Lieutenant Powell, of Colonel Cummings' regiment, 1 fatally wounded, and 3
slightly wounded. The enemy fled precipitately. The number of his wounded
unknown.
Col. J. A. Battle
commanded the detachment, making a march of 34 miles and dispersing this
detachment of the enemy within a period of twenty hours. He destroyed their
encampment, called Camp Andrew Johnson, and captured about 25 arms. Two
prisoners had been taken a day or two before, one of whom was bearing a letter
from an East Tennessee captain in the Lincoln camp at Hoskins' Cross-Roads to
his wife, in which the writer states that the strength of that camp is 15,000
and still rapidly increasing. We now have a report from the country people that
they are 20,000 strong.
My only engineer
officer understanding military engineering has resigned and gone home.
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