Sunday, December 25, 2022

Diary of Private Richard R. Hancock: Wednesday, November 27, 1861

Our battalion marched (about fourteen miles) from Camp McGinnis to within five miles of Albany, the county seat of Clinton County, Kentucky.

From his headquarters, thirteen miles west of Monticello, Zollicoffer wrote, under the above date, to General S. Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector-General, Richmond, Virginia, thus:

Two regiments cross the river to-day at Mill Springs to endeavor to cut off eight hundred of the enemy at Waitsborough, nine miles above. A mail from Columbia to Monticello has been captured, by which we learn that there are two battalions of cavalry and two regiments of infantry at Columbia.


They had heard of my advance and heard my force was nine thousand. This they doubt, but think if it is true they will have to retreat for want of numbers. I learn that General Thomas is at Crab Orchard, but have no reliable intelligence of forces other than those at Columbia and Waitsborough.


I have sent detachments of cavalry to examine the ferries at Burkesville, and Creelsborough, seventeen miles above Burkesville, also to get more particular information of the ferries and roads crossing at Dorothea Landing and Horse-Shoe Bottom. It is now certain there is no enemy this side of the Cumberland.*

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* Rebellion Records, Vol. VII., p. 706.

SOURCE: Richard R. Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, p. 85

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