Assistant Adjutant-General, Bowling Green, Ky.:
SIR: I feel it my
duty frankly to say that the failure to receive the reserves and supplies I
ordered up a month ago, and upon which in part the plan of campaign was
predicated, has given and is likely to give serious embarrassment. I now
receive no responses to communications addressed to Knoxville connected with
the most important details. I have five regiments north of the river and two
south. The strength of the enemy is unknown, but it is reported by the country
people to be very large. There are now, I learn in East Tennessee, besides the
force at Cumberland Gap, eight full regiments and the Georgia battalion, a
battery of artillery, and eight cavalry companies. I beg respectfully to say
that it cannot be that half this force is required there. On the other hand,
were this column strengthened properly, the enemy could not venture to pass
London to attack Cumberland Gap. We could open the Cumberland and drive the
enemy from Somerset and Columbia.
I trouble you with
these suggestions, about which I feel the deepest concern, because I learn that
Major-General Crittenden has gone to Richmond.
* Order not found.
SOURCE: The
War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 7 (Serial No. 7), p. 786
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