The Army of the Cumberland | Page 6

West Liberty, after a brisk skirmish. The command united at Salyersville and followed the enemy to Prestonburg. At this point Nelson sent the Thirty-third Ohio, with the Kentucky troops and a section of Konkle's battery under Colonel Sill, by a detour to the right to flank the rebel position at Ivy Mountain. Nelson on the next day then advanced with his command on the direct road to Piketon, and encountered the enemy in ambush on the mountain at Ivy Creek. Pushing forward at once with the force under his immediate command, Nelson attacked the enemy, and after a brisk engagement, lasting over an hour, routed them from their cover and drove them in full retreat.
Sill occupied Piketon on the 9th without much opposition. General Nelson arrived there on the 10th, when the rebels leaving the State and retreating through Pound Gap, he was ordered to report with his command to General Buell at Louisville.
On the retirement of General Anderson, as the ranking officer in the department, General Sherman assumed the command. On the 9th of November, by general order from the headquarters of the army, No. 97, the Department of the Ohio was created, "to consist of the States of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, that portion of Kentucky east of the Cumberland river, and the State of Tennessee, and to be commanded by Brigadier-General D. C. Buell, headquarters at Louisville;" and General Sherman was relieved from command at his own request.
Nelson's command being ordered out of East Kentucky, the rebel forces again entered, and in small bands were depredating on Union people in the Big Sandy Valley. The Fourteenth Kentucky under Colonel L. P. Moore was ordered to move from Catlettsburg and advance up the valley. General Buell finding that the rebel force had been largely re-enforced by the advance of General Humphrey Marshall, one of the ablest rebel generals in that part of the country, ordered the Twenty-second Kentucky under Colonel Lindsay from Maysville to join the Fourteenth, and Lindsay was placed in command of the two regiments. Marshall was a graduate of West Point; he had served in the Black Hawk War and had seen service in Mexico as a Colonel of Kentucky cavalry, winning distinction at Buena Vista. He had now entered the State from Virginia through Pound Gap, and had reached a strong natural position near Paintville, where he was rapidly increasing his army, with the intention of raising a sufficient force--already some five thousand--to operate on General Buell's flank and to retard his advance into Tennessee. The Forty-second Ohio, just organized, was in a camp of instruction near Columbus, Ohio, under its Colonel, James A. Garfield. While there, in December, he was ordered by General Buell to move his regiment at once to Catlettsburg, at the mouth of the Big Sandy River, and to report in person to Louisville for orders.
Starting his regiment eastward, from Cincinnati, Garfield, on the 19th of December, reported to General Buell, who informed him that he had been selected to command an expedition to drive Marshall and his forces from Kentucky. That evening Garfield received his orders, which organized the Eighteenth Brigade of the Army of the Ohio, and placed him in command. General Buell with these orders sent a letter of instruction, giving general directions as to the campaign, leaving all matters of detail and the fate of the expedition, however, largely to the discretion of the brigade commander. The latter reached his command on the 24th of December, at Louisa, some twenty-eight miles up the Big Sandy. He then proceeded to concentrate his troops, the main body consisting of his own regiment--the Forty-second Ohio--the Fourteenth Kentucky, and a battalion of Ohio cavalry under Major McLaughlin, which was with him; but these gave only some fifteen hundred men for duty.
The next largest portion of his command was stationed at Paris, Kentucky, under Colonel Cranor, with his regiment, the Fortieth Ohio, 800 strong. Cranor was ordered to join the main body as expeditiously as possible, and to bring with him that portion of Colonel Wolford's Kentucky cavalry stationed at Stanford, consisting of three small battalions under Lieutenant-Colonel Letcher, and to report at Prestonburg. The twenty-second Kentucky was ordered from Maysville, and some three hundred men of that command reported before Garfield reached Paintville. He was also joined by a battalion of west Virginia cavalry under Colonel Bolles. After a toilsome march in mid-winter, Garfield's command, on the 7th of January, drove Marshall's forces from the mouth of Jenny's Creek, and occupied Paintville. On the morning of the 9th, Cranor reported with his command, footsore and exhausted, after a march of over one hundred miles through the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. At noon of the 9th Garfield advanced his command to attack Marshall with his cavalry, pressing the rebels as they fell