In the mean time the citizens, believing that General Johnson would make a stand, commenced a fortification, four miles from the city, on the south side of the Cumberland, for the purpose of resisting the advance of the gunboats.  When it was announced that no defence would be made, the people were highly indignant, because the suddenness of this decision left the citizens no time for the removal of their remaining goods.  As the Confederate authorities could not remove all their commissary stores, the warehouses were thrown open, and the poor came and carried off thousands of dollars’ worth.  Some of these people subsequently set up boarding-houses and fed Union soldiers from the provisions thus obtained.

At length the railroad bridge and the gunboats were burned, and the suspension bridge cut down.  An act of pure vandalism was this last, as it neither aided the Rebel retreat nor delayed the Federal advance.  Curses against General Floyd and Governor Harris were loud and deep for this act, and General A.S.  Johnson never recovered the reputation lost during this retreat.

My company was constantly on scout duty, guarding the roads on the north side of the river, protecting the rear of the retreating hosts, and watching for the coming of Buell’s advance.  This whole retreat, from Bowling Green to Corinth, a distance of nearly three hundred miles as traveled by the army, and occupying six weeks, was one of the most trying that an army was ever called upon to perform in its own country and among friends.  The army was not far from 60,000 strong, after General George B. Crittenden’s forces were added to it at Murfreesboro.  The season of the year was the worst possible in that latitude.  Rain fell, sometimes sleet, four days out of seven.  The roads were bad enough at best, but under such a tramping of horses and cutting of wheels as the march produced, soon became horrible.  About a hundred regiments were numbered in the army.  The full complement of wagons to each regiment—­twenty-four—­would give above two thousand wagons.  Imagine such a train of heavily loaded wagons, passing along a single mud road, accompanied by 55,000 infantry and 5000 horsemen, in the midst of rain and sleet, day after day, camping at night in wet fields or dripping woods, without sufficient food adapted to their wants, and often without any tents, the men lying down in their wet clothes, and rising chilled through and through; and let this continue for six weeks of incessant retreat, and you get a feeble glimpse of what we endured.  The army suffered great loss from sickness and some from desertion; some regiments leaving Bowling Green with six or seven hundred men, and reaching Corinth with but half of this number.  The towns through which we passed were left full of sick men, and many were sent off to hospitals at some distance from our route.