He went, taking me and one other staff-officer, to see McClernand, and found that, under an order from the President, he had taken command of the Army of the Mississippi.  He and his staff, of whom I only remember two-Colonels Scates and Braham, assistant adjutant-general and aide-de-camp—­seemed to think they had a big thing, and, so far as I could judge, they had just that.  All hands thought the country expected them to cut their way to the Gulf; and to us, who had just come out of the swamp, the cutting didn’t seem such an easy job as to the new-comers.  Making due allowance for the elevation they seemed to feel in view of their job, everything passed off pleasantly, and we learned that General Grant’s communications had been cut at Holly Springs by the capture of Murphy and his force (at Holly Springs), and that he was either in Memphis by that time or would soon be.  So that, everything considered, it was about as well that we did not get our forces on the bluff’s of Walnut Hill.”

The above statement was sent to General Sherman in a letter dated “Chicago, February 5,1876,” and signed “John H. Hammond.”  Hammond was General Sherman’s assistant adjutant-general at the Chickasaw Bayou.

J. E. Tourtelotte, Colonel and Aide-de-Camp.

On 29th December, 1862, at Chickasaw Bayou, I was in command of the Thirty-first Missouri Volunteer Infantry, First Brigade, First Division, Fifteenth Army Corps (Blair’s brigade).  Colonel Wyman, of the Thirteenth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, having been killed, I was the senior colonel of the brigade.  General Blair rode up to where my regiment lay, and said to me: 

“We are to make a charge here; we will charge in two lines; your regiment will be in the first line, and the Twenty-ninth (Cavender’s) will support you.  Form here in the timber, and move out across the bayou on a double-quick, and go right on to the top of the heights in your front.”  He then told me to await a signal.  I then attempted to make a reconnaissance of the ground over which we would have to charge, and rode out to the open ground in my front, and saw that there was water and soft mud in the bayou, and was fired upon by the sharp-shooters of the enemy, and turned and went back into the woods where my command lay.  Soon after that General Blair came near me, and I told him there was water and mud in the bayou, and I doubted if we could get across.  He answered me that General Morgan told him there was no water nor mud to hinder us.  I remarked that I had seen it myself, and General Morgan, or any one else, could see it if he would risk being shot at pretty lively.  I then told General Blair that it was certain destruction to us if we passed over the abatis upon the open ground where there had once been a corn-field; that we could never reach the base of the hill.  He turned to me and said, “Can’t you take your regiment up there?” I told him, “Yes, I can take my regiment anywhere, because the men do not know