By the middle of November the enemy, having assembled his forces in Middle Tennessee, showed considerable boldness, and it became necessary to rearrange the Union lines; so my troops were moved to the south side of the river, out on the Murfreesboro’ pike, to Mill Creek, distant from Nashville about seven miles.  While we were in camp on Mill Creek the army was reorganized, and General Joshua W. Sill, at his own request, was assigned to my division, and took command of Colonel Nicholas Greusel’s brigade.  My division became at the same time the Third Division, Right Wing, Fourteenth Army Corps, its three brigades of four regiments each being respectively commanded by General Sill, Colonel Frederick Schaefer and Colonel Dan McCook; but a few days later Colonel George W. Roberts’s brigade, from the garrison at Nashville, was substituted for McCook’s.

General Sill was a classmate of mine at the Military Academy, having graduated in 1853.  On graduating he was appointed to the Ordnance Corps, and served in that department at various arsenals and ordnance depots throughout the country till early in 1861, when he resigned to accept a professorship of mathematics and civil engineering at the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute.  At the breaking out of the war he immediately tendered his services to the Government, and soon rose to the colonelcy of the Thirty-Third Ohio Volunteers, and afterward to the rank of brigadier-general.  I knew him well, and was glad that he came to my division, though I was very loth to relieve Colonel Greusel, of the Thirty-Sixth Illinois, who had already indicated much military skill and bravery, and at the battle of Perryville had handled his men with the experience of a veteran.  Sill’s modesty and courage were exceeded only by a capacity that had already been demonstrated in many practical ways, and his untimely death, almost within a month of his joining me, abruptly closed a career which, had it been prolonged a little more, not only would have shed additional lustre on his name, but would have been of marked benefit to his country.

Colonel Schaefer, of the Second Missouri Infantry, had been absent on sick-leave during the Kentucky campaign, but about this date he returned to duty, and by seniority fell in command of the second brigade.  He was of German birth, having come from Baden, where, prior to 1848, he had been a non-commissioned officer in the service of his State.  He took part as an insurgent in the so-called revolution which occurred at Baden in that year, and, compelled to emigrate on the suppression of the insurrection, made his way to this country and settled in St. Louis.  Here the breaking out of the war found him, and through the personal interest which General Sigel took in him he was commissioned a colonel of volunteers.  He had had a pretty fair education, a taste for the military profession, and was of tall and slender build, all of which gave him a student-like appearance.  He was extremely excitable and nervous when anticipating a crisis, but always calmed down to cool deliberation when the critical moment came.  With such a man I could not be less than well satisfied, although the officer whom he replaced—­Colonel Laiboldt —­had performed efficient service and shown much capacity in the recent campaign.