Colonel Murphy was the officer who, two months before, had evacuated Iuka on the approach of the enemy.  General Rosecrans denounced him for the act and desired to have him tried and punished.  I sustained the colonel at the time because his command was a small one compared with that of the enemy—­not one-tenth as large—­and I thought he had done well to get away without falling into their hands.  His leaving large stores to fall into Price’s possession I looked upon as an oversight and excused it on the ground of inexperience in military matters.  He should, however, have destroyed them.  This last surrender demonstrated to my mind that Rosecrans’ judgment of Murphy’s conduct at Iuka was correct.  The surrender of Holly Springs was most reprehensible and showed either the disloyalty of Colonel Murphy to the cause which he professed to serve, or gross cowardice.

After the war was over I read from the diary of a lady who accompanied General Pemberton in his retreat from the Tallahatchie, that the retreat was almost a panic.  The roads were bad and it was difficult to move the artillery and trains.  Why there should have been a panic I do not see.  No expedition had yet started down the Mississippi River.  Had I known the demoralized condition of the enemy, or the fact that central Mississippi abounded so in all army supplies, I would have been in pursuit of Pemberton while his cavalry was destroying the roads in my rear.

After sending cavalry to drive Van Dorn away, my next order was to dispatch all the wagons we had, under proper escort, to collect and bring in all supplies of forage and food from a region of fifteen miles east and west of the road from our front back to Grand Junction, leaving two months’ supplies for the families of those whose stores were taken.  I was amazed at the quantity of supplies the country afforded.  It showed that we could have subsisted off the country for two months instead of two weeks without going beyond the limits designated.  This taught me a lesson which was taken advantage of later in the campaign when our army lived twenty days with the issue of only five days’ rations by the commissary.  Our loss of supplies was great at Holly Springs, but it was more than compensated for by those taken from the country and by the lesson taught.

The news of the capture of Holly Springs and the destruction of our supplies caused much rejoicing among the people remaining in Oxford.  They came with broad smiles on their faces, indicating intense joy, to ask what I was going to do now without anything for my soldiers to eat.  I told them that I was not disturbed; that I had already sent troops and wagons to collect all the food and forage they could find for fifteen miles on each side of the road.  Countenances soon changed, and so did the inquiry.  The next was, “What are we to do?” My response was that we had endeavored to feed ourselves from our own northern resources while visiting them; but their friends in gray had been uncivil enough to destroy what we had brought along, and it could not be expected that men, with arms in their hands, would starve in the midst of plenty.  I advised them to emigrate east, or west, fifteen miles and assist in eating up what we left.