In the general conversation which followed, I remember taking a large map of the United States, and assuming the people of the whole South to be in rebellion, that our task was to subdue them, showed that McClellan was on the left, having a frontage of less than a hundred miles, and Fremont the right, about the same; whereas I, the centre, had from the Big Sandy to Paducah, over three hundred miles of frontier; that McClellan had a hundred thousand men, Fremont sixty thousand, whereas to me had only been allotted about eighteen thousand.  I argued that, for the purpose of defense we should have sixty thousand men at once, and for offense, would need two hundred thousand, before we were done.  Mr. Cameron, who still lay on the bed, threw up his hands and exclaimed, “Great God! where are they to come from?” I asserted that there were plenty of men at the North, ready and willing to come, if he would only accept their services; for it was notorious that regiments had been formed in all the Northwestern States, whose services had been refused by the War Department, on the ground that they would not be needed.  We discussed all these matters fully, in the most friendly spirit, and I thought I had aroused Mr. Cameron to a realization of the great war that was before us, and was in fact upon us.  I heard him tell General Thomas to make a note of our conversation, that he might attend to my requests on reaching Washington.  We all spent the evening together agreeably in conversation, many Union citizens calling to pay their respects, and the next morning early we took the train for Frankfort; Mr. Cameron and party going on to Cincinnati and Washington, and I to Camp Dick Robinson to see General Thomas and the troops there.

I found General Thomas in a tavern, with most of his regiments camped about him.  He had sent a small force some miles in advance toward Cumberland Gap, under Brigadier-General Schoepf.  Remaining there a couple of days, I returned to Louisville; on the 22d of October, General Negley’s brigade arrived in boats from Pittsburg, was sent out to Camp Nolin; and the Thirty-seventh Indiana., Colonel Hazzard, and Second Minnesota, Colonel Van Cleve, also reached Louisville by rail, and were posted at Elizabethtown and Lebanon Junction.  These were the same troops which had been ordered by Mr. Cameron when at Louisville, and they were all that I received thereafter, prior to my leaving Kentucky.  On reaching Washington, Mr. Cameron called on General Thomas, as he himself afterward told me, to submit his memorandum of events during his absence, and in that memorandum was mentioned my insane request for two hundred thousand men.  By some newspaper man this was seen and published, and, before I had the least conception of it, I was universally published throughout the country as “insane, crazy,” etc.  Without any knowledge, however, of this fact, I had previously addressed to the Adjutant-General of the army at Washington this letter: