General Halleck, February 25th, telegraphs me:  “General Grant will send no more forces to Clarksville.  General Smith’s division will come to Fort Henry, or a point higher up on the Tennessee River; transports will also be collected at Paducah.  Two gunboats in Tennessee River with Grant.  General Grant will immediately have small garrisons detailed for Forts Henry and Donelson, and all other forces made ready for the field”

From your letter of the 28th, I learn you were at Fort Donelson, and General Smith at Nashville, from which I infer you could not have received orders.  Halleck’s telegram of last night says:  “Who sent Smith’s division to Nashville?  I ordered it across to the Tennessee, where they are wanted immediately.  Order them back.  Send all spare transports up Tennessee to General Grant.”  Evidently the general supposes you to be on the Tennessee.  I am sending all the transports I can find for you, reporting to General Sherman for orders to go up the Cumberland for you, or, if you march across to Fort Henry, then to send them up the Tennessee.

G. W. CULLUM, Brigadier-General.

On the 4th came this dispatch: 

To Major-General U. S. GRANT

You will place Major-General C. F. Smith in command of expedition, and remain yourself at Fort Henry.  Why do you not obey my orders to report strength and positions of your command?

H. W. HALLECK, Major-General.

Halleck was evidently working himself into a passion, but he was too far from the seat of war to make due allowance for the actual state of facts.  General Grant had done so much, that General Halleck should have been patient.  Meantime, at Paducah, I was busy sending boats in every direction—­some under the orders of General Halleck, others of General Cullum; others for General Grant, and still others for General Buell at Nashville; and at the same time I was organizing out of the new troops that were arriving at Paducah a division for myself when allowed to take the field, which I had been promised by General Halleck.  His purpose was evidently to operate up the Tennessee River, to break up Bear Creek Bridge and the railroad communications between the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers, and no doubt he was provoked that Generals Grant and Smith had turned aside to Nashville.  In the mean time several of the gunboats, under Captain Phelps, United States Navy, had gone up the Tennessee as far as Florence, and on their return had reported a strong Union feeling among the people along the river.  On the 10th of March, having received the necessary orders from General Halleck, I embarked my division at Paducah.  It was composed of four brigades.  The First, commanded by Colonel S. G. Hicks, was composed of the Fortieth Illinois, Forty-sixth Ohio, and Morton’s Indiana Battery, on the boats Sallie List, Golden Gate, J. B. Adams, and Lancaster.

The Second Brigade, Colonel D. Stuart, was composed of the Fifty-fifth Illinois, Seventy-first Ohio, and Fifty-fourth Ohio; embarked on the Hannibal, Universe, Hazel Dell, Cheeseman, and Prairie Rose.