in the large hotel facing the State-House, where the former explained to us that he had intercepted dispatches from Pemberton to Johnston, which made it important for us to work smart to prevent a junction of their respective forces.  McPherson was ordered to march back early the next day on the Clinton road to make junction with McClernand, and I was ordered to remain one day to break up railroads, to destroy the arsenal, a foundery, the cotton-factory of the Messrs. Green, etc., etc., and then to follow McPherson.

McPherson left Jackson early on the 15th, and General Grant during the same day.  I kept my troops busy in tearing up railroad-tracks, etc., but early on the morning of the 16th received notice from General Grant that a battle was imminent near Edwards’s Depot; that he wanted me to dispatch one of my divisions immediately, and to follow with the other as soon as I had completed the work of destruction.  Steele’s division started immediately, and later in the day I followed with the other division (Tuttle’s).  Just as I was leaving Jackson, a very fat man came to see me, to inquire if his hotel, a large, frame building near the depot, were doomed to be burned.  I told him we had no intention to burn it, or any other house, except the machine-shops, and such buildings as could easily be converted to hostile uses.  He professed to be a law-abiding Union man, and I remember to have said that this fact was manifest from the sign of his hotel, which was the “Confederate Hotel;” the sign “United States” being faintly painted out, and “Confederate” painted over it!  I remembered that hotel, as it was the supper-station for the New Orleans trains when I used to travel the road before the war.  I had not the least purpose, however, of burning it, but, just as we were leaving the town, it burst out in flames and was burned to the ground.  I never found out exactly who set it on fire, but was told that in one of our batteries were some officers and men who had been made prisoners at Shiloh, with Prentiss’s division, and had been carried past Jackson in a railroad-train; they had been permitted by the guard to go to this very hotel for supper, and had nothing to pay but greenbacks, which were refused, with insult, by this same law-abiding landlord.  These men, it was said, had quietly and stealthily applied the fire underneath the hotel just as we were leaving the town.

About dark we met General Grant’s staff-officer near Bolton Station, who turned us to the right, with orders to push on to Vicksburg by what was known as the upper Jackson Road, which crossed the Big Black at Bridgeport.  During that day (May 16th) the battle of Champion Hills had been fought and won by McClernand’s and McPherson’s corps, aided by one division of mine (Blairs), under the immediate command of General Grant; and McPherson was then following the mass of Pemberton’s army, disordered and retreating toward Vicksburg by the Edwards’s Ferry road.  General Blair’s division had come up from the rear, was temporarily attached to McClernand’s corps, taking part with it in the battle of Champion Hills, but on the 17th it was ordered by General Grant across to Bridgeport, to join me there.