First Brigade, Colonel T. J. Jordan, Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry;
Second Brigade, Colonel S. D. Atkins, Ninety-second Illinois Vol.;
Third Brigade, Colonel George E. Spencer, First Alabama Cavalry. 
One battery of four guns.

The actual strength of the army, as given in the following official tabular statements, was at the time sixty thousand and seventy-nine men, and sixty-eight guns.  The trains were made up of about twenty-five hundred wagons, with six mules to each wagon, and about six hundred ambulances, with two horses each.  The contents of the wagons embraced an ample supply of ammunition for a great battle; forage for about seven days, and provisions for twenty days, mostly of bread, sugar, coffee, and salt, depending largely for fresh meat on beeves driven on the hoof and such cattle, hogs, and poultry, as we expected to gather along our line of march.

Recapitulation-campaign of the Carolinas.

February 1.     March 1.     April 1.     April 10
Pers:   60,079         57,676      81,150      88,948

The enemy occupied the cities of Charleston and Augusta, with garrisons capable of making a respectable if not successful defense, but utterly unable to meet our veteran columns in the open field.  To resist or delay our progress north, General Wheeler had his division of cavalry (reduced to the size of a brigade by his hard and persistent fighting ever since the beginning of the Atlanta campaign), and General Wade Hampton had been dispatched from the Army of Virginia to his native State of South Carolina, with a great flourish of trumpets, and extraordinary powers to raise men, money, and horses, with which “to stay the progress of the invader,” and “to punish us for our insolent attempt to invade the glorious State of South Carolina!” He was supposed at the time to have, at and near Columbia, two small divisions of cavalry commanded by himself and General Butler.

Of course, I had a species of contempt for these scattered and inconsiderable forces, knew that they could hardly delay us an hour; and the only serious question that occurred to me was, would General Lee sit down in Richmond (besieged by General Grant), and permit us, almost unopposed, to pass through the States of South and North Carolina, cutting off and consuming the very supplies on which he depended to feed his army in Virginia, or would he make an effort to escape from General Grant, and endeavor to catch us inland somewhere between Columbia and Raleigh?  I knew full well at the time that the broken fragments of Hood’s army (which had escaped from Tennessee) were being hurried rapidly across Georgia, by Augusta, to make junction in my front; estimating them at the maximum twenty-five thousand men, and Hardee’s, Wheeler’s, and Hampton’s forces at fifteen thousand, made forty thousand; which, if handled with spirit and energy, would constitute a formidable force, and might