force against them.  I dispatched Colonel Oglesby at once with troops sufficient to compete with the reported number of the enemy.  On the 5th word came from the same source that the rebels were about to detach a large force from Columbus to be moved by boats down the Mississippi and up the White River, in Arkansas, in order to reinforce Price, and I was directed to prevent this movement if possible.  I accordingly sent a regiment from Bird’s Point under Colonel W. H. L. Wallace to overtake and reinforce Oglesby, with orders to march to New Madrid, a point some distance below Columbus, on the Missouri side.  At the same time I directed General C. F. Smith to move all the troops he could spare from Paducah directly against Columbus, halting them, however, a few miles from the town to await further orders from me.  Then I gathered up all the troops at Cairo and Fort Holt, except suitable guards, and moved them down the river on steamers convoyed by two gunboats, accompanying them myself.  My force consisted of a little over 3,000 men and embraced five regiments of infantry, two guns and two companies of cavalry.  We dropped down the river on the 6th to within about six miles of Columbus, debarked a few men on the Kentucky side and established pickets to connect with the troops from Paducah.

I had no orders which contemplated an attack by the National troops, nor did I intend anything of the kind when I started out from Cairo; but after we started I saw that the officers and men were elated at the prospect of at last having the opportunity of doing what they had volunteered to do—­fight the enemies of their country.  I did not see how I could maintain discipline, or retain the confidence of my command, if we should return to Cairo without an effort to do something.  Columbus, besides being strongly fortified, contained a garrison much more numerous than the force I had with me.  It would not do, therefore, to attack that point.  About two o’clock on the morning of the 7th, I learned that the enemy was crossing troops from Columbus to the west bank to be dispatched, presumably, after Oglesby.  I knew there was a small camp of Confederates at Belmont, immediately opposite Columbus, and I speedily resolved to push down the river, land on the Missouri side, capture Belmont, break up the camp and return.  Accordingly, the pickets above Columbus were drawn in at once, and about daylight the boats moved out from shore.  In an hour we were debarking on the west bank of the Mississippi, just out of range of the batteries at Columbus.

The ground on the west shore of the river, opposite Columbus, is low and in places marshy and cut up with sloughs.  The soil is rich and the timber large and heavy.  There were some small clearings between Belmont and the point where we landed, but most of the country was covered with the native forests.  We landed in front of a cornfield.  When the debarkation commenced, I took a regiment down the river