a value all over the world and which they so much needed, but it afforded them means of obtaining accurate and intelligent information in regard to our position and strength.  It was also demoralizing to the troops.  Citizens obtaining permits from the treasury department had to be protected within our lines and given facilities to get out cotton by which they realized enormous profits.  Men who had enlisted to fight the battles of their country did not like to be engaged in protecting a traffic which went to the support of an enemy they had to fight, and the profits of which went to men who shared none of their dangers.

On the 30th of August Colonel M. D. Leggett, near Bolivar, with the 20th and 29th Ohio volunteer infantry, was attacked by a force supposed to be about 4,000 strong.  The enemy was driven away with a loss of more than one hundred men.  On the 1st of September the bridge guard at Medon was attacked by guerillas.  The guard held the position until reinforced, when the enemy were routed leaving about fifty of their number on the field dead or wounded, our loss being only two killed and fifteen wounded.  On the same day Colonel Dennis, with a force of less than 500 infantry and two pieces of artillery, met the cavalry of the enemy in strong force, a few miles west of Medon, and drove them away with great loss.  Our troops buried 179 of the enemy’s dead, left upon the field.  Afterwards it was found that all the houses in the vicinity of the battlefield were turned into hospitals for the wounded.  Our loss, as reported at the time, was forty-five killed and wounded.  On the 2d of September I was ordered to send more reinforcements to Buell.  Jackson and Bolivar were yet threatened, but I sent the reinforcements.  On the 4th I received direct orders to send Granger’s division also to Louisville, Kentucky.

General Buell had left Corinth about the 10th of June to march upon Chattanooga; Bragg, who had superseded Beauregard in command, sent one division from Tupelo on the 27th of June for the same place.  This gave Buell about seventeen days’ start.  If he had not been required to repair the railroad as he advanced, the march could have been made in eighteen days at the outside, and Chattanooga must have been reached by the National forces before the rebels could have possibly got there.  The road between Nashville and Chattanooga could easily have been put in repair by other troops, so that communication with the North would have been opened in a short time after the occupation of the place by the National troops.  If Buell had been permitted to move in the first instance, with the whole of the Army of the Ohio and that portion of the Army of the Mississippi afterwards sent to him, he could have thrown four divisions from his own command along the line of road to repair and guard it.

Granger’s division was promptly sent on the 4th of September.  I was at the station at Corinth when the troops reached that point, and found General P. H. Sheridan with them.  I expressed surprise at seeing him and said that I had not expected him to go.  He showed decided disappointment at the prospect of being detained.  I felt a little nettled at his desire to get away and did not detain him.