Today in History:

181 Series I Volume XXIX-I Serial 48 - Bristoe, Mine Run Part I

Page 181 Chapter XLI. TRANSFER OF ARMY CORPS.

WAR DEPARTMENT, September 30, 1863-7.40 p.m.

Brigadier-General ALLEN,

Assistant Quartermaster, Saint Louis:

I forward herewith a telegram from Colonel Thomas A. Scott, who is in temporary charge of transportation at Louisville, and have authorized him and John B. Anderson, who has been sent forward to organize the transportation on the roads from Nashville to Chattanooga,to communicate with you. You will please fill any requisitions either of them may make, and render them such aid as they or either of them may ask from you, in the same manner as if ordered directly from this Department.

EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

[Inclosure.]

LOUISVILLE, KY., September 29, 1863.

(Received 2.45 a.m., 30th.)

Hon. E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

My estimate for equipment necessary to work the lines in Kentucky and Tennessee would be 300 eight-wheel house cars, 15 second-class passenger cars, 50 platform cars, and 25 locomotives. The house cars to be constructed suitable for carrying horses, soldier, and perishable stores. The passenger cars to be suitable for movement of officers, and for hospital cars.

THOMAS A. SCOTT.


HEADQUARTERS THIRD DIVISION, ELEVENTH CORPS, Bridgeport, Ala., October 1, 1863.

Hon. E. M. STANTON,
Secretary of War:

SIR: On the 27th of September, while traveling with my command by railroad from Virginia to the Department of the Cumberland, I received from you a telegraphic dispatch, implying a severe censure upon me for having delayed and endangered trains, and informing me that General Hooke had been ordered to relieve me from command.

The only circumstances which can have given occasion for this dispatch is the following: At the depots at Alexandria and Washington the different trains loaded with troops were, in consequence of the management of the railroad men, so confusedly mixed up that hardly a single regiment was kept together, and thus the control of the officers over the men much impaired. The train on which I was, and which was to be first, fell behind two other trains. On the morning after our departure I learned that several men belonging to my command had met with severe accidents on the trains ahead of mine, two men being killed and a good many left behind; all this in consequence of a lack of system and order on board the cars. I endeavored, therefore, to get to the head of the column in order to establish that order which was necessary to avoid these evils. But I found that the trains ahead were always leaving the depots a very few minutes before the arrival of my train.


Page 181 Chapter XLI. TRANSFER OF ARMY CORPS.