Today in History:

299 Series I Volume XVI-I Serial 22 - Morgan's First Kentucky Raid, Perryville Campaign Part I

Page 299 Chapter XXVIII. GENERAL REPORTS.

forward supplies from Louisville while these roads were in operation, and by the rivers also while they were navigable?

I think there were. I was in Tennessee, and could not know personally all that was done at Louisville, though I visited Louisville at different times during the summer. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company assured me they were doing all they possibly could to forward Government supplies, and that to the exclusion of other business. So far as I know, supplies were also forwarded by the Cumberland River while it remained navigable.

Question. Do you know whether efforts were made by the commander of the Army of the Ohio, by repeated instructions and injunctions, to further this object; that is, the accumulation of supplies at Nashville?

I know that the commander of the Army of the Ohio did, by repeated instructions, urge forward supplies to the entire capacity of all lines of transportation in use, and that I received from him almost daily dispatches urging the forwarding of supplies over the Government roads southward from Nashville.

Cross-examination by the JUDGE-ADVOCATE:

Question. Were you with the Army of the Ohio when it fell back from Middle Tennessee to Nashville?

I was not strictly with the army; I was either at Nashville, Murfreesborough, or Decherd, or some other point on the railroad, during the time the army fell back from Middle Tennessee to Nashville. I was engaged in managing trains used in removing baggage and sick and convalescent soldiers.

Question. Do you know what became of the various improvements and repairs that you made on these lines of railroads in Tennessee after the army fell back?

I do not know certainly. The bridges over Mill Creek, on the Nashville and Chattanooga road, were destroyed, but I do not know at what period. I have no definite information from the Nashville and Decatur Railroad.

Question. By whom or by whose orders were these bridges destroyed?

I am not aware that they were destroyed by the order of any one. The Mill Creek bridges, I presume, were destroyed by the enemy.

Question. At what time did you receive those urgent solicitations from General Buell to forward supplies from Nashville into Tennessee?

I cannot fix the date precisely at which these dispatches came, but it was from the time the road was opened through to Columbia; and during all the period that supplies were sent while the army occupied the country south of Columbia it was supplied over those routes to the full capacity of rolling-stock we had. The supplies were carried to Reynolds' Station, thence by wagons to Elk River, and by rail from that to Athens, Decatur, and Huntsville.

Question. At what point and in what quantities did you accumulate stores at that time?

I would be impossible to state the amount without reference to the manifest books.

General TYLER. It would be advisable to have those books which give the amount of Government freight during the whole time the road was opened.

(The witness was directed to bring them before the Commission for examination.)

By the JUDGE-ADVOCATE:

Question. What became of those stores when the army fell back from Nashville?

I presume there was no considerable portion which had not been issued. The commissary stores were brought back, to some extent, from Huntsville, Bridgeport, and Stevenson.


Page 299 Chapter XXVIII. GENERAL REPORTS.