Today in History:

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

Page 309 Chapter XXVIII. GENERAL REPORTS.

Question. The places are always given where those prisoners were captured, are they not?

Those captured previous to the 12th of November are not given; but I suppose I have all the evidence that was requisite to secure an exchange and to secure detection of any one attempting to re-enter the service without having been formally exchanged. The rolls made were forwarded, one to Washington and one to Vicksburg, and no copy kept. Subsequent to the 12th of November the place and date of capture are exhibited.

Question. State as nearly as you can, from such data as you possess, what proportion of those prisoners reported to us were taken previous to the Perryville fight.

My impression is that there were not over 400 taken previous to the Perryville fight.

Question. Do you know, officially or otherwise, the number of prisoners taken in this late fight at Murfreesborough and the regiments they represented?

Only through what I have seen in the newspapers.

By General TYLER:

Question. Does the report which you furnish to the Commission show the prisoners taken by General Buell's army proper, by General Morgan at Cumberland Gap or those at Clarksville, General Granger near Lexington, and General Rosecrans' army in Tennessee;does it embrace all these commands?

My impression is, though I cannot state positively, that there are none embraced in the report that were captured by General Morgan at Cumberland Gap, from the fact that there were no means of forwarding such prisoners to this place. There might possibly have been some few captured by him on his retreat from the Gap to the Ohio River, when followed by John Morgan, in command of the Confederate forces, but I am not positive whether there were any or not. Those on the east and north of Lexington were probably captured by General Granger's forces, or by the colonel in command of the Eastern District of Kentucky, or in some cases by Home Guards, and in some cases the prisoners gave themselves up, and a large number of these were released on parole. Most of these are not probably recorded here, from the fact that by General Boyle's orders Colonel Dent was ordered to administer the oath to them and release them. My impression is that those captured north and east of Lexington were captured by forces not connected with General Buell's army. Those captured in the counties of Woodford, Franklin, Jessamine, Madison, Garrard, Lincoln, and the counties between that and the Cumberland Gap, as far, perhaps, as London on one road and Goose Creek Works road on the other, were captured by forces acting under General Buell's orders. Whether those captured in the county of Scott were captured by General Buell's forces of by those of General Granger I could not state, because I do not know whether any of General Buell's forces went beyond Lexington in that direction. My belief, from the best of my information is that all those captured in Lexington and in Fayette County were captured by the cavalry of General Buell's forces, that I understood visited Lexington at some time before the arrival of General Granger's forces there. There were also prisoners received, after the Army of the Ohio marched back into Tennessee, from Colonel Bruce and from perhaps one or two other officers; some perhaps from Colonel Foster. With the knowledge that the court must have of the line of march pursued by General Buell's forces in Kentucky they can, by an examination of this report, seeing the places from which the prisoners came and by whom taken, draw as correct an inference as I can give them. The prisoners I referred to were captured at Corinth, Fort Donelson, Mill Springs, and other places. Some four or five of them, that I think of, were forwarded from this place subsequent to the time that General Buell's army left Louisville and most of them very recently. Those were prisoners captured previous to the agreement for exchange between the United States and the Confederate authorities. At the time of that movement they were unable, from disease or from the effects of their wounds, to be sent back, and have therefore remained in our lines up to the present time. One that I remember that was captured at Mill Springs was not able to be moved from that place until some three or four weeks since.

By General SCHOEPF:

Question. The report here furnished to the Commission shows a certain


Page 309 Chapter XXVIII. GENERAL REPORTS.