the other officers of the command have been captured and forwarded to Chattanooga, permit me to submit the following report of such portion of the attack made on the 13th instant as came under my own personal observation:

I arrived here, after an absence of two months, on the afternoon of the 11th instant, coming down on the same train with Brigadier General Thomas T. Crittenden, the newly appointed commander of the post, and found that several material changes had been made in the location and encampment of the Twenty-third Brigade since my departure. Instead of the whole command encamping together, as it had done, it was separated into two portions and several miles apart. The brigade had never been drilled as such nor a brigade guard mounted. Each regiment furnished its quota of officers and men and watched certain roads; and, worse than all, the commanding officers of the respective regiments were on ill terms with each other, and this feeling, upon one occasion, had broken out into an open personal quarrel. The result was a great lack of discipline and a bitter feeling of jealousy between the different regiments, manifesting itself in the personal encounters of the men when they met upon the street. There was no order, no harmony. The parts of the machine did not fit well, and the commanding officers seem either not to have possessed the will or the ability to adjust them. General Crittenden and myself, immediately after our arrival, visited the several camps, discussed the impropriety of a divided command, and decided upon a concentration; but as neither of us had assumed command we deferred it until the morrow. But on the morrow the blow fell, and the danger we anticipated became a reality. General Crittenden made his headquarters in town, while I preferred camping with my own men, and therefore pitched my tent with the five companies of the Ninth Michigan Volunteers.

The force then at Murfreesborough was as follows: Five companies (A, C, G, H, and K), Ninth Michigan Volunteers, Lieutenant-Colonel Parkhurst commanding, 200 strong, together with the First Squadron Fourth Kentucky Cavalry, Captain Levi Chilson, 81 strong, were encamped three-fourths of a mile east of the town, upon the Liberty turnpike; one company (B) Ninth Michigan Volunteers, Captain Rounds, 42 strong, occupied the court-house, the other companies of the Ninth Michigan Volunteers having been ordered to Tullahoma a month since, while nine companies of the Third Minnesota Volunteers, Colonel Lester (one company being on detached duty as train guard), 450 strong, and Hewett's First Kentucky battery, two sections, 72 strong, occupied the east bank of Stone River, at a distance of more than 3 miles from the encampment of the detachment of the Ninth Michigan Volunteers.

Orders were received from Nashville the evening of the 12th instant directing the First Squadron Fourth Kentucky Cavalry to proceed immediately to Lebanon. The total effective strength of the command at Murfreesborough on the morning of the 13th instant did not therefore exceed 814 men, including pickets.

The attack was made at daybreak on the morning of the 13th instant by the Second Cavalry Brigade, C. S. Army, Brigadier General N. B. Forrest, over 3,000 strong, consisting of one Texas regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Walker; the First and Second Georgia Regiments, Colonels Lawton and Hood; one Alabama regiment, Colonel Saunders, and one Tennessee regiment, Colonel Lawton [?]. The noise of so many hoofs at full speed upon the macadamized roads was so great that the alarm was given before the head of the column reached our pickets, about 1 mile distant,

51 R R-VOL XVI