Captain Cockerill and Lieutenant Buckmar were both wounded on the 31st. The former commanded Battery F, First Ohio, and the latter belongs to the Seventh Indiana Battery.

Major Race, First Ohio Artillery, chief of artillery in the First Division, and the several battery commanders, with their officers and men, all, with one exception, deserve most mention for their coolness and bravery throughout the battle.

Lieutenant Parsons, commanding Batteries H and M, Fourth Artillery, and his officers, Lieutenants Cushing and Huntington, deserve great credit for their courage under the hottest of the enemy's fire; they were probably under closer fire and more of it than any other battery in the left wing, and perhaps in the army. I am more than pleased with the way they behaved, as well as the brave men that were under them. Captain Bradley, Sixth Ohio Battery, deserves particular notice for the manner in which he handled his battery.

The one exception above referred to is Lieutenant Richard Jervis, of the Eighth Indiana, who is represented to have acted in a very cowardly manner, by retiring a section of the bravery at a critical moment, without orders or notifying his battery commander.

I am, major, very respectfully, your most obedient servant,

JOHN MENDENHALL,

Captain Fourth Artillery, Chief of Artillery.

Major LYNE STARLING,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

No. 96. Reports of Brig. General Thomas J. Wood, U. S. Army, commanding First Division.

NASHVILLE, TENN., January 6, 1863.

SIR: On the morning of the 26th ultimo, the left wing of the Fourteenth Army Corps broke up its encampment, in the vicinity of Nashville, and moved toward the enemy. Reliable information assured us that he was encamped in force at and in the vicinity of Murfreesborough; but as his cavalry, supported occasionally by infantry, had extended its operations up to our outposts, and as we had been compelled for some days previous to the movement on the 26th ultimo to fight for the greater part of the forage consumed by the animals, it was supposed we should meet with resistance as soon as our troops passed beyond the line of our outposts. Nor was this expectation disappointed.

The order of march on the first day of the movement placed the Second Division, General Palmer, in advance, followed by my own. Several miles northward of La Vergne, a small hamlet nearly equidistant between Nashville and Murfreesborough, parties of the enemy were encountered by our advance guard, a cavalry force, and a running fight at once commenced. The country occupied by these bodies of hostile troops affords ground peculiarly favorable for a small force to retard the advance of a larger one. Large cultivated fields occur at intervals on either side of the turnpike road, but the country between the cultivated tracts is densely wooded, and much of the woodland interspersed with thick groves of cedar. The face of the country is undulating, presenting a succession of swells and subsidences. This brief description is applicable to the whole country between Nashville and Murfreesborough,