of Volunteers, and the Senate promptly confirmed the appointment, and thus he came out of his trial and condemnation with increased rank. He accepted the promotion, served in the field afterwards, was distinguished in many battles, and left the army October 4, 1864.

Turchin at the time he entered the Union Army was, and still is, a resident of Illinois.

There were many excellent men of foreign birth and residence who found places in the Union Army and filled them with credit.'

1

1 My last letter from Gen. Robert C. Schenck speaks of meeting, while Minister to England, a former Ohio soldier. I give his letter, omitting unimportant parts. 'MARSHALL HOUSE, YORK HARBOR, MAINE, July 10, 1889. "MY DEAR GENERAL KEIFER,-Your letter came to me just as I was leaving Washington.. I keep fairly well and vigorous for an old fellow so near to the octogenarian line. Accept my thanks for your kind remembrance and good wishes. You want to know about Colonel John DeCourcey, who commanded the [16th] regiment of Ohio Infantry for some time during our late war. I have not much to tell you of him, except that I made his acquaintance afterwards as a British nobleman. He was appointed a Union officer, I believe, by Governor Dennison, and had had, as I understand, some previous military experience and training. "One night, in a party at the house of a friend in London, about 1872, I was told that Lord Kinsale desired especially to be presented to me. I said of course it would be agreeable. On being introduced he explained that, besides a general desire to pay his respects to the American Minister, he took an interest in me as being from Ohio. I was a little surprised to find an English gentleman having any particular knowledge about Ohio. He went on to tell me he had not been in London for some time, and had been ill, or he would have called on me before that time, for that he had served as commander of an Ohio regiment during our late war. This surprised me, but he explained that he was not then Lord Kinsale, else the fact might have attracted some attention, but only John DeCourcey, having succeeded rather unexpectedly to the title. I think he said on the death of a cousin, and perhaps the end of one or two other lives intervening. He was himself then an invalid, apparently, and has since died. I found him an agreeable gentleman.

"The Barony of Kinsale is an old title. I believe this Lord Kinsale was the 31st or 32d Baron. His ancestor, Earl of Ulster, for defending King John, in single combat, with a champion provided by Philip Augustus of France, was granted the privilege for himself and heirs forever to go with covered head in the presence of Royalty. This, my dear General, must be about all that I told you of John DeCourcey, or could remember when I met you on the occasion you mention, at Springfield. Hoping you are in good heart and health, I am ROBT. C. SCHENCK."

"Very sincerely yours,

At Paint Rock, on the railroad east of Huntsville, the train on which the 3d Ohio was being transported from Stevenson (May 2d) was fired upon from ambush by guerrillas, and six or eight men more or less seriously wounded.

Colonel Beatty stopped the train, and after giving the citizens notice that all such acts of bushwhacking would bring on them certain destruction of property, as it was known that professed peaceful citizens were often themselves the guilty parties or harbored the guilty ones, himself fired the town as an earnest of what a repetition of such deeds would bring.

Many fruitless small expeditions were undertaken to drive out the constant invasions made by Wheeler's, Morgan's, Adams', and Scott's cavalry north of the Tennessee and upon our lines of communication.

On May 18th, having become restless in camp, I volunteered as special aide to Colonel Wm. H. Lytle on an expedition to Winchester, Tennessee. We passed through a region thickly infested with the most daring bands of guerrillas, and at Winchester had an encounter with some of Adams' regular cavalry, who, after making a rash charge into the town while we occupied it and losing a few men, retreated eastward to the mountains.

On May 13th General James S. Negley led a force from Pulaski against Adams' cavalry at Rogersville, north of the Tennessee opposite the Muscle Shoals, and with slight loss drove it across the river. Later there was a more determined effort by the Confederates to occupy, with considerable bodies of cavalry and light artillery, the country north of the Tennessee below Chattanooga, but June 4th, an expedition under Negley, composed of troops selected from Mitchel's command, surprised Adams with his principal force twelve miles northwest of Jasper, and routed him, killing about twenty of his men and wounding and capturing about one hundred more; also capturing arms, ammunition, commissary wagons, and supplies. Negley pushed his command over the mountains up the Tennessee, threatening to cross to the south side at 1 War Records, vol. x., Part I., pp. 904, 919-920.

Shellmound, and at other points, and finally took position opposite Chattanooga.

This expedition caused much consternation among the rebels, though little was actually accomplished. The attack made on Chattanooga, June 7th and 8th, failed, and Negley's command returned.' Colonel Joshua W. Sill, 33d Ohio, afterwards Brigadier-General, and killed at the battle of Stone's River, commanded a brigade under Mitchel and in the Chattanooga expedition. He was an accomplished, educated officer, modest almost to a fault, yet brave and capable of great deeds. His body is buried at Chillicothe, Ohio.

Mitchel's position in Northern Alabama was at all times precarious; he covered too much country; lacked concentration, and was constantly in danger of being assailed in detail; besides, his relations to Buell, his immediate commander, were not cordial. He complained frequently directly to the Secretary of War for want of support. Shortly after Buell's arrival from Corinth, the last of June, Mitchel tendered his resignation and asked to be granted immediate leave of absence, but the next day (July 2d) he was, by the Secretary of War, ordered to repair to Washington,' and General Lovell H. Rousseau, a Kentuckian, who also believed in a vigorous prosecution of the war, succeeded him. General Mitchel on reaching Washington was selected by President Lincoln for the command of an expedition on the Mississippi, but Halleck opposed his selection and failed to give the necessary orders for the contemplated movement, consequently Mitchel remained inactive until September, when he was assigned to the command of the Department of the South, headquarters Hilton Head. He was stricken with yellow fever and died at Beaufort, South Carolina, October 30, 1862. He is buried at Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N. Y.

1 War Records, vol. x., Part I., pp. 904, 919-920.

Battles and Leaders, etc., vol. ii., pp. 706-7; War Records, vol. xvi., Part II., p. 92.

CHAPTER VIII

CONFEDERATE INVASION OF KENTUCKY (1862)-CINCINNATI THREATENED, AND "SQUIRREL HUNTERS CALLED OUT BATTLES OF IUKA, CORINTH, AND HATCHIE BRIDGE-MOVEMENTS OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES OF BRAGG AND KIRBY SMITH-RETIREMENT OF BUELL'S ARMY TO LOUISVILLE-BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE, WITH PERSONAL AND OTHER INCIDENTS

A

S we have seen, Halleck's great army at Corinth was dispersed, the Army of the Ohio going eastward. It spent the month of June, 1862, in rebuilding bridges, including the great bridge across the Tennessee at Decatur, but recently burned under his direction, and soon again to be abandoned to the Confederates.

The Confederate authorities projected an invasion on two lines and with two armies,-one under General E. Kirby Smith and the other under General Braxton Bragg,-the Ohio River and the cities of Louisville and Cincinnati being the objective points; the design being, also, to recruit the Confederate armies in Kentucky, obtain supplies, and force the evacuation by the Union Army of Alabama and Tennessee, and especially of Nashville. Early in August, 1862, these two Confederate armies were assembled at Knoxville and Chattanooga and along the Upper Tennessee, Kirby Smith's main force at the former and Bragg's at the latter place. The objectives of these armies were soon known, and the Army of the Ohio was therefore ordered to concentrate from its scattered situation at Dechard and Winchester, Tennessee.

General Robert L. McCook, late Colonel of the 9th Ohio, commanding a brigade under General George H. Thomas, while riding in an ambulance at the head of his command, ill and helpless, was shot and mortally wounded, August 5th, about three miles eastward of New Market, Alabama, by a body of ambushed men, said to have been guerrillas in citizens' dress. He died at 12 M., August 6th. His command, in retaliation, laid the country waste around about the scene of his death.' McCook had fought in Western Virginia; at Mill Springs (where he was wounded), at Shiloh, and elsewhere. He was one of the ten sons of Major Daniel McCook, who was killed (July 21, 1863), at sixty-five years of age, near Buffington's Island, during the Morgan raid in Ohio, while leading a party to cut off Morgan's escape across the Ohio River. Two brothers of his were killed in battle-Charles M., at Bull Run, July 21, 1861, and Daniel at Kenesaw, July 21, 1864. Alexander McDowell McCook commanded a corps, and all the brothers had honorable war records. Dr. John McCook, brother of the senior Daniel McCook, likewise served and died in the war. He had five sons, three of whom served with distinction in the volunteer army and two in the navy. I knew John's son, General Anson George McCook, first in Mitchel's division as Major and Lieutenant-Colonel of the 2d Ohio, then in the Forty-fifth, Forty-sixth, and Forty-seventh Congresses, and later as Secretary of the United States Senate.

The killing of General R. L. McCook, under the circumstances, was regarded as murder, and excited deep indignation both in and out of the army. Even Buell issued orders to arrest every able-bodied man of suspicious character within a radius of ten miles of the place where McCook was shot, to take all horses fit for service within that circuit, and to pursue and destroy bushwhackers. With the arrest of a few men and the taking of some horses, however, the incident closed so far as official action was concerned.

Memphis was taken, on June 6, 1862, by Flag Officer C. H.

1 War Records, vol. xvi., Part I., pp. 838-841.

Ibid., Part II., p. 290.