Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Opening Battles. Volume 1.

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[397] two forces. The next month General Marshall sent the bulk of his command south of the Cumberland Mountains, to go into winter quarters, because all supplies were exhausted in the mountains of Kentucky. General Marshall's forces would probably have been compelled to return to Virginia in order to secure supplies, even if they had not been opposed by an enemy. The occupation of the Sandy Valley by a largely superior force so crippled his resources that he could hardly have subsisted his troops among the impoverished mountains. Indeed, Colonel Garfield could not have maintained his position a week, without the aid of the river, by which supplies were brought on steamboats. On the 16th of March, 1862, Garfield with 750 men made an attack on a battalion of Virginia militia, occupying Pound Gap, and drove them away and burned the log-huts built for winter quarters. Soon after this he was ordered to report to General Buell, who had gone to the relief of General Grant at Pittsburg Landing. This he did on the 7th of April, 1862, in time to take part in the second day's contest.

General Marshall was born January 13th, 1812, in Frankfort, Ky., and came of a most distinguished family, which included Chief-Justice John Marshall of Virginia, the historian Humphrey Marshall of Kentucky, and the orator and lawyer Thomas F. Marshall. He was four times elected to Congress from the Louisville District, and was Minister to China under President Fillmore. In his profession of law Humphrey Marshall had probably no superior and few equals among the jurists of Kentucky. As an orator he fully inherited the talent of a family which was famous in the forum. As a soldier he enjoyed the confidence of General Lee, who wrote him frequently in reference to military operations, and earnestly opposed his retirement from the army. He was a graduate of West Point, and both he and General Williams had won distinction in the Mexican war-Marshall at Buena Vista and Williams at Cerro Gordo.

General Marshall personally was not adapted to mountain warfare, owing to his great size; nor was he qualified to command volunteers, being the most democratic of men. Moreover, his heart was tender as a woman's. For these reasons he could not enforce the rigorous discipline of an army. So well known was his leniency, that an officer of his staff made a standing offer to eat the first man the general should shoot for any crime. Speaking to Colonel Leigh about military dignity and discipline, Marshall said he “regarded these things as the decrepitudes of the military art.” General Williams, who was his ablest lieutenant, was a man of very different mold, proud, imperious, a born soldier, who believed in discipline to its last extremity.

With his little command Marshall afterward successfully defended the vital interests of the Confederacy in south-west Virginia, so long as he remained in the service. In the summer of 1863 he was transferred to the Mississippi Department, but resigned his commission because he believed that he had been badly treated by President Davis in not having received the governmental support which he thought he deserved and which the necessities of his command required.

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