Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[430] at dusk the same evening, with two hundred men, eight guns, and a valuable wagon-train. After destroying Wytheville, and stores there, and the railway for some distance, Gillem returned to Mount Airy, from which place Stoneman had sent out a brigade under Colonel Buckley, to destroy lead mines in that region, which that officer accomplished, after driving off Vaughan, who was there. Stoneman now started

Dec. 17, 1864.

to destroy the great salt-works already mentioned. On the way, Burbridge, in the advance, met and fought Breckinridge near Marion, nearly all one day. Gillem approached from another point to cut the foe off from the salt-works, when Breckinridge, taking counsel of prudence, withdrew and retired over the mountains into North Carolina. Saltville, where the works were situated, was thus abandoned to its fate, after being guarded with the greatest care. These important works were now utterly destroyed, while spoils, in the shape of cannon, ammunition, and railway rolling stock, fell into Stoneman's hands. The object of the expedition having been accomplished, General Burbridge returned to Kentucky, and General Stoneman, with Gillem's command, went back to Knoxville.

The writer visited Nashville, and the battle-field in its vicinity, at the beginning of May, 1866, after a voyage on the Cumberland to Fort Donelson and back,¹ and he was placed under many obligations to General Thomas, and members of his staff, and especially to Major Willard, for kind attentions, and for facilities for obtaining all necessary topographical and historical information concerning the battle of the 15th and 16th of December,

1864.

of which a description, in outline, is given in this chapter.

General Thomas took the writer, in his light carriage drawn by a span of beautiful dappled gray horses, to various points of interest, the most important of which, for the author's purpose, was the lofty hill between the Hardin and Granny White turnpikes, on which the commanding general stood, with the whole field of operations in view, and directed the battle on the 15th. With a large topographical map in his hand,² he pointed out every important locality and explained every movement, making the text of his official report perfectly luminous. Around us lay, upon bare hills once crowned with groves and forest, and across desolated vales once beautiful with the richest products of cultivation, the long lines of intrenchments, with forts and redoubts, cast up by both parties in the strife, and scarcely altered in feature since the day of battle. With these, and the ruins of houses battered by missiles or laid in ashes by fire, in full view, and with the clear and vivid descriptions of General Thomas, the chief actor in the events of that day, which consecrated every hill and valley, ravine and streamlet within the range of vision, it required but a small effort of the imagination, then and there, to reproduce the battle in all its awful grandeur and hideousness.

General Thomas kindly offered his carriage and a driver for the writer's use in revisiting for further study, and for sketching important points connected with the battle. In this way, accompanied by his traveling companions (Messrs. Dreer and Greble), who joined him at Nashville on the day