Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 8.
Frank Moore, Ed.

I also took possession of Hickman, the enemy having passed it.

I moved north with Buford's division, marching direct fiom Jackson to Paducah in fifty hours; attacked it on the evening of the twenty-sixth, drove the enemy to their gunboats and forts, held the town for ten hours, and could have held it longer, but found the small-pox raging, and evacuated the place.

We captured many stores and horses, burned up sixty bales of cotton, one steamer in the dry-dock, and brought out fifty prisoners.

My loss at Union City and Paducah, as far as known, is twenty-five killed and wounded--among them Colonel Thompson, commanding the Kentucky brigade, killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Lanhum, of the Faulkner regiment, mortally wounded; and Colonel Crosslin, of the Ninth Kentucky, and Lieutenant-Colonel Morton, of the Second Tennessee, slightly wounded.

The enemy's loss at Paducah was fifty killed and wounded. The prisoners, in all, five hundred.

The General Commanding returns to the officers and troops of this division his congratulations upon the success which has thus far attended the campaign into Kentucky. The hardships you bore upon a march almost unprecedented, from Tibbie Station, Mississippi, to Paducah, in a week; the devotion you have exhibited to the cause of freedom, and the valor our skirmishers displayed in their attack upon the fort at Paducah, call for the highest admiration and praise of your commander. At the very doors of their homes some of your comrades laid down their lives to rescue Kentucky from the iron heel of abolition despotism, and the rule of the negro. Among those whose faces are gone from us for ever, we are forced to pay a lasting regret to the memory of one brave, courteous, and beloved, and whose merits as a citizen, as a friend, and as a soldier, we all felt and appreciated. He fell as a soldier desires to fall, at the head of his command, a hero regretted by all. Colonel A. P. Thompson, Third Kentucky regiment, and commanding the Third brigade, will long be remembered by all who knew his noble deeds and heroic death. With a force less than that of the enemy within the stockade, you, in an exposed condition, with your skirmishers, silenced his guns; caused one of his gunboats to withdraw from action, fearful of the accuracy of your fire; captured and destroyed immense stores — quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance; and inflicted upon him a loss of twenty-seven killed, and from seventy to eighty wounded, besides capturing. sixty-four prisoners; your own loss being ten killed and forty wounded.

The General Commanding feels proud of the division, and relies upon your courage, your fortitude, and your discipline, to hold this portion of the State of Kentucky, aided as you will be by your friends now flocking to your ranks.