Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[447] march is somewhat more rapid; he reaches, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the village of West Point, fifteen miles south of Egypt. Hepburn's brigade, which he has summoned from Aberdeen, is not long in joining him. But he cannot make up for lost time. Forrest has made all his preparations to stop the progress of the Federals. He hopes even to engage them and detain them until General Lee—who, as we have said, has remained between Selma and Demopolis—may come to join him to crush them. The character of the country seems suited to this combination. A very swampy river, the Okatybbeeka, flowing from west to east, empties into the Tombigbee a little below Columbus; the railroad crosses it at a point situated five miles south of West Point. A little distance from this point it receives, on the left, the waters of an important stream, the Sookatonka, also called Chootkatonkchee, which, from the height of Okolona, flows from north to south parallel to the Tombigbee. The beautiful country through which the railroad passes is compressed between these two watercourses. By penetrating it along the railway Sooy Smith entered a real cul-de-sac formed by the Tombigbee, a large river navigable eastward, the Sookatonka on the west, and terminated by the Okatybbeeka. It was in this cul-de-sac that Forrest had resolved to stop him. Fearing that the Federals might, from Aberdeen, wish to reach Columbus by the left bank of the Tombigbee, he had caused Bell's brigade, then commanded by Colonel Barteau, to pass over to this bank. Barteau having heard, on the 20th, of the movement of Hepburn toward West Point, had halted at Waverly, at the point where the road which leads from this village to Columbus crosses the Tombigbee; he thus occupied the crossing of the river and could operate on either bank. Forrest, on his part, with his two other brigades, proceeded very early in the morning of the 20th from Starkville to the banks of the Sookatonka to support his brother's brigade, which was withdrawn, step by step, toward West Point, opposite the Federals. The latter, deployed in battle in the fine plain traversed by the railroad, had, as we have said, arrived about three o'clock opposite this village, and were pressing closely Colonel Forrest's little band. His elder brother arrived in due time to reinforce him and allow him to withdraw without being pursued. General Forrest, in