Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

Gen. S. D. Sturgis, commanding our advance east of Knoxville, had a fight¹ at Mossy creek, near Newmarket, with a Rebel force reported by him at 6,000, led by Martin Armstrong and John Morgan; wherein the Rebels were worsted. Our loss was 18 killed, 82 wounded. Sturgis reports the enemy's at 250 to 400; saying that he buried 22 of their dead and took 44 prisoners.

Our advance eastward from Knoxville, having occupied² Dandridge, was attacked there next day, and more determinedly at 3 P. M. the day after; holding the town till after dark, when our men fell back to Strawberry Plains.

Gen. Vance, with 500 mounted men and 2 guns, crossed Smoky mountain from North Carolina into East Tennessee, making for Seviersville; near which place he, with 175 picked men, charged and captured a train of 17 Union wagons, making 26 prisoners. Attempting to return, however, he was surrounded³ on Cosby creek by the 4th Illinois cavalry, Maj. Davidson, who routed and captured him, with 100 of his men.

Sturgis had several further collisions⁴ with the Rebel cavalry under Martin and Morgan, wherein he claimed the advantage, with a superior loss inflicted on the enemy ; but, as he began them near Dandridge and Newmarket, and left off at Maryville — some 30 miles farther back — it is not safe to credit his estimates of the respective losses. He claims to have taken 150 prisoners in a cavalry fight near Seviersville; another account says he lost 200 when the Rebels captured Strawberry Plains. It was supposed on our side that this Rebel advance presaged a fresh attempt on Knoxville by Longstreet; but that able General was doubtless masking the movement of the bulk of his forces into Virginia, whither he retired next month. Of course, that ended the pressure on our lines east of Knoxville.

Morgan remained in East Tennessee--hiding, as well as he could, the paucity of his numbers — till the 1st of June ; when he started on another raid, via Pound gap, into Kentucky; evading Gen. Burbridge, who was in that quarter with a superior force, meditating an advance into south-western Virginia, in concert with the advance of Crook and Averill up the Kanawha. Morgan had but 2,500 followers, and these not so well mounted as they would have been two years earlier. Still, sending forward small parties to purvey as many good horses as possible, he moved, so swiftly as he might, by Paintville, Hazel Green, Owingsville, Flemingsburg, and Maysville, into and through the richest part of the State ; capturing Mount Sterling, Paris, Cynthiana, and Williamstown, burning trains, tearing up railroads, &c., almost without resistance. The most amazing feature of this raid was the capture of Gen. Hobson, with 1,600 well-armed Unionists, by Col. Giltner, one of Morgan's lieutenants, who had 300 only, by crowding him into a bend of the Licking, and then threatening him from the opposite bank so that he was glad to surrender. It is added that the Rebels were nearly out of ammunition. It is