This camp is named in honor of
D. Nevin,
Esq., formerly proprietor of the well-known marble shop on Jefferson Street, near Fifth, but now an extensive farmer, and owner of the land on which our tents are pitched.
When the troops arrived
Mr. Nevin welcomed them most cordially, and informed
Gen. Rousseau, who was in command, that any thing and every thing he had was at the service of the army.
Gen. McCook arrived on Sunday, and took command of this division on yesterday (Monday) morning.
He is quite a young man, not more than thirty years of age, as I have been informed.
In personal appearance he is the very reverse of
Gen. Sherman, late head of this division and now head of the department.
He is short of stature, fleshy, with a decidedly genial, good-humored face.
He graduated at the national military academy,
West Point, in 1852.
Last night, about one o'clock, we had another little skirmish.
Capt. Vandyke, of the
Kentucky cavalry, while out with a scouting party, fell in with a body of rebel horse.
Several shots were exchanged, but none were killed or wounded.
Just before day this morning a man coming in from the
South was shot in endeavoring to pass our pickets.
His horse was killed, and the man himself wounded in the hand and wrist.
The health of the army continues excellent.
Gen. Rousseau, however, has just come out of a most violent attack of quinsy — so violent, indeed, that at one time his life was in imminent
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peril.
He is now almost well again.
May he be spared to the army and the country.
Yesterday we received positive intelligence that the rebels had burned Green River bridge.
The account was so circumstantial that it seemed there could be no doubt that this long-meditated outrage had at last been perpetrated.
But a man arrived this morning, who says he saw the bridge yesterday afternoon, and it was certainly standing then, if any faith is to be put in human vision.
It does not seem credible that
Buckner should destroy the bridge until the last moment, especially as he can command it with his heavy guns from the southern bluff.
I am now able to give you a complete account of the skirmish which took place on Saturday between a detachment of the Thirty-ninth Indiana and a squadron of rebel cavalry.
The scene of the fight was a log house by the roadside, two miles beyond
Upton's, fourteen miles below this camp, and eight miles this side of the rebel camp.
A squad of the rebels had come up there to cut off a company which had been recruiting in the neighborhood for
Rousseau's brigade, and were to come up here to camp that day. When the Indianians, forty in number, under
Captain Herring and
Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, reached the place, the rebels were at dinner, the officers in the house and the privates in the bushes beyond.
As our men approached, the rebels left the house and their unfinished dinner, and retired behind a hill a short distance below.
Captain Herring went forward to see whether they were going to make a stand or continue their flight.
Just as he reached the summit of the hill, two men fired at him at a distance of twenty paces.
He then returned to his men, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Jones ordered forward the detachment to take possession of the house which the rebels had evacuated.
This was (lone, and the firing began, the rebels replying from the cover of the woods which skirted the road.
They presently retreated with a loss of five killed and three wounded. None of our party were hurt.
The number of rebels engaged was fifty-eight.
P. S.--Later intelligence renders it certain that the
Green River bridge has been destroyed.
It appears that they blew up the abutments and left the central portion of the bridge still lying in its former position, though entirely ruined.
Thus the bridge, seen from a distance, would present the same appearance as formerly, and this circumstance deceived the gentleman whose statement I have given in the body of my letter.
The ends of the bridge are let down, but its middle is still standing.
