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

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The whole region of the great Valley of East Tennessee, eastward as well as westward of Knoxville, is clustered with the most stirring associations of the Civil War. We passed on our journey from Knoxville, Strawberry Plain, Bull's Gap, Blue Springs, and other places already mentioned as scenes of conflict; and from Greenville to Bristol, on the borders of Virginia, such notable places were many. Over that region and beyond we passed on the night of the 24th and 25th,

May, 1866.

and at six o'clock in the morning were at Mount Airy, twenty-eight hundred feet above the Richmond basin, and said to be the most lofty point of railway travel in the United States. We descended into the rugged valleys eastward of this Appalachian range, and then ascended the western gentle slope of the Blue Ridge, one of the most beautiful and thoroughly cultivated regions in the world. The ravages of war had not been felt just there. We descended the more precipitous side of that lofty range into the fine high valleys around the upper waters of the James River, and arrived at Lynchburg in the evening, whence we traveled the next day, by way of Charlottesville and Gordonsville, to Richmond,¹ the track of the more direct route of railway being yet in ruins.

Morgan's raid into Kentucky, though disastrous to his immediate command, accomplished its object in a degree, for it drew Burbridge, as we have