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seen, away from the combined movement upon
Southwestern Virginia, and gave the
Confederates time to strengthen their forces in that direction, especially along the line of the great railway.
Burbridge remained several weeks in
Kentucky after his expulsion of
Morgan, reorganizing and remounting his worn army, and then, late in September, he started with a fresh column directly for the salt works of the
Confederates, near
Abingdon, in Washington County, Virginia, to destroy them.
He was met by a heavy force under
Breckinridge, and after a sharp conflict
was thrown back, with a loss of about three hundred and fifty men. His ammunition was running low, so he retreated that night, leaving his wounded to the care of his foe.
Encouraged by this success,
Breckinridge soon moved into
East Tennessee, and threatened
Knoxville.
Meanwhile
General Gillem discovered a Confederate force in his rear, at
Morristown, when he attacked them suddenly,
routed them, and inflicted upon them a loss of four hundred men and four guns.
Soon after this
Breckinridge moved cautiously forward, and on a very dark night
fell suddenly upon
Gillem, at
Bull's Gap, charged gallantly up a steep, half-wooded hill in the gloom, drove the Nationals from their intrenchments, and utterly routed them.
Gillem fell back to
Russellville, where he was again attacked and routed, and after a loss of his battery, train, nearly all of his small-arms, thrown away by his soldiers in their flight, and two hundred and twenty men, he fled to the shelter of the intrenchments at
Knoxville.
Breckinridge pursued him as far as Strawberry Plain, and for awhile held the country eastward of that point in subjection to the
Confederates.
Other military movements in that mountain region were so intimately connected with, and auxiliary to, those of the Army of the Potomac against
Richmond, that we will now turn to a consideration of the general events of that campaign from the
Rapid Anna to the
James, after noticing earlier movements of some detachments of National troops on the flanks and rear of the Army of Northern Virginia.
The first of these movements which attracted much attention occurred early in February, when
General B. F. Butler, then in command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, lately vacated by
General Foster, planned and attempted the capture of
Richmond, and the release of the
Union ,prisoners there, by a sudden descent upon it. Arrangements were made for a diversion in favor of this movement by the Army of the Potomac, and when, on the 5th of February,
a column of cavalry and infantry, under
General Wistar, about fifteen hundred strong, pushed rapidly northward from New Kent Court-House to the
Chickahominy, at Bottom's Bridge, intending to cross it there,
General Sedgwick, then in temporary command of the Army of the Potomac, in the absence of
General Meade, made the diversion, in obedience to orders from
Washington.
He sent
Kilpatrick's cavalry across the
Rapid Anna at Elly's Ford, and
Merritt's at Barnett's Ford, while two divisions of
Hancock's infantry waded the stream at Germania Ford.
These skirmished sharply with the
Confederates, who stood unmoved in their position, and when the prescribed time for the execution of the raid had expired, these troops recrossed the
Rapid Anna, with a loss of about two hundred men.
Wistar's raid was fruitless,
