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.

[42] and pursuing a generally parallel course to that stream, to its own reception by the Ohio, and being navigable for 250 miles by large steamboats, save in seasons of summer drouth, and by boats of 500 tuns for some 300 miles further. These two--the only rivers, save the Mississippi, navigable southward from the border of the Free into the Slave States--were obviously regarded on both sides, in view of the notorious impracticability of Southern roads in Winter and Spring, as the natural routes of advance for our Western armies collected and drilled on and near the Ohio during the Autumn of 1861 and the Winter following.

The close of 1861 left Gen. Humphrey Marshall, commanding the Confederate forces in south-eastern Kentucky, intrenched at Paintville, Johnson county, intent on gathering supplies and recruiting. Col. James A. Garfield, of Ohio, commanding a Union brigade consisting of the 42d Ohio, 14th Kentucky, and a squadron of Ohio cavalry, moved up the Big Sandy early in 1862, occupying Paintville¹ without resistance, and pushing on to Prestonburg, Floyd county; hear which town, at the forks of Middle creek, he encountered Marshall, whom he put to flight with little loss on either side. Garfield reported his full strength in this engagement at 1,800, and estimated that of Marshall at 2,500. Marshall was obliged to retreat into Virginia.

Cumberland Gap was abandoned without resistance to the Unionists next month;² and Gen. Garfield, with 600 men, made a rapid excursion³ to Pound Gap, where he surprised a Rebel camp, capturing 300 rifles, destroying the camp equipage, and returning to Pikeville without loss.

Gen. Zollicoffer, at the close of 1861, held a position on the Cumberland, near the head of steamboat navigation on that sinuous stream, which may be regarded as the right of the Rebel army covering Tennessee and holding a small part of southern Kentucky. His force did not exceed 5,000 men; but even this was with great difficulty meagerly subsisted by inexorable foraging on that thinly settled and poorly cultivated region. His principal camp was at Mill Spring, in Wayne county, on the south side of the river; but, finding himself unmolested, he established himself on the opposite bank, in a substantial earthwork, which he named Camp Beach Grove. He had one small steamboat, which had run up with munitions from Nashville, and was employed in gathering supplies for his hungry men; but the advance of a Union detachment to Columbia, on his left, had rendered his navigation of the river below him precarious, if not entirely obstructed it. On his right front, Gen. Schoepf, with a force of 8,000 men, occupied Somerset; but was content to occupy it, without attempting or desiring to make trouble. But Gen. George H. Thomas, having been ordered⁴ by Gen. Buell to take command in this quarter, had scarcely reached Logan's Cross-Roads⁵ when Maj.-Gen. George B. Crittenden, who had recently joined Zollicoffer and superseded him in command, finding himself nearly destitute of subsistence, and apprehending an attack in overwhelming