[99] command of the Fourth Division. After the fall of Atlanta, Fuller's Division of the Sixteenth Corps was transferred to the Seventeenth, becoming its First Division, to the command of which General Joseph A. Mower was soon after assigned. While on the March to the Sea, and during Sherman's march through the Carolinas, the corps remained under the command of General Blair, with its three divisions--First, Third, and Fourth--under Generals Mower, Leggett, and Giles A. Smith. Just before starting on the March to the Sea its morning reports showed 11,732 present for duty; it then contained 32 regiments of infantry and five light batteries. It encountered little or no fighting as it went marching through Georgia, but its advance through the Carolinas was marked by several minor engagements, culminating in the battle of Bentonville in which it was partially engaged. There were long, toilsome marches, also, with wide rivers to cross and swamps to wade, many of which were forded under the enemy's fire. After participating in the Grand Review at Washington at the close of the war, the Army of the Tennessee--Fifteenth and Seventeenth Army Corps--was ordered in June, 1865, to Louisville, Ky. On the 6th of July, orders were issued to prepare the Army of the Tennessee for muster-out; in a few weeks the ranks which had fought at Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, Atlanta, and in the Carolinas, moved northward and disappeared. When the Seventeenth Corps started on the Atlanta campaign it left the First and Second Divisions in the Mississippi Valley, and the corps thus separated was not reunited. The place of the First Division was filled at Atlanta by the transfer from the Sixteenth Corps; the place of the Second Division remained vacant, for that division continued to serve in the Department of the Mississippi as a part of the Seventeenth Corps. Six regiments from this division served on Banks' Red River Expedition in April, 1864, the six regiments — formed into two brigades — being known then as a Provisional, or as the Red River Division of the Seventeenth Corps. It was commanded by General T. K. Smith. Parts of this division served, also, on McArthur's Yazoo City Expedition, May 4-13, 1864, and on General Slocum's Expedition to Jackson, July 5-6, 1864. A few regiments were engaged, also, under Sturgis, at Brice's Cross Roads, and in General A. J. Smith's Expedition to Tupelo. The fighting in some of these campaigns was severe on certain regiments. In November, 1864, the Red River Division of the Seventeenth Corps accompanied General A. J. Smith's forces to Nashville, and took part in that famous battle and victory. Smith's troops consisted of two divisions of the Sixteenth Corps and this provisional division of the Seventeenth; but the whole command was officially designated as a “Detachment, from the Army of the Tennessee,” instead of by their corps numbers. Upon the reorganization of the Sixteenth Corps, prior to the Mobile campaign of 1865, this division of the Seventeenth was merged in the larger organization of the Sixteenth; hence, the Seventeenth Corps, in 1865, consisted of the three divisions then marching with Sherman north ward through the Carolinas.
Eighteenth Corps.
- Kinston -- Whitehall -- Goldsboro -- Siege of Washington (N. C.); Siege of Suffolk -- Quaker Bridge -- Gum Swamp -- Bachelor's Creek -- Winton -- Port Walthall -- Arrowfield Church -- Drewry's Bluff -- Bermuda Hundred -- Cold Harbor -- assault on Petersburg, June 15th -- Mine Explosion -- Petersburg Trenches -- Chaffin's Farm -- Fair Oaks (1864); Fall of Richmond.
On December 24, 1862, the President ordered that the troops in the Department of North Carolina should be organized into a corps and designated as the Eighteenth. These troops were stationed at Newbern, Plymouth, Beaufort, and vicinity. They included Peck's Division,
