General Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations During the Civil War

[303] Grant, the Sixteenth and Twenty-third Corps, and Hovey's division. The veteran regiments of this army had made a very large number of recruits while on furlough in the previous winter-probably fifteen or eighteen thousand. These men, mixed in the ranks, were little inferior to old soldiers. We had been estimating the cavalry, under General Kilpatrick, at five thousand; but, at the opening of the campaign, Stoneman's, Garrard's, and McCook's divisions arrived-adding, probably, twelve thousand.

Our scouts reported that the Fourth Corps and McCook's division of cavalry were at Cleveland, and the Army of the Ohio at Charleston, on the 2d, both on the way to Chattanooga; and that these troops and the Army of the Cumberland reached Ringgold in the afternoon of the 4th and encamped there.

Our pickets (cavalry) were at the same time pressed back beyond Varnell's Station, on the Cleveland road, and within three miles of Tunnel Hill, on that from Ringgold.

Upon these indications that the enemy was advancing upon us in great force, I again urged the Administration, by telegraph, to put about half of Lieutenant-General Polk's infantry under my control, and ordered Major-General Martin, with his division, from the valley of the Etowah to that of the Oostenaula, to observe it from Resaca to Rome. Brigadier-General Kelly, whose little division of cavalry had just come up from the vicinity of Resaca, was ordered to join the troops of that arm in observation on the Cleveland road.