Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

Buell had massed at Elizabethtown an army of forty thousand men under the immediate command of General McCook, an officer of great energy and brother to the one we have seen serving under Rosecrans. At the same time, he sent General Mitchell to make a threatening demonstration against Zollicoffer on the borders of the Cumberland. McCook, following the railway, proceeded as far as Munfordsville, on Green River, after a trifling engagement with the outposts of the Confederate general Hindman, on the 4th of December, at Whippoorwill Bridge. The passage of the river delayed him for some time, but on the 16th the Union general, having at last constructed a bridge of boats, sent a German regiment to make a reconnaissance on the left bank. This force was attacked on the 17th by a party of mounted Texans, who rushed upon them with great impetuosity. The Federals kept their ground. They came to close fighting; and the Texans seemed on the point of gaining the victory, when their commander, Colonel Terry, was killed. Seeing that their adversaries were receiving reinforcements, the Texans withdrew, destroying the railway behind them. This battle, which closed the campaign, cost each belligerent about thirty men. Buell did not deem it advisable to go beyond Green River, and waited along its borders for a more favorable season. He was hesitating as to an attack on Bowling Green; we shall find that Grant, a few weeks later, by piercing the Confederate line along the Tennessee, spared him that trouble.

Before closing this chapter it behooves us to cast a glance along the banks of the Potomac, where the two principal hostile armies have been in presence of each other since the battle of Bull Run.

In a preceding chapter we have shown what efforts the North had made to repair that disaster by raising an army which was already formidable in point of numbers. We have pointed out the modes of proceeding resorted to in all the loyal States to raise regiments. A portion of these troops was destined to swell the armies of Missouri, Kentucky, and Western Virginia, but the necessity of covering the Federal capital concentrated around Washington the greatest portion of the men and materiel that the patriotic impulse of the Northern States had placed at Mr. Lincoln's