Gen. Forrest's expedition to Paducah.
[Official dispatches.]
The following dispatch from Gen. Forrest has just been received. L. Polk, Lieut.-Gen.
Dresden, Ten., March 27. via Okolona, April 2. --To Lieut.-Gen. Polk:--I left Jackson on the 23d ult, and captured Union City on the 24th with four hundred and fifty prisoners, among them the renegade Hawkins, and most of his regiment, about two hundred horses, and five hundred small arms. I also took possession of Hickman, the enemy having passed it. I moved North with Buford's Division, marching direct from Jackson to Paducah in fifty hours, attacked it on the evening of the 26th, drove the enemy to their gunboats and forts, held the town for ten hours, and could have held it longer, but found the small-pox raging, and evacuated the place. We captured many stores and horses, burned up sixty bales of cotton, one steamer in the dry-dock, and brought out fifty prisoners. My loss at Union City and Paducah, as far as known, is twenty-five killed and wounded, among them Col Thompson, commanding the Kentucky Brigade, killed; Lieut. Col. Lanhum, of the Faulkner regiment, mortally wounded, and Col. Crosslin, of the 9th Ky., and Lieut-Col Morton, of the 2d Tennessee, slightly wounded. The enemy's loss at Paducah was fifty killed and wounded. The prisoners in all five hundred.
The following dispatch just received from Gen. Forrest: "Jackson, Tenn, via Waterford, April 2.--Six hundred Federal prisoners will arrive at Ripley, Miss, to-day, en route for Demopolis. Colonel Neely engaged Hunt (?) on the 29th March, near Bolivar, capturing his entire wagon train, routing and driving him to Memphis, killing thirty and capturing thirty-five prisoners, killing two Captains and capturing one."
