Chapter 2

SCARCITY OF FOOD FOR THE ARMY--RAID FOR FORAGE--ENCOUNTER WIT THE REBELS
--SHARP CAVALRY FIGHT--DEFEAT OF THE "JOHNNIES"--POWELL'S VALLEY OPENED
UP.

As the Autumn of 1863 advanced towards Winter the difficulty of supplying
the forces concentrated around Cumberland Gap--as well as the rest of
Burnside's army in East Tennessee--became greater and greater. The base
of supplies was at Camp Nelson, near Lexington, Ky., one hundred and
eighty miles from the Gap, and all that the Army used had to be hauled
that distance by mule teams over roads that, in their best state were
wretched, and which the copious rains and heavy traffic had rendered
well-nigh impassable. All the country to our possession had been drained
of its stock of whatever would contribute to the support of man or beast.
That portion of Powell's Valley extending from the Gap into Virginia was
still in the hands of the Rebels; its stock of products was as yet almost
exempt from military contributions. Consequently a raid was projected to
reduce the Valley to our possession, and secure its much needed stores.
It was guarded by the Sixty-fourth Virginia, a mounted regiment, made up
of the young men of the locality, who had then been in the service about
two years.

Maj. C. H. Beer's third Battalion, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry--four
companies, each about 75 strong--was sent on the errand of driving out
the Rebels and opening up the Valley for our foraging teams. The writer
was invited to attend the excursion. As he held the honorable, but not
very lucrative position of "high, private" in Company L, of the
Battalion, and the invitation came from his Captain, he did not feel at
liberty to decline. He went, as private soldiers have been in the habit
of doing ever since the days of the old Centurion, who said with the
characteristic boastfulness of one of the lower grades of commissioned
officers when he happens to be a snob:

For I am also a man set under authority, having under me soldiers,
and I say unto one, Go; and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

Rather "airy" talk that for a man who nowadays would take rank with
Captains of infantry.

Three hundred of us responded to the signal of "boots and saddles,"
buckled on three hundred more or less trusty sabers and revolvers,
saddled three hundred more or less gallant steeds, came into line "as
companies" with the automatic listlessness of the old soldiers, "counted
off by fours" in that queer gamut-running style that makes a company of
men "counting off"--each shouting a number in a different voice from his
neighbor--sound like running the scales on some great