[Illustration]

Pushing on before dawn of the 3d, we reached Columbia in the afternoon.
The place was occupied by a detachment of Colonel Frank Wolford's
brigade, which was quickly driven out. Encamping that evening some eight
miles from Columbia, we could hear all night the ringing of the axes
near Green River bridge, on the road from Columbia to Campbellsville.
Three or four hundred of the 25th Michigan Infantry were stationed at
the bridge to protect it; but the commander, Colonel Orlando H. Moore,
deliberately quitting the elaborate stockade erected near the
bridge,--in which nine officers out of ten would have remained, but
where we could have shelled him into surrender without losing a man
ourselves,--selected one of the strongest natural positions I ever saw,
and fortified it skilfully although simply. The Green River makes here
an immense horseshoe sweep, with the bridge at the toe of the horseshoe;
and more than a mile south of it was the point where Colonel Moore
elected to make his fight. The river there wound back so nearly upon its
previous course that the peninsula, or "neck," was scarcely a hundred
yards wide. This narrow neck was also very short, the river bending
almost immediately to the west again. At that time it was thickly
covered with trees and undergrowth, and Colonel Moore, felling the
heaviest timber, had constructed a formidable abatis across the
narrowest part of it. Just in front of the abatis there was open ground
for perhaps two hundred yards. South of the open was a deep ravine. The
road ran on the east side of the cleared place, and the banks of the
river were high and precipitous. The center of the open space rose into
a swell, sloping gently away both to the north and south. On the crest
of the swell Moore had thrown up a slight earthwork, which was manned
when we approached. An officer was promptly despatched with a flag to