Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War by Various
page 120 of 286 (41%)
page 120 of 286 (41%)
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the depot. The Federal loss was three killed and sixteen wounded, and
three hundred and eighty were prisoners. Without delay we passed through Springfield and Bardstown, crossing the Louisville and Nashville Railroad at Lebanon Junction, thirty miles from Louisville, on the evening of the 6th. At Springfield two companies of about ninety men were sent toward Harrodsburg and Danville to occupy the attention of the Federal cavalry in that quarter. From Bardstown, Captain W.C. Davis, acting assistant adjutant-general of the First Brigade, was sent with a detachment of one hundred and thirty men to scout in the vicinity of Louisville, to produce the impression that the city was about to be attacked, and to divert attention from the passage of the Ohio by the main body at Brandenburg. He was instructed to cross the river somewhere east of Louisville and to rejoin the column on its line of march through Indiana. He executed the first part of the program perfectly, but was unable to get across the river. Tapping the wires at Lebanon Junction, we learned from intercepted despatches that the garrison at Louisville was much alarmed, and in expectation of an immediate attack. The detachments I have just mentioned, with some smaller ones previously sent off on similar service, aggregated not less than two hundred and sixty men permanently separated from the division; which, with a loss in killed and wounded, in Kentucky, of about one hundred and fifty, had reduced our effective strength at the Ohio, by more than four hundred. The rapid and constant marching already began to tell upon both horses and men, but we reached the Ohio at Brandenburg at 9 A.M. on the 8th. Captains Samuel Taylor and H.C. Meriwether of the 10th Kentucky had been sent forward the day before, with their companies, to capture |
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