CHAP.XII.] CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.- UNION.
out their wagons, owing to the fact that no time could be lost in getting them into the field. I have now the wagons, horses, and harness, and am organizing a force of teamsters, and hope very soon to supply all the regiments with transportation.
You request me to send the column of about four regiments up the Big Sandy, to co-operate with you in your advance upon the Cumberland Gap. You do not advise me what amount of force is indispensably necessary at camp Dick Robinson before you will feel it expedient to commence your advance.
We have in Ohio at this time a limited number of arms. The number of regiments which we can put in the field is necessarily limited. Admitting we have but three regiments remaining prepared to move in all this week, do you prefer them to be sent to your camp, or do you prefer them to undertake the expedition up the Sandy?
Send your answer by a mounted messenger to the telegraph office, that it may promptly reach me.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
O. M. MITCHELL, Brigadier-General, Commanding.
CAMP KENTON, MASON, COUNTY, Near Maysville, Ky., October 4, 1861.
Captain GREENE, Assistant Adjutant-General:
SIR: I desire to call the attention of General Anderson to the following intelligence that comes to me from a person in whom I have the highest confidence, and who is himself high in secession counsel, but is in truth a Union man, true and loyal. This person has never yet deceived me.
Breckinridge is not in Prestonburg or that vicinity, but is in Richmond, Va. He sent a messenger to W. R. H. Stanton, who arrived day before yesterday, saying that he (Breckinridge) would return in a very few days as general, and that the secession companies would hold themselves in readiness and be prepared to meet him at hazel Green, in Mason County, on his return, of which event they would be early notified.
The message went on to say that the whole of Beauregard's army was on its way to Kentucky, and will winter in Kentucky, and will be here in time to take advantage of the hay crop; that there was but a thin line of troops in front of Washington masking the movement.
Now, see, this comes to me from such a source that I believe it. The sudden accessions to the strength of Zollicoffer, Buckner, and Polk show that such a movement, or one similar, is on foot. A virtual panic exists in this part of Kentucky; a fear of the General Government's ability to aid them.
I beg to call the general's attention to another point which is doing injury to the cause here. A number of persons are establishing camps in impossible and out-of-the-way places, and raising troops for regiments that can never be found, acting in competition with each other, all desirous of having a camp on his own or his immediate neighbor's farm, and all claiming to be acting under the authority of General Anderson, and pitch in without the slightest reference to me. The consequence is tat there is no head here, no authority or control. If the general will confide to me the raising of troops in this section and give me authority over that which immediately surrounds me, it seems to me tat I can
