there by 18th. Colonel Trigg started from Wytheville with 560 men; Jeffress had 60 in his battery, Williams about 600 in his nine companies, and Shawhan had about 300 mounted men.

With these I commenced a demonstration upon the State. Two points were strategic as connected with the roads of the country-Salyersville and Paintsville. I moved the mounted force to the one, the infantry and artillery to the other. This line covered all the roads leading to Virginia by the way of the Pound Gap or up the Sandy on this side of the river. I sent recruiting parties into the counties adjacent to my positions. The news that I was in the State flew through the country and the work of enlistment commenced. I permitted my battalion of mounted men to advance to West Liberty, and some of the troopers pushed on to Mount Sterling, and even to Lexington, Paris, and Owingsville. The Union men in the State became alarmed, and fled by hundreds to Louisville and Cincinnati, exaggerating my force to the most wonderful volume, and lying to excess as to my cruelty and general conduct. Immediate measures were taken to attack me, and especially to prevent the men from the interior of the State from coming out to me. By Christmas Day the enemy was advancing on me from Lexington and from the mouth of the Sandy. Colonel Moore had not yet joined me. Colonel Stuart had been sent to me, but had not come up with the Fifty-sixth Virginia, which was intended to supply the deficiency occasioned by the failure to accomplish the organization of the Twenty-ninth, and to supply me with Trigg's deficiency of numbers.

On the 28th of December Colonel Moore arrived at Paintsville with scant 300 men and officers, and the news came that Colonel Stuart was not coming to me at all, and I would not be further re-enforced. My two Virginia regiments then amounted to about 850 men, all told, my battery to four pieces and 60 men. My Kentucky regiments to (which were supposed to be 2,500 at least, and daily swelling when I accepted) less than one regiment of infantry and about 300 mounted men, say 850 more, all told. These people all put together have never seen the day they could parade on the field 1,700 men, or more in fact than 1,400 to 1,500, and at least half of these were entirely undrilled, as much so as any militia.

But the young men commenced coming to me gloriously. Some days I received as many as 75 recruits, and I soon had the tenth company added to Colonel Williams, and then the companies began to fill up, but the advance of the enemy closed down this operation in a very few days. I had not quartermaster; my commissary was old and unfit for duty; my staff had been picked up as I could catch it in the highways going along; clever, but inexperienced in all military affairs. I found that I was in a critical position. I will not recount the military operations which ensued. Suffice it that I repulsed the enemy in largely-superior numbers after engaging him on the 10th of January, and he gave me leisure then to make other arrangements. I did not intend to leave Kentucky. On the contrary, I meant to draw off to be line of the Kentucky River and occupy that for the present, while I presented a plan of invasion. I asked for 1,500 cavalry. I meant to dash on to Lexington and destroy the railroad to Cincinnati, and move steadily forward with infantry re-enforcements, so as to recall the troops from Bowling Green, and so let General Johnston advance on Louisville, making the war in Kentucky thereby so active as to involve the whole population. Whenever that is done it will soon recross the Ohio. My views did not prevail. I was ordered to fall back to Pound Gap and make such dispositions as seemed to me most expedient. I had no