The Commission adjourned to meet December 25, 1862, at 10 o'clock a. m.

NASHVILLE, December 25, 1862.

The Commission met pursuant to adjournment, all the members being present; also the judge-advocate and General Buell.

Major SIDELL (a witness for the defense), being duty sworn, testified as follows:

By General BUELL:

Question. State your name and position in the service, if you please, and the special duty upon which you have been engaged for some months past as far back as the month of July.

W. H. Sidell; major of the Fifteenth U. S. Infantry. I have been engaged on special duty as assistant adjutant-general since July 20 at Nashville.

Question. Give, if you please, major, a concise statement of the operations of the enemy in the vicinity of Nashville during the last summer, and of the effect of these operations and the measures adopted to counteract them.

The operations here were irregular and generally of small significance. At the time that I arrived Morgan, with his force, entered Kentucky, and I was detained in Louisville by General Boyle with reference to that condition of things. When I arrived here I found a small garrison of perhaps 1,200 effective men, with a body of convalescents, who were considered available to a certain extent, under the command of Colonel J. F. Miller, Twenty-ninth Indiana Volunteers, who commanded the post. Immediately on my arrival the aggressions of these parties or forces, under various leaders and sometimes without leaders, began in cutting off couriers and interfering with forage and general trains of the army and interrupting the communication between this place and the various corps of the army in the vicinity. We had to be on the alert all the time in order to counteract these operations as they occurred, the general meaning of which is that the country was alive with these irregular forces. Among their operations they made an attack on Gallatin, or rather they entered there, for there was no great force, and there were two expeditions to go upon the road and endeavor to drive them away, which was effected by Colonel Miller. Subsequently to that a third movement was made by Lieutenant-Colonel Heffren, of the Fiftieth Indiana, who went to Gallatin and went into the tunnel, which was burning, 3 miles beyond Gallatin, and to prevent its falling in was lined with wood. The burning out of the interior was of very serious detriment. It is only now just repaired. This Lieutenant-Colonel Heffren, going without proper precaution, met with a disaster, that Colonel Miller was careful enough to avoid, in having this communications cut off in the rear. This so encouraged the enemy that nearly all the communications were destroyed between here and Gallatin. All this occurred toward the end of July and the beginning of August. Some cavalry were sent, under command of R. W. Johnson, brigadier-general, to Gallatin, going by the way of Lebanon, in this State, for the purpose of driving away such of these forces as were concentrated (a force of four companies at Gallatin, under Colonel Boone, a Kentucky regiment, had been taken by surprise, without any firing, and were captured). General Johnson met the rebels at Gallatin and was repulsed. Stragglers began to arrive in this city by way of Lebanon about 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening, giving us information.

This movement of Colonel Heffren and this repulse of General Johnson was the finale to the communication between this city and Louisville. This was early in August. In the other direction from Nashville, south, there were no large conflicts, but a continued series of annoyances, sometimes taking, in one instance 80, prisoners, who went out with wagon trains; at other times squads of from 8 to 10, who were sent in here for parole, as they called it. There was no knowledge that the enemy were always in an organized condition; in fact it was fair to be inferred that they were countrymen, without any organization.

When affairs had arrived at this point, as the forces here were not adequate to any large movement, it was thought proper to organize a light brigade; that is, a brigade so organized as to move with the facility of cavalry. Men were mounted as cavalry or artillery or infantry with the means of a mount, and provided with the means of transportation in wagons, the intention being to follow the enemy and to be self-