twenty-three miles north of us, and four miles east of Potosi. I thought they were probably there still and that by getting a good start we could effect a junction with them and fall back or stand as the movement and force of the enemy might permit. I therefore determined to evacuate that night. The chief danger was that the preparations for the retreat might be observed and the garrison cut to pieces or captured in the confusion incident to the exit. The works of the iron company at the north base of Pilot Knob had been fired by the enemy and the immense pile of charcoal adjacent to the works glowed and flamed all night, making the valley as light as noonday. Moreover, I learned Colonel Slayback's command held the Mineral Point road just north of the town, leaving the Potosi road the only exit not certainly in the possession of the enemy. But, with all its dangers, the policy of retreat was clearly best, and preparations for it began at midnight. I had Colonel Fletcher arrange for having the magazine (which was large and filled with every variety of ammunition) blown up in two hours after we left, or as soon as our exit should be discovered by the enemy. We took possession of the town and valley and drove from them all straggling rebels. The garrison was then aroused, knapsacks packed, haversacks, and cartridge-boxes well supplied and everything destructible, which we could not take away and the enemy might use, placed near or on the magazine. At 3 o'clock Colonel Fletcher silently led the infantry out of the sally port around the ditch, and through the north rifle-pit, forming them under cover of a deep shadow at the end of the pit. The drawbridge was then covered with tents to muffle the sound, and the cavalry and battery marching out formed column with the infantry and took a by-way to the Potosi road. We left Slayback's camp on our right and another rebel camp near the road on our left, both unapprised of our movement. The body of the rebel army was at Ironton and thinking us sufficiently hemmed in were busy making fascines and scaling ladders for an assault in the morning. They even failed to take the hint when the magazine an hour before daylight, shook the hills with its explosion. At sunrise I started Captain Hills, Tenth Kansas, acting aide-de-camp, with ten men to Mineral point to acquaint the command there of my approach and request it to march and join me. On starting, they, with our advance, fell upon about twenty-five rebels in the town of Caledonia and routed them, killing one. We then learned that our forces had fallen back from Mineral Point and that Shelby had taken Potosi the evening before, and I therefore at once left the Potosi road and took that through Webster toward Rolla.

I afterward learned that after his repulse Tuesday Price ordered Shelby's division down from Potosi to Pilot Knob, to take part in a second attack, and that the squad we routed at Caledonia was Shelby's advance. He waited several hours with his division to give us battle two miles north of Caledonia thus giving us a good start on the Webster road before pursuing. Marmaduke's division left Pilot Knob at 8 that morning to overtake us and joined Shelby in the pursuit at Caledonia. At sundown we reached Webster, thirty-one miles from Pilot Knob, and rested until midnight. From information received there I determined to go to Harrison, Leasburg, on the southwest branch of the Pacific Railroad, because part of Colonel Warmoth's militia regiment was there, but especially because the road to Rolla was one on which we could be easily surrounded by a superior cavalry force, while that to Harrison led nearly all the way along a sharp spur of the Ozark range, separating the waters of the Huzza and the Courtois, and through the gorge of the Huzza, walled in with untraversable cliffs, to Rolla was

29 R R-VOL XLI, PT I