Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/252

he could spare to the aid of Rosecrans, General John E. Smith's division of General McPherson's Seventeenth Corps was going up the Mississippi to join General Steele's command, for an expedition up the Arkansas River. The division was ordered to disembark at Memphis. Next, General Sherman, whose Fifteenth Corps was lying along the Big Black River about twenty miles east of Vicksburg, was directed to send one of his divisions at once to that town, for immediate embarkation. He detached the first division, under General Osterhaus, and it marched immediately. The following day, the corps commander was ordered to report in person to General Grant at Vicksburg. He was there told that he and his corps would be sent to Eastern Tennessee, except one division which was to remain on the Black River; but, as a substitute for it, Smith's division of the other corps, already up the river, would be placed under his orders. His first division embarked on the 23d, but the second and fourth were delayed some days by the want of boats. General Sherman started on September 27 and reached Memphis on October 2. He found his instructions from General Halleck, according to which he was to conduct the troops that had come up the river and all others that could be spared from Western Tennessee to Athens, on the Tennessee River, following the railroad and repairing it as he moved. From Athens, he was to report by letter for orders to General Rosecrans as Commander of the Army of the Cumberland. Osterhaus's division had already been moved by rail to Corinth, and Smith's was being moved to that point. Finding that, owing to the limited supply of rolling-stock, it would take weeks to get all the rest of his troops off by rail, General Sherman shipped only his guns and wagons and made the men and animals march. On the 16th, his whole force was assembled at Corinth and reached Iuka on the 19th. Here the railroad repairing commenced, making further progress slow. The first and second divisions led, under the command of F. P. Blair, Jr., and constantly skirmished