equippage could not be had in time, and about thirty pots and kettles
were bought at Louisville, one to each company of eighty men. At the
mouth of the Cumberland River they were detained eight days, with their
axes and frows riving boards with which to patch up their old boats.
From this point they started with half a supply of rations, to which
they added as they could on the way down the Mississippi River. The men
knew there was due them an advance of two months' pay when ordered out
of the State. The United States quartermaster distributed this pay to
the Tennessee troops who had preceded them, but withheld it from the
Kentuckians. Believing that they would be furnished suitable clothing or
pay, blankets, tents, arms, and munitions with reasonable promptness,
they left home with little else than the one suit of clothing they wore,
usually of homespun jeans. As a writer has said: "Rarely, if ever, has
it been known of such a body of men leaving their homes, unprovided as
they were, and risking a difficult passage of fifteen hundred miles in
the crudest of barges to meet an enemy. They could have been prompted
alone by a patriotic love of country and a defiance of its enemies."
This contribution of Kentucky for the defense of Louisiana was made just
after she had furnished over ten thousand volunteer troops in the
campaigns of Harrison in the Northwest, who made up the larger part of
the soldiers in that army for the two years previous, and who recently
had won the great victory at the battle of the Thames. Governor Shelby
tendered to the government ten thousand more Kentuckians for the army of
the Southwest, if they were needed to repel the invaders.

It was in the midst of an unusually severe winter in Louisiana, in a
season of almost daily rainfalls, when the Kentucky and part of the
Tennessee troops reached their destination. They went into camp without
tents or blankets or bedding of straw even, on the open and miry
alluvial ground, with the temperature at times at freezing point. This
destitution and consequent suffering at once enlisted the attention and
sympathies of the public. The Legislature of Louisiana, in session,
promptly voted six thousand dollars for relief, to which the generous
citizens added by subscription ten thousand dollars more. With these
funds materials were purchased. The noble women of New Orleans, almost
without an exception, devoted themselves day and night to making up the
materials int