where I could
reach rail to carry me back to my headquarters at Nashville.

The road over Cumberland Gap, and back of it, was strewn with debris of
broken wagons and dead animals, much as I had found it on my first trip
to Chattanooga over Waldron's Ridge. The road had been cut up to as
great a depth as clay could be by mules and wagons, and in that
condition frozen; so that the ride of six days from Strawberry Plains to
Lexington over these holes and knobs in the road was a very cheerless
one, and very disagreeable.

I found a great many people at home along that route, both in Tennessee
and Kentucky, and, almost universally, intensely loyal. They would
collect in little places where we would stop of evenings, to see me,
generally hearing of my approach before we arrived. The people
naturally expected to see the commanding general the oldest person in
the party. I was then forty-one years of age, while my medical director
was gray-haired and probably twelve or more years my senior. The crowds
would generally swarm around him, and thus give me an opportunity of
quietly dismounting and getting into the house. It also gave me an
opportunity of hearing passing remarks from one spectator to another
about their general. Those remarks were apt to be more complimentary to
the cause than to the appearance of the supposed general, owing to his
being muffled up, and also owing to the travel-worn condition we were
all in after a hard day's ride. I was back in Nashville by the 13th of
January, 1864.

When I started on this trip it was necessary for me to have some person
along who could turn dispatches into cipher, and who could also read the
cipher dispatches which I was liable to receive daily and almost hourly.
Under the rules of the War Department at that time, Mr. Stanton had
taken entire control of the matter of regulating the telegraph and
determining how it should be used, and of saying who, and who alone,
should have the ciphers. The operators possessed of the ciphers, as
well as the ciphers used, were practically independent of the commanders
whom they were serving immediately under, and had to report to the War
Department through General Stager all the dispatches which they received
or forwarded.

I was obliged to leave the telegraphic operator back at Nashville,
because that was the point at which all dispatches to me would come, to
be forwarded from there. As I have said, it was necessary for me also
to