hie Bridge--Movements of Confederate Armies of Bragg and Kirby
Smith--Retirement of Buell's Army to Louisville--Battle of Perryville,
with Personal and Other Incidents

As we have seen, Halleck's great army at Corinth was dispersed,
the Army of the Ohio going eastward. It spent the month of June,
1862, in rebuilding bridges, including the great bridge across the
Tennessee at Decatur, but recently burned under his direction, and
soon again to be abandoned to the Confederates.

The Confederate authorities projected an invasion on two lines and
with two armies,--one under General E. Kirby Smith and the other
under General Braxton Bragg,--the Ohio River and the cities of
Louisville and Cincinnati being the objective points; the design
being, also, to recruit the Confederate armies in Kentucky, obtain
supplies, and force the evacuation by the Union Army of Alabama
and Tennessee, and especially of Nashville. Early in August, 1862,
these two Confederate armies were assembled at Knoxville and
Chattanooga and along the Upper Tennessee, Kirby Smith's main force
at the former and Bragg's at the latter place. The objectives of
these armies were soon known, and the Army of the Ohio was therefore
ordered to concentrate from its scattered situation at Decherd and
Winchester, Tennessee.

General Robert L. McCook, late Colonel of the 9th Ohio, commanding
a brigade under General George H. Thomas, while riding in an
ambulance at the head of his command, ill and helpless, was shot
and mortally wounded, August 5th, about three miles eastward of
New Market, Alabama, by a body of ambushed men, said to have been
guerillas in citizens' dress. He died at 12 M., August 6th. His
command, in retaliation, laid the country waste around the scene
of his death.( 1) McCook had fought in Western Virginia; at Mill
Springs (where he was wounded), at Shiloh, and elsewhere. He was
one of the ten sons of Major Daniel McCook, who was killed (July
21, 1863), at sixty-five years of age, near Buffington's Island,
during the Morgan raid in Ohio, while leading a party to cut off
Morgan's escape across the Ohio River. Two brothers of his were
killed in battle--Charles M., at Bull Run, July 21, 1861, and Daniel
at Kenesaw, July 21, 1864. Alexander McDowell McCook commanded a
corps, and all the brothers had honorable war records. Dr. John
McCook, brother of the senior Daniel McCook, likewise served and
died in the war. He had five sons, three of whom se