ments--Curious case of General Turchin--Congestion in the highest
grades--Effects--Confederate grades of general and
lieutenant-general--Superiority of our system--Cotemporaneous
reports and criticisms--New regiments instead of recruiting old
ones--Sherman's trenchant opinion.

Early in December I established my winter headquarters at Marietta
on the Ohio River, a central position from which communication could
be had most easily with all parts of the district and with
department headquarters. It was situated at the end of the railway
line from Cincinnati to the Ohio River near Parkersburg, where the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad met the Cincinnati line. The Baltimore
road, coming from the east, forked at Grafton in West Virginia and
reached Wheeling, as has been described in an earlier chapter.
[Footnote: _Ante_, pp. 40, 42.] The river was usually navigable
during the winter and made an easy communication with Wheeling as
with the lower towns. I was thus conveniently situated for most
speedily reaching every part of my command, in person or otherwise.
It took but a little while to get affairs so organized that the
routine of work ran on quietly and pleasantly. No serious effort was
made by the enemy to re-enter the district during the winter, and
except some local outbreaks of "bush-whacking" and petty guerilla
warfare, there was nothing to interrupt the progress of the troops
in drill and instruction.

A good deal of obscurity still hangs about the subject of guerilla
warfare, and the relation of the Confederate government to it. There
was, no doubt, a good deal of loose talk that found its way into
print and helped form a popular opinion, which treated almost every
scouting party as if it were a lawless organization of
"bush-whackers." But there was an authoritative and systematic
effort of the Richmond government to keep up partisan bodies within
our lines which should be soldiers when they had a chance to do us a
mischief, and citizens when they were in danger of capture and
punishment. When Fremont assumed command of the Mountain Department,
he very early called the attention of the Secretary of War to the
fact that Governor Letcher was sending commissions into West
Virginia, authorizing the recipients to enlist companies to be used
against us in irregular warfare. [Footnote: Official Records, vol.
xii. pt. iii. p. 75.]

The bands which were organized by the Confederate Government under
authority of law, but