Departure of the staff for the field--An amusingly quick
return--Changes in my own duties--Expeditions to occupy the
enemy--Sanders' raid into East Tennessee--His route--His success and
return--The Confederate Morgan's raid--His instructions--His
reputation as a soldier--Compared with Forrest--Morgan's start
delayed--His appearance at Green River, Ky.--Foiled by Colonel
Moore--Captures Lebanon--Reaches the Ohio at Brandenburg--General
Hobson in pursuit--Morgan crosses into Indiana--Was this his
original purpose?--His route out of Indiana into Ohio--He approaches
Cincinnati--Hot chase by Hobson--Gunboats co-operating on the
river--Efforts to block his way--He avoids garrisoned posts and
cities--Our troops moved in transports by water--Condition of
Morgan's jaded column--Approaching the Ohio at
Buffington's--Gunboats near the ford--Hobson attacks--Part captured,
the rest fly northward--Another capture--A long chase--Surrender of
Morgan with the remnant--Summary of results--A burlesque
capitulation.

The departure of General Burnside and his staff for active service
in the field was quite an event in Cincinnati society. The young men
were a set of fine fellows, well educated and great social
favorites. There was a public concert the evening before they left
for Lexington, and they were to go by a special train after the
entertainment should be over. They came to the concert hall,
therefore, not only booted and spurred, but there was perhaps a bit
of youthful but very natural ostentation of being ready for the
field. Their hair was cropped as close as barber's shears could cut
it, they wore the regulation uniform of the cavalry, with trim
round-about jackets, and were the "cynosure of all eyes." Their
parting words were said to their lady friends in the intervals of
the music, and the pretty dramatic effect of it all suggested to an
onlooker the famous parting scene in "Belgium's capital" which
"Childe Harold" has made so familiar.

It was quite an anti-climax, however, when the gay young officers
came back, before a week was over, crestfallen, the detaching of the
Ninth Corps having suspended operations in Kentucky. They were a
little quizzed about their very brief campaign, but so
good-humoredly that they bore it pretty well, and were able to seem
amused at it, as well as the fair quizzers.

In preparation for a lengthened absence, Burnside had turned over to
me some extra duties. He ordered the District of M