Donelson." At the same time, he was preparing to discipline General Grant for his hasty and unauthorized movements which resulted in the fall of the two forts.

Washington heeded a portion of Halleck's recommendation by making Grant a Major-General of Volunteers, although still subordinate to General Halleck. It was Grant's idea to follow up the victory at Donelson by starting immediately in pursuit of General Johnston with his main army, then retiring precipitately from his headquarters at Bowling Green to Corinth, Mississippi, an exhausting retreat of three hundred miles; but on strict orders of General Halleck, Grant remained at Fort Donelson, practically a prisoner, for ten days, which was enough to allow Johnston to mobilize at Corinth, Mississippi, all the Confederate troops in the western theater. Then President Lincoln himself took a hand and started the movement which resulted in moving the fleet of Commodore Foote up the Tennessee river to Pittsburg Landing, together with all the Union forces which could be spared from Fort Donelson, under General Grant, who was to wait at Pittsburg Landing, twenty miles from Corinth, until General Buell with the Army of the Cum. berland could join him, when, with their combined forces, they could attack General Johnstor at the place he was then resting waiting to giv battle.

CHAPTER XVII

ON THE WAY TO SHILOH

On account of the assignment of my company to guard the mouth of the Cumberland at Smithland, I did not take an active part in the campaigns that led up to the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson. Soon after the surrender of the latter, however, my company was ordered back to Paducah, and was detailed to string a line of telegraph wires from Paducah to Fort Henry, from thence to Fort Donelson, and from there to Clarksville, a city in Tennessee on the Cumberland river about midway between Fort Donelson and Nashville. The telegraph line was constructed through Kentucky on the high ground between the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and took us into a region sparsely populated with a primitive, uneducated people, few of whom could read or write. There were no school houses, and only occasionally a church which the natives invariably called a "meeting house." While only a few of the residents of that territory owned slaves, the institution was generally approved, and many of the preachers in those backwoods meeting houses would be found arguing the divine origin and establishment of human slavery.

The telegraph line which we constructed was the first in that country, and served to inspire the natives with fear, awe and wonder. When our construction gang was asked by the natives what the wire was for they replied to the effect that it was highly charged and that any one fooling with it might get killed. The wire was not disturbed, and for weeks it served as a means of communication between our forces advancing on Corinth and the base at Paducah. We had with us a telegraph operator named Von Volingberg. Every evening when we went into camp he would rig up an instrument, connecting it with our end of the wire, and furnish us with up-to-the-minute news from the world. I think it was Von Volingberg who, after the war was over, invented the Duplex table that is now universally used by telegraphers.

The route chosen for our line took us through the village of Fungo, where, to my surprise, I found a very competent physician who had been graduated from Jefferson College in Philadelphia. Learning that I knew something about medicine, he made my acquaintance and invited me to his home to take dinner with him. Not having had an opportunity for a long time to partake of home cooking, I jumped at the chance, and was rewarded with a savory, well-cooked meal and a pressing invitation to return for supper. On my return to the camp in the afternoon,

I related my good fortune to Mr. Burlingame, the man in charge of our construction work, who asked if he could not be included in the supper invitation; so when the Doctor came to the camp later to get me, I made it a point to introduce Mr. Burlingame. In the course of their conversation they discovered that a cousin of Mr. Burlingame had been a college classmate of the Doctor, which secured for Burlingame the coveted invitation.

After we reached the Doctor's home, the conversation between him and my friend continued, and so it fell to me to converse with the Doctor's wife, who was a very nice appearing lady, aside from the fact that she went about her work of cooking the supper with a short stick in her mouth, which she would remove occasionally to expectorate, and from which I came to the conclusion that she was a "snuff dipper." She had no cook stove, but followed the primitive method of cooking at the open fireplace in a portable oven and in skillets. While heating the oven to bake biscuits, she removed her snuff stick to spit in the fireplace, but made a miscue with the result that it landed in the oven. Covered with embarrassment she hastily removed the oven, and I am fully satisfied that she gave it a thorough cleaning, but the incident rather took away my taste for homemade biscuits. During the evening meal Burlingame ate voraciously of biscuits,

butter and honey; and on our return to the camp while he was still raving about "those delicious biscuits," I told him what had happened. The information acted as a strong emetic causing Burlingame to part with his supper, after which I explained to him that she had thoroughly cleaned the oven before baking the biscuits. He then upbraided me for not telling him that sooner, but I reminded him that he hadn't given me time to make that explanation.

While at Fungo, I was ordered to arrest a gentleman in the neighborhood named Wright who was accused of having given aid and comfort to the enemy. It transpired later that he had sold a boatload of flour the previous autumn in Nashville, but not to the Confederate government; that later he had consigned another load to the same market, but this had been captured by one of our gunboats and confiscated. Mr. Wright did not try to evade or resist arrest, but gladly accompanied me to camp, and, as he was an elderly gentleman, I walked and let him ride my horse. After a brief examination, the captain in command of our squad offered to release Mr. Wright and allow him to return to his home until Monday morning, at which time I was detailed to take him to the commanding officer at Fort Henry. At his urgent request, however, Captain Hall and I went home. with him, and we were surprised and delighted to find such a refined and cultured home in that