A Hard March

A Hard March. Mill Springs Battlefield. In November 1861, the Confederate army commanded by General Felix Zollicoffer arrived in Mill Springs, Kentucky, on the south side of the Cumberland River. A month later, Zollicoffer had moved 6,000 men to the north side of Cumberland and constructed a line of fortifications a mile long. Union General Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Army of the Ohio, ordered General George Thomas to find Zollicoffer’s army and destroy it. , , On December 31, 1861, Thomas and about 3,000 men left Lebanon, Kentucky, and marched to this place, then known as Logan’s Crossroads. Under normal circumstances, his soldiers would have covered the sixty-five miles in two or three days. But heavy winter rains turned roads into ankle-deep mud, and the trip stretched to over two weeks. His men, wet, cold and hungry, arrived here on January 17, 1862. , , Upon his arrival, Thomas ordered General Albin Schoepf at Somerset to bring his men up from the village eight miles away. Schoepf’s men forded swollen Fishing Creek and joined Thomas a day later. The Confederates arrived the day after that. , , When the battle began, Thomas rode to the hilltop where Mill Springs National Cemetery is now. Dressed in his new brigadier’s uniform, Thomas ordered the 2nd Minnesota and 9th Ohio regiments forward. He then rode toward the sound of fighting. From what is now Zollicoffer Park, Thomas directed his troops at the Battle of Mill Springs. , , , Around noon a heavy rain began to fall in such torrents that it blinded our eyes. The wagons cut up the road and the mud in some places was six to eight inches deep. , – A soldier of the 10th Kentucky Infantry, (U.S.)