Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/522

Rh was put in command in Northern Mississippi. Depots of supplies were established at Columbus and Grenada, where martial law was put in force March 30th, and subsistence was ordered to be collected at Jackson, Corinth and Iuka, and Grand Junction, Tenn.

General Johnston reorganized at Murfreesboro what was left of the force lately at Bowling Green, with the remnants of Zollicoffer's command and those who had escaped from Fort Donelson, and assumed personal command. On February 23d, this reorganized central army included the Sixth infantry, Colonel Thornton; the Fifteenth, Major Brantley; the Twenty-second, Lieutenant-Colonel Schaller; the Second Confederate (35th Mississippi), Colonel Martin, and Hardcastle's battalion. Johnston moved the military stores saved from Nashville to Stevenson, and marched his men over the mud roads to Corinth.

On March 29th he assumed command and immediate direction of the armies of Kentucky and of the Mississippi, now united and to be known as the army of the Mississippi. General Beauregard was appointed second in command; General Bragg was made chief of staff, and the army was divided into three army corps: The First, including the garrisons on the river up to Island No. 10, under General Polk; the Second, under General Bragg; and the Third, General Hardee; the infantry reserve under General Breckinridge. Under these commanders was organized at Corinth, during March and the early days of April, the first great Confederate army outside of Virginia. It defended a line which was practically the north line of the State of Mississippi, extending from the Mississippi to the Tennessee rivers. The greater river was still held by the garrisons extending up to the north line of Tennessee, and the Tennessee river itself was the army's outer line of defense.

The Federal army of invasion had occupied Nashville February 25th, and on March 16th General Sherman