Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/88

 82 Southern Historical Society Papers.

General Cheatham took Blythe's Mississippi regiment and the One Hundred and Fifty-fourth Tennessee regiment, under my command, to follow up the retreating Federals and attack the troops embarking on the transports. Within a half mile from where we started we came near a double log house, about one hundred yards from the road, and which was occupied by the Federals as a hospifal. At the gate were two Federal officers mounted on fine stallions one of the stallions a black, the other a gray. At this juncture, two officers one with an overcoat on, the other with his overcoat on his arm came out of the hospital and ran towards a cornfield, jumping the fence and disappearing. When they first appeared, a number of my men of the One Hundred and Fifty-fourth regiment cocked their guns and made aim at them.

General Cheatham at once directed me to order their guns to a shoulder and not to fire on stragglers, as his orders were to attack the troops seeking the transports. The order was given and there was no firing on them. On the day after the batile, General Cheat- ham met, under flag of truce, Colonel Hatch, who was General Grant's Quartermaster. Colonel Hatch, in his conversation wilh General Cheatham, told him that the two officers who ran out of the hospital were General Grant and himself, and that both were surprised that they were not fired on. General Cheatham, in a few days after- wards, met General Grant on a flag-of-truce boat, and he fully con- firmed Colonel Hatch's statement.

The battle of Belmont was the initial battle of the great campaign in the Mississippi Valley. It was General Grant's first battle in this war, and its sequences were Forts Henry, Donelson and Shiloh and all that followed.

MARCUS J. WRIGHT. Washingion, D. C, April, 1888.

A Narrative of the Service of Colonel Geo. A. Porterfield in North- western Virginia in i86i-'a,

CHARLESTON, W. VA., May 77, 1888.

70 General MARCUS I. WRIGHT :

At your request I submit the following statement: I was living upon my farm, in Jefferson county, when our civil war began. In May, 1861, I was appointed Colonel of Volunteers, and