Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/407

 position. He considered himself still threatened by Stonewall Jackson, who was reported to have received heavy reinforcements, giving him a decided superiority in numbers. This report was incorrect, but it was credited by other Union commanders in that region. Frémont, therefore, thought it necessary to put his command in a position more easily defensible. Whether he knew or guessed that Mr. Lincoln wanted me to write to him, I do not know. At any rate I gave him no reason for thinking so. But he evidently wished me to form the most favorable judgment of his past action and of his purposes. What he told me of the miserable condition of his troops, I found to be but too true when I reviewed the regiments that were to constitute the two little brigades of my division—two regiments of New York Volunteers, the Fifty-fourth and the Fifty-eighth, two from Pennsylvania, the Seventy-fourth and the Seventy-fifth, one from Ohio, the Sixty-first, and one from West Virginia, the Eighth, besides two batteries of artillery, and a company of cavalry. Most of the infantry had belonged to Blenker's division, which, on the 1st of April, had been detached from the Army of the Potomac and ordered to join Frémont in the Mountain Department. For weeks it had wandered westward, most of the time over wretched roads, sometimes, it seems, without clearly defined direction, in districts of country where “you could not find forage enough for a mule,” ill equipped and ill provisioned. In substantially the same condition they took part in Frémont's ineffective attempt to intercept Stonewall Jackson, and in the battle of Cross Keys, where they fought bravely. And in that condition some of them passed under my command. As soon as we were settled at Mount Jackson, and I had, as well as I could in a few days, satisfied myself by personal observation as to the actual state of things, I availed myself of the privilege given