Seven days before, we had left our camps on the other side of the Tennessee with two days' rations, without a change of clothing–stripped for the fight, with but a single blanket or coat per man, from myself to the private included. Of course, we then had no provisions save what we gathered by the road, and were ill supplied for such a march. But we learned that twelve thousand of our fellow-soldiers were beleaguered in the mountain town of Knoxville, eighty-four miles distant; that they needed relief, and must have it in three days.

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