!

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ARMY OF THE CENTRE.

As the army corps had relieved the commanders of departments from the care of the great mass of minor and personal details relating to the troops under them, so the organization of military divisions, now for the first time introduced into our service-although something similar had been intended when General McClellan was first called to Washington-left the generals selected to command them entirely free to devote their minds to the organization, administration, and movement of their armies against the enemy. Tactical details devolved upon the department commanders. The unit habitually contemplated by the commander of the military division became an army; his detachments were army corps.

The military division of the Mississippi, in the personal command of which Sherman had just relieved the lieutenantgeneral, consisted of the four large departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and Arkansas. Embracing the great central belt of territory from the Alleghanies to the western boundary of Arkansas, it included the entire theatre of war from Chattanooga to Vicksburg. Four large Union armies occupied this central zone.

The army of the Ohio, consisting of the Ninth and Twentythird Army Corps, was at Knoxville. Major-General John M. Schofield had just taken command of it. Longstreet had disappeared from its front, and was retreating into Virginia to join Lee, and the Ninth Corps was on the way to re-enforce the army of the Potomac. The Twenty-third Corps, as it presently took the field, consisted of the divisions of Brigadier-Generals Miles S. Hascall and Jacob D. Cox. Three divisions remained to garrison East Tennessee and Kentucky.

The Army of the Cumberland was at Chattanooga, under the command of Major-General George H. Thomas. It consisted of the Fourth, Fourteenth, and Twentieth corps, commanded respectively by Major-Generals Oliver O. Howard, John M. Palmer, and Joseph Hooker. The Fourth Corps included the divisions of Brigadier-Generals D. S. Stanley, John Newton, and Thomas J. Wood; the Fourteenth, those of Jefferson C. Davis, R. W. Johnson, and Absalom Baird; and the Twentieth, those of A. S. Williams, John W. Geary, and Daniel Butterfield.

The Army of the Tennessee, comprising the Fifteenth, and portions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth corps, under Major-Generals John A. Logan, George M. Dodge, and Frank P. Blair, Jr., was at Huntsville, commanded by McPherson. The remaining divisions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps were at Memphis and Vicksburg, under Hurlbut and Slocum, except those absent on the Red River expedition. The Fifteenth Corps embraced the divisions of Generals P. J. Osterhaus, Morgan L. Smith, John E. Smith, and Harrow; the Sixteenth, those of Thomas E. G. Ransom, John M. Corse, and Thomas W. Sweeney; and the Seventeenth, those of Charles R. Woods and Miles D. Leggett.

The cavalry consisted of McCook's division of the Army of the Ohio, Kilpatrick's and Garrard's divisions of the Army of the Cumberland, and Edward McCook's brigade of the Army of the Tennessee.

The Department of Arkansas, including the whole of that State, was commanded by Major-General Frederick Steele, who, with the main portion of his troops, was at Little Rock, holding the line of the Arkansas River, with the object of keeping an army of the enemy away from the Mississippi and out of Missouri. This department, however, did not long continue attached to Sherman's command, being added to the Military Division of West Mississippi, under Canby, when that organization was formed in May.

John McAllister Schofield, the son of a clergyman, the Reverend James Schofield, residing in Chatauqua County, in

the State of New York, was born there on the 29th of September, 1831. When about twelve years of age his father took him to reside at Bristol, Illinois, whence, in 1845, they removed to Freeport, in the same State. In June, 1849, young Schofield entered the Military Academy at West Point, and graduated four years later, standing seventh in the order of general merit in the same class with Generals McPherson, Sheridan, Sill, Terrill, R. O. Tyler, and the rebel General Hood. He was appointed a brevet second-lieutenant, and attached to the Second Regiment of Artillery, on the 1st of July, 1853, and in regular course of promotion advanced to the grades of second-lieutenant in the First Regiment of Artillery on the 30th of August in the same year; first-lieutenant in the same regiment on the 1st of March, 1855; and captain on the 14th of May, 1861. After serving for two years with his company in South Carolina and Florida, in the fall of 1855, Lieutenant Schofield was ordered to West Point, as Assistant Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy; which position he held until June, 1860, when he obtained leave of absence for twelve months to accept the Chair of Physics in Washington University, at St. Louis, Missouri, intending to quit the army at the end of the leave. This design he abandoned immediately upon the publication of the President's proclamation of the 15th of April, 1861, calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers, and waiving the remainder of his leave, reported himself for orders and was assigned to duty as mustering officer at St. Louis. Shortly afterwards, by permission of the War Department, Lieutenant Schofield accepted the position of major of the First Regiment of Missouri Volunteers, offered him by the governor of the State, and in that capacity participated with his regiment in the bold capture and dispersion of the nest of secessionists at Camp Jackson on the 10th of May, planned and executed by Captain, afterwards Brigadier-General Nathaniel Lyon. Major Schofield soon afterwards became General Lyon's principal staff-officer, and served with that gallant commander throughout the campaign which ended in his death. In the