General John G.Foster was then commanding the Department of the Ohio.

It was an intensely cold winter, the thermometer being down as low as zero every morning for more than a week while I was at Knoxville and on my way from there on horseback to Lexington, Kentucky, the first point where I could reach rail to carry me back to my headquarters at Nashville.
The road over Cumberland Gap, and back of it, was strewn with debris of broken wagons and dead animals, much as I had found it on my first trip to Chattanooga over Waldron's Ridge.

The road had been cut up to as great a depth as clay could be by mules and wagons, and in that condition frozen; so that the ride of six days from Strawberry Plains to Lexington over these holes and knobs in the road was a very cheerless one, and very disagreeable.
I found a great many people at home along that route, both in Tennessee and Kentucky, and, almost universally, intensely loyal.

They would collect in little places where we would stop of evenings, to see me, generally hearing of my approach before we arrived.

The people naturally expected to see the commanding general the oldest person in the party.