roads toward Mason, by Jonesboro' and McDonough, and reached the
Ocmulgee at Planters' Factory, which they crossed, by the aid of
the pontoon-train, during the 18th and 19th of November. Thence,
with the Seventeenth Corps (General Blair's) he (General Howard)
had marched via Monticello toward Gordon, having dispatched
Kilpatrick's cavalry, supported by the Fifteenth Corps
(Osterhaus's), to feign on Mason. Kilpatrick met the enemy's
cavalry about four miles out of Mason, and drove them rapidly back
into the bridge-defenses held by infantry. Kilpatrick charged
these, got inside the parapet, but could not hold it, and retired
to his infantry supports, near Griswold Station. The Fifteenth
Corps tore up the railroad-track eastward from Griswold, leaving
Charles R. Wood's division behind as a rear-guard-one brigade of
which was intrenched across the road, with some of Kilpatrick's
cavalry on the flanks. On the 22d of November General G. W. Smith,
with a division of troops, came out of Mason, attacked this brigade
(Walcutt's) in position, and was handsomely repulsed and driven
back into Mason. This brigade was in part armed with Spencer
repeating-rifles, and its fire was so rapid that General Smith
insists to this day that he encountered a whole division; but he is
mistaken; he was beaten by one brigade (Walcutt's), and made no
further effort to molest our operations from that direction.
General Walcutt was wounded in the leg, and had to ride the rest of
the distance to Savannah in a carriage.

Therefore, by the 23d, I was in Milledgeville with the left wing,
and was in full communication with the right wing at Gordon. The
people of Milledgeville remained at home, except the Governor
(Brown), the State officers, and Legislature, who had ignominiously
fled, in the utmost disorder and confusion; standing not on the
order of their going, but going at once--some by rail, some by
carriages, and many on foot. Some of the citizens who remained
behind described this flight of the "brave and patriotic" Governor
Brown. He had occupied a public building known as the "Governor's
Mansion," and had hastily stripped it of carpets, curtains, and
furniture of all sorts, which were removed to a train of
freight-cars, which carried away these things--even the cabbages and
vegetables from his kitchen and cellar--leaving behind muskets,
ammunition, and the public archives. On arrival at Milledgeville I
occupied the same public mansi