unty had been fatal to co-operation. The Confederate General Heth
had been able to neglect the Lewisburg route and to carry his
brigade to the assistance of Marshall in his opposition to my
advance. As it turned out, I should have done better to have waited
at Flat-top Mountain till I knew that Crook was at Lewisburg, and
then to have made a fresh combination of movements. Our experience
only added another to the numerous proofs the whole campaign
furnished, of the futility of such combined operations from distant
bases,

Major-General Loring took command of all the Confederate forces in
southwestern Virginia on the 19th or 20th of May, and Heth was
already in march to oppose Crook's forward movement. On the 23d
Heth, with some 3000 men, including three batteries of artillery,
attacked Crook at Lewisburg, soon after daybreak in the morning.
Crook met him in front of the town, and after a sharp engagement
routed him, capturing four cannon, some 200 stand of arms and 100
prisoners. His own loss was 13 killed and 53 wounded, with 7
missing. He did not think it wise to follow up the retreating enemy,
but held a strong position near Lewisburg, where his communications
were well covered, and where he was upon the same range of highlands
on which we were at Flat-top, though fifty miles of broken country
intervened. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp.
804-813.] Meanwhile Fremont had been ordered to Banks's relief, and
had been obliged to telegraph me that we must be left to ourselves
till the results of the Shenandoah campaign were tested. [Footnote:
_Id_., pt. iii. p. 264.] Rumors were rife that after Jackson retired
from Fremont's front at Franklin, Johnson's division was ordered to
march into our part of West Virginia. We were thus thrown,
necessarily, into an expectant attitude, awaiting the outcome of
Fremont's eastward movement and the resumption of his plans. Our men
were kept busy in marching and scouting by detachments, putting down
guerilla bands and punishing disorders. They thus acquired a power
of sustained exertion on foot which proved afterward of great value.

There was, in a way, a resemblance in our situation and in our work
to that of feudal chiefs in the middle ages. We held a lofty and
almost impregnable position, overlooking the country in every
direction. The distant ridges of the Alleghanies rose before us, the
higher peaks standing out in the blue distance, so that we seemed to
watch t