ratification was
extreme.

My scout, Card, was exceedingly useful while encamped near
Murfreesboro, making several trips to East Tennessee within the
enemy's lines to collect information as to the condition of the loyal
people there, and to encourage them with the hope of early
liberation. He also brought back from each trip very accurate
statements as to the strength and doings of the Confederate army,
fixing almost with certainty its numbers and the locations of its
different divisions, and enabling my engineer-officer--Major
Morhardt--to construct good maps of the country in our front. On
these dangerous excursions Card was always accompanied by one of his
brothers, the other remaining with me to be ready for duty if any
accident occurred to those who had gone out, or in case I wanted to
communicate with them. In this way we kept well posted, although the
intelligence these men brought was almost always secured at the risk
of their lives.

Early in the spring, before the Tullahoma campaign began, I thought
it would be practicable, by sending out a small secret expedition of
but three or four men, to break the Nashville and Chattanooga
railroad between Chattanooga and the enemy's position at Tullahoma by
burning the bridges in Crow Creek valley from its head to Stevenson,
Alabama, and then the great bridge across the Tennessee River at
Bridgeport. Feeling confident that I could persuade Card to
undertake the perilous duty, I broached the contemplated project to
him, and he at once jumped at the opportunity of thus distinguishing
himself, saying that with one of his brothers and three other loyal
East Tennesseeans, whose services he knew could be enlisted, he felt
sure of carrying out the idea, so I gave him authority to choose his
own assistants. In a few days his men appeared at my headquarters,
and when supplied with money in notes of the State Bank of Tennessee,
current everywhere as gold in those days, the party, composed of
Card, the second brother, and the three East Tennesseeans, started on
their precarious enterprise, their course being directed first toward
the Cumberland Mountains, intending to strike the Nashville and
Chattanooga railroad somewhere above Anderson's station. They
expected to get back in about fifteen days, but I looked for some
knowledge of the progress of their adventure before the expiration of
that period, hoping to hear through Confederate sources prisoners and
the like-of the