At last the preliminary work was completed. His men, an undisciplined body when he took them in hand, had become trained soldiers, but as yet they had not received what Napoleon III. called the "baptism of fire." It is all very well to march and countermarch, and practice the ordinary evolutions like militia-men at a muster, but how was the regiment, how was its scholarly commander likely to act in the field? On the 14th of December orders for the field were received by Colonel Garfield's command, stationed at Camp Chase. Then came the trial of parting with wife and mother and going forth to battle and danger. To his mother, whose highest ambition had been that her son should be a scholar, it was doubtless a keen disappointment that his settled prospects should be so broken up; but she, too, was patriotic, and she quietly said: "Go, my son, your life belongs to your country." Colonel Garfield's orders were to report to General Buell at Louisville. He moved his regiment by way of Cincinnati to Catlettsburg, Kentucky, a town at the junction of the Big Sandy and the Ohio, and was enabled to report to his commander on the 19th of December. Then, for the first time, he learned what was the nature of the duty that was assigned to him. It was no less than to save Kentucky to the Union. A border State, with an interest in slavery, public opinion was divided, and it was uncertain to which side it would incline. The Confederates understood the value of the prize, and they had taken measures, which promised to be successful, to wrest it from the Union. The task had been committed to Gen. Humphrey Marshall, who had invaded Eastern Kentucky from the Virginia border, and had already advanced as far north as Prestonburg. Gen. Marshall fortified a strong natural position near Paintville, and overran the whole Piedmont region. This region contained few slaves--but one in twenty-five of the whole population. It was inhabited by a brave rural population, more closely resembling their Northern than their Southern neighbors. Among these people Marshall sent stump orators to fire them with enthusiasm for the Confederate cause. Such men would make valuable soldiers and must be won over if possible. So all that portion of the State was in a ferment. It looked as if it would be lost to the Union. Marshall was daily increasing the number of his forces, preparing either to intercept Buell, and prevent his advance into Tennessee, or, cutting off his communications, with the assistance of Beauregard, to crush him between them.