The Fourth Corps was no better off than ourselves. Granger had left the Army of the Cumberland immediately after the battle of Missionary Ridge, and although the situation at Chattanooga had been a good deal mitigated, no considerable supplies of clothing had then arrived. The distress was therefore universal in our East Tennessee army. Learning that Sheridan's division was encamped not far from us at Blain's Cross-roads, I rode over to find Colonel Emerson Opdycke of the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Ohio, who was in that division. He was a townsman of mine, and our families were intimate, and other neighbors and friends were with him. I could give them later news from home than any of them had, for until the end of the year the newspapers I brought from Cincinnati were the latest in camp. I found Opdycke's camp like our own. He was in the woods, under a lean-to shelter such as I have described, with a camp-fire of great logs in front of it. He was just opening the first letters he had got from home since the battle of Chickamauga in September, and these had been a long time on the way, for they had gone to Chattanooga and had come by casual conveyance from there. His statements fully agreed with the reports I had got from the Twenty-third Corps officers in regard to the condition of the troops. It was the same with all. They would not suffer greatly if they could remain in the forest encampments till shoes and clothing could come to us, but any active campaigning must produce intolerable suffering.