Soon after General Foster was assigned to the department he reissued an order which Burnside had made earlier but had revoked, by which Brigadier-General Samuel D. Sturgis was appointed to the command of the cavalry corps. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii, p. 394.] Sturgis had commanded a division of the Ninth Corps in Maryland and Virginia, and was one of those whose dismissal Burnside had demanded for the insubordination which followed the battle of Fredericksburg. Good policy would have dictated that he should be sent to some other command; but he was ordered to report to Burnside, and had no active employment until Foster arrived. The cavalry corps had had several lively engagements with the Confederate horse, and was now concentrated near Mossy Creek, where it was supported by a brigade of infantry from the second division of the Twenty-third Corps, in command of Colonel Mott of the One Hundred and Eighteenth Ohio. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 488, 489, 562.] Our information showed that Longstreet's forces were now concentrated about Morristown, and that nothing larger than scouting parties came across to the west side of the Holston. It became prudent, therefore, to transfer part of our forces from the Rutledge road over to that which runs from Knoxville along the line of the railroad to Morristown. Both the railroad and the wagon-road cross the Holston at Strawberry Plains and go up the valley on the east side of the river by way of New Market and Mossy Creek. On the 24th and 25th I was directed to send two more brigades to Strawberry Plains, [Footnote: _Id_., p. 490.]one of which was put over the river to cover the reconstruction of the railway bridge which was going on. This was the long trestle which had been burned by Sanders in the preceding summer, and had since been repaired and destroyed by the opposing armies alternately. On the 27th I was ordered to move the other division of the corps to Strawberry Plains, thus concentrating my command in that vicinity. Our distance from Knoxville would be about the same as at Blain's Cross-roads, but the divergence of the roads made our march some six or eight miles across the country.