On this day the division reached Barren River and exchanged a few artillery shots with the rear of General A. S. Johnston's army, under the immediate command of General Hardee. The next day--the last day of fighting at Fort Donelson--the advance of Mitchel's division crossed the river and occupied Bowling Green, which was found strongly fortified and a naturally good position for defence. In its hasty evacuation many stores were burned; others distributed to the inhabitants, and some abandoned to capture. After an unaccountable delay here of one week, during which time we heard of the victory at Fort Donelson, Mitchel's division, still in advance, resumed its march towards Nashville, distant about seventy miles. The head of the division reached Edgefield (suburb of Nashville on the north bank of the Cumberland) on the evening of the 24th of February, and the following morning the Mayor and a committee of citizens formally surrendered the city of Nashville while yet Forrest's cavalry occupied it. General Nelson's division of Buell's army arrived by boats the night of the 24th, and at once landed in the city. Nashville would have been a rich prize and easily taken if troops from either Donelson or Bowling Green had been pushed forward without delay when Fort Donelson fell. General A. S. Johnston abandoned the city as early as the 16th, and concentrated his forces at Murfreesboro, thirty or more miles distant, leaving only Floyd with a demoralized brigade and Colonel N. B. Forrest's small cavalry command to remove or destroy the guns and stores, of which there was an immense quantity. Floyd was ordered by Johnston not to fight in the city.(25) Pandemonium reigned everywhere in Nashville for a week before it was taken. The mob, in which all classes participated, had possession of it. The proper officers abandoned their stores of ordnance, quartermaster and commissary supplies, and such as were portable were, as far as possible, carried off by anybody who might desire them. No kind of property was safe, private houses and property were seized and appropriated. No other such disgraceful scene has been enacted in modern times.(26) Johnston had a right to expect the arrival of the Union Army as early as the 18th, and had wise counsel prevailed, Nashville might have been taken on that or an earlier day. A diversity of views led to delays in the movement of Buell's army. Buell early expressed himself favorably to moving directly on Nashville _via_ Bowling Green or by embarking his divisions at Louisville on steamboats and thence by water up the Cumberland.(27)