General Mitchel's division (to which I belonged) of the Army of the Ohio we left at Nashville, ready to move on an independent line. When the other divisions had started for Savannah, Mitchel, March 18, 1862, resumed his march southward, encamping the first night at Lavergne, fifteen miles from Nashville. The next day we marched on a road leading by old cotton fields, and felt we were in the heart of the slaveholding South. The slaves were of an apparently different type from those in Kentucky, though still of many shades of color, varying from pure African black to oily-white. The eye, in many instances, had to be resorted to, to decide whether there was any black blood in them. But these negroes were shrewd, and had the idea of liberty uppermost in their minds. They had heard that the Northern army was coming to make them free. Their masters had probably talked of this in their hearing. They believed the time for their freedom had come. Untutored as they all were, they understood somehow they were the cause of the war. As our column advanced, regardless of sex, and in families, they abandoned the fields and their homes, turning their backs on master and mistress, many bearing their bedding, clothing, and other effects on their heads and backs, and came to the roadsides, shouting and singing a medley of songs of freedom and religion, confidently expecting to follow the army to immediate liberty. Their number were so great we marched for a good part of a day between almost continuous lines of them. Their disappointment was sincere and deep when told they must return to their homes: that the Union Army could not take them. Of course some never returned, but the mass of them did, and remained until the final decree of the war was entered and their chains fell off, never to be welded in America on their race again. They shouted "_Glory_" on seeing the _Stars and Stripes_, as though it had been a banner of protection and liberty, instead of the emblem of a power which hitherto had kept them and their ancestors in bondage. The "_old flag_" has a peculiar charm for those who have served under it. It was noticeable that wherever we marched in the South, particularly in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, we found men at the roadside who had fought in the Mexican War, often with tears streaming down their cheeks, who professed sincere loyalty to the flag and the Union. We reached Murfreesboro on the 20th without a fight, the small Confederate force retiring and destroying bridges as we advanced. The division was kept busy in repairing the railroad, and especially in rebuilding the recently destroyed railroad bridge near Murfreesboro across Stone's River. I worked industriously in charge of a detail of soldiers on this bridge. In ten days it was rebuilt, though the heavy timbers had to be cut and hewed from green timber in the nearby woods. The Union Army never called in vain for expert mechanics, civil or locomotive engineers.