During the autumn of 1861 the troops of both sides were pushed into the "neutral" state of Kentucky at various points and in considerable numbers. Two battles of some moment resulted. At a place called Paintville, on the Big Sandy river in the eastern part of the state, Humphrey Marshall established himself with about 2,000 or 2,500 Confederates. Colonel Garfield (afterwards General and still later President), in command of a substantially equal force of Federals, assailed Marshall there, pushed his columns back and on January 10, 1862, so far crippled him in a small but hotly contested pitched battle that Marshall was glad to retreat during the night with a loss of morale which at that period of the war was as important as the loss of guns. In the meanwhile the Confederate General Zollicoffer, one of those amateurs in the military art who managed by political or other interest to push themselves into military command on either side, invaded eastern Kentucky, was defeated on October 21st, and fell back to Mill Springs on the upper waters of the Cumberland, where he fortified himself. General Don Carlos Buell on the Federal side was in command of the department, and General George H. Thomas was in command of the column that immediately confronted Zollicoffer. General Thomas was a Virginian by birth and was passionately devoted to his native state and its historic memories. He had been at the outbreak of the war a major in that specially selected regiment of which Robert E. Lee was colonel and in which the roster of his fellow officers included besides Lee Albert Sydney Johnston, William J. Hardee, Earl Van Dorn, E. Kirby Smith, John B. Hood and Fitzhugh Lee. All of these, Thomas's fellow Southerners, resigned their commissions and accepted service in the Confederate army. Thomas, who had very remarkably distinguished himself in the service, might well have been strongly tempted, not only by the example of these his beloved comrades and by his sentimental affection for his native state, but additionally by the direct certainty of an exalted command in the Confederate army, to go with them into the Southern service. To him peculiarly came the perplexing problem of divided allegiance which presented itself to every old army officer of Southern birth, and it is said--whether truthfully or not the historian cannot determine--that for a time he seriously and painfully hesitated whether to cast in his lot with Virginia and the South, and thus join his most cherished comrades, or to retain his place in the service of the nation that had educated him as a soldier and that had so generously recognized and so richly rewarded his genius and his devotion in the past. In the end he decided to adhere to the Federal cause, and very early in the war he was offered that supreme command of the Federal armies which Robert E. Lee had refused. He too declined that honor and responsibility, remaining,