On the twenty-seventh of March, the column was divided. General Stoneman, with one division, went direct to Wilkesboro. The other, under General Gillam, crossed the Blue Ridge at Blowing Rock, and went to Patterson, in Caldwell county, thence rejoining Stoneman at Wilkesboro. At Patterson General Gillam took the responsibility of ordering the extensive cotton factory there to be burned. General Stoneman is said to have regretted this destruction especially, as Mr. Patterson, the owner, had received a promise that it should be spared, and the people of East-Tennessee had been largely supplied from it. But General Gillam, when not immediately under General Stoneman's eye, could not restrain his propensities. He announced that "the Government had been too lenient, and rebels must look out for consequences," and ordered the torch to be applied. While the raiders were in the Yadkin river-bottom, they were detained three days by freshets. Small parties scoured the country, carrying off all the horses and mules, and burning the factories. There seemed to be no systematic plan of destruction; for while some mills and factories were burned, others in the same neighborhood and quite as easily accessible were spared. Much depended on the personal character and disposition of the commanding officer of these detachments. If he happened to be a gentleman, the people were spared as much as possible; if he were simply a brute dressed in a little brief authority, every needless injury was inflicted, accompanied with true underbred insolence and malice. The privates always followed the lead of their commander. The factories on Hunting Creek, in the upper part of Tredell, were burned with large quantities of cotton. Eagle Mills alone lost eight hundred bales. Among General Gillam's exploits in Wilkesboro, was the finding the horse of the late General James Gordon in the stable of a brother-in-law of the General. This, General G. immediately, with great intrepidity, "captured;" and further to impress the family with a sense of his heroic achievement, he had a man to mount the animal and parade him slowly up and down before the door of the house for an hour or two.