After the six weeks’ preparation for the siege of Corinth, Halleck found that only the hull of the nut was left for him. The wily enemy had evacuated the place without a struggle. The vast Union army, which had been massed for this campaign, having no foe to oppose it, was resolved into its original elements. The Army of the Ohio, under Buell, was ordered to East Tennessee, preparatory to an attack on Chattanooga. The advance to the east, was along the line of the Memphis and Chattanooga Railroad. This road had to be almost entirely rebuilt, as the supplies for the army were to come along its line. This work of rebuilding was assigned to Wood’s division, and Garfield’s brigade laid down the musket to handle the spade and hammer. Here, Garfield’s boyhood experience with tools, was of incalculable value. If a culvert was to be built, his head planned a swift, but substantial way, to build it. If a bridge had been burned, his eye saw quickly how to shape the spans, and secure the braces. His mind was of the rare sort which combines speculative with practical powers. His spirit electrified his men, as it had the school at Hiram; and, in the drudgery of the work, from which the inspiration of battle was wholly wanting, it was he who cheered and encouraged their unwonted toil. The work, for the time being, having been finished, Garfield’s head-quarters were established at Huntsville, Alabama, the most beautiful town in America. But the exposures of army life, the tremendous exertions put forth in rebuilding the railroad, and the fierce rays of the summer sun, in the unaccustomed climate, laid hold on his constitution, in which the old boyhood tendency to ague was all the time dormant; and in the latter part of July, 1862, he was attacked by malarial fever. In the rough surroundings of the camp, as he tossed on his feverish couch, his thoughts turned longingly to the young wife and child in that humble northern home. Procuring sick-leave, he started north about the first of August. The War Department had an eye upon Garfield, and determined to give his abilities free scope. Five divisions of Buell’s army we have followed to Corinth, and thence, along the tedious march to Chattanooga. A sixth division had been sent on a separate expedition to Northern Mississippi, and a seventh, under General Geo. W. Morgan, to occupy East Tennessee, and, in particular, Cumberland Gap. In the early part of August, orders reached Garfield to proceed to Cumberland Gap and take command of the seventh division of the Army of the Ohio, relieving General Morgan. But when the order reached Garfield, he was already on his way north, fast held by the malignant clutch of low fever.