]
Governor Dennison seconded our wishes with his usual earnestness,
and ordered the battery of artillery and company of cavalry to meet
me at Gallipolis; but the guns for the battery were not to be had,
and a section of two bronze guns (six-pounder smooth-bores rifled)
was the only artillery, whilst the cavalry was less than half a
troop of raw recruits, useful only as messengers. I succeeded in
getting the Eleventh Ohio sent with me, the lacking companies to be
recruited and sent later. The Twelfth Ohio was an excellent regiment
which had been somewhat delayed in its reorganization and had not
gone with the rest of its brigade to McClellan. The Twenty-first was
one of the regiments enlisted for the State in excess of the first
quota, and was now brought into the national service under the
President's second call. The two Kentucky regiments had been
organized in Cincinnati, and were made up chiefly of steamboat crews
and "longshoremen" thrown out of employment by the stoppage of
commerce on the river. There were in them some companies of other
material, but these gave the distinctive character to the regiments.
The colonels and part of the field officers were Kentuckians, but
the organizations were Ohio regiments in nearly everything but the
name.
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