Better soldiers
there were none, and Creighton proved himself a lion in every fight.
Casement, who rallied and led the most of the regiment from Cross
Lanes over the mountains to Charleston, became afterward colonel of
the One Hundred and Third Ohio. He came again under my command in
East Tennessee in the winter of 1863, and continued one of my
brigade commanders to the close of the war. He was a railway builder
by profession, had a natural aptitude for controlling bodies of men,
was rough of speech but generous of heart, running over with fun
which no dolefulness of circumstance could repress, as jolly a
comrade and as loyal a subordinate as the army could show.
After the Cross Lanes affair I fully expected that the Confederate
forces would follow the route which Casement had taken to
Charleston. Floyd's inactivity puzzled me, for he did no more than
make an intrenched camp at Carnifex Ferry, with outposts at Peters
Mountain and toward Summersville. The publication of the Confederate
Archives has partly solved the mystery. Floyd called on Wise to
reinforce him; but the latter demurred, insistent that the duty
assigned him of attacking my position in front needed all the men he
had.
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