[Footnote: _Id_., pp. 479, 481.] At the Sunday
Road I was stopped by orders from Rosecrans, who thought it unwise
to advance further till he had made a ferry at the Gauley and
succeeded in getting his command over; for Floyd had again sunk the
flatboats within reach, and these had to be a second time raised and
repaired. At his request I visited the General at Carnifex Ferry,
and then got permission to move my column forward a few miles to
Alderson's, or Camp Lookout as we dubbed it, where a commanding
position controlled the country to the base of Sewell Mountain.
[Footnote: _Id_., p. 482.] I was now able to concentrate the Seventh
Ohio at Gauley Bridge, and ordered forward the Second Kentucky to
join me in the new camp.
The period of my separate responsibility and of struggle against
great odds was not to close without a private grief which was the
more poignant because the condition of the campaign forbade my
leaving the post of duty. On the day I visited General Rosecrans at
Carnifex Ferry I got news of the critical illness of my youngest
child, a babe of eight months old, whom I had seen but a single day
after his birth, for I had been ordered into camp from the
legislature without time to make another visit to my family.
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