Confederate War Office for assignment to some light duty farther south till the milder weather of the ensuing spring would enable me to take my place at the head of the brave and hardy mountaineers of the Valley and western counties of Virginia I had the honor to command. General R. E. Lee kindly urged my application in person, and procured an order directing me to report to Brigadier-General J. H. Winder, then Commissary of Prisoners, whose headquarters were at Columbia, South Carolina. I left my camp in the Shenandoah Valley, late in December, 1864, and reached Columbia, I think, on the 6th of January, 1865. General Winder immediately ordered me to the command of all the prisons west of the Savannah river, with leave to establish my temporary headquarters at Aiken, South Carolina, on account of the salubrity of its climate. I cannot fix dates after this with absolute precision, because all my official papers fell into the hands of the United States military authorities after the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston to General Sherman; but for all essential purposes my memory enables me to detail events in consecutive order, and approximately to assign each to its proper date.
A few days after receiving my orders from General Winder, I reached Aiken, and visited Augusta, Georgia, and established an office there in charge of a staff officer, Lieutenant George W. McPhail, for prompt and convenient communication with the prisons of the department.
About my first official act was to dispatch Lieutenant-Colonel Bondurant on a tour of inspection of the prisons in my department, with instructions to report fully on their condition and management. Whilst Colonel Bondurant was on this service, I was forced to quit Aiken by the approach of Kilpatrick's cavalry, moving on the flank of Sherman's army. A detachment of this cavalry reached Aiken within four hours after I left it. I then made Augusta my permanent headquarters, residing, however a few miles out on the Georgia railroad at Berzelia. Colonel Bondurant promptly discharged the duty assigned to him, and on the state of facts presented in his reports, I resolved to keep up but two prisons, the one at Andersonville and the other at Eufaula. I did this for economical reasons, and because it was easier to supply two posts than four or five so widely scattered; and besides the whole number of prisoners in the department then did not exceed 8,000 or 9,000—the great majority, about 7,500, being at Andersonville.
Before I received Colonel Bondurant's report, General Winder died, when, having no superior in command, I reported directly to the Secretary of War at Richmond. Communication with the War Office was at that period very slow and difficult. Great military operations were in progress. General Sherman was moving through the Carolinas. The Federal cavalry under Kilpatrick, with Sherman and Stoneman co-operating from Tennessee, almost suspended mail facilities between Georgia and Virginia, and the telegraph was almost impracticable, because the line was taxed almost to its capacity
