doing outpost duty in that section of the State early in 1863. After the accession of this company the regiment had a strength of more than 900 men. Some of the companies were consolidated and their letter designations changed, while the regiment was in Tennessee.
That the 11th Kentucky Cavalry was intended for real use rather than for ornament is shown by the fact that on the very day that it was mustered into the service (September 10, 1862), orders were received from General Kirby Smith, then at Lexington, for one of its companies to go on an expedition to Irvine and Estill Counties to find out whether there had been any movement of the Federal General George H. Morgan's forces from Cumberland Gap, in that direction; and to remain upon the scout until they had found out something definite about his movements, in whatever direction. Another order, received on the same day, directed that part of the regiment should operate with General John H. Morgan in one of his scouting forays in the mountains. On September 15 four companies of the 11th were sent into the Fox or Sugar Hill Country, in Garrard County, to hunt up, disperse or capture a little army of home guards and bushwhackers under the command of a man named King, who was giving a great deal of trouble in that direction. On the same day Lieutenant J. L. Wheeler was assigned to the command of Winchester and Clark County with his company (C) and directed to suppress all bushwhacking and break up all communications with the enemy, and to take away the arms of the Winchester home guards and parole the men.
It was in such arduous and perilous work as scouting, fighting bushwhackers, etc., that the young regiment of raw recruits received its baptism of fire, as well as its first military training, before .the men were even instructed in the manual of arms or the simplest rudiments of drill and the school of the soldier; and in such work it continued until the retreat from Kentucky.
Although assigned to Morgan's Brigade, the regiment as a whole, did not join him before the retreat, and did not go out of Kentucky with him on the retreat. Morgan went out of the State by way of Versailles, Lawrenceburg, Bardstown, Elizabethtown, Hopkinsville, etc., to Gallatin, in Sumner County,
