Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston : His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.

[210] the Governor, and offered him his choice between the escort and accompanying himself to Utah. The Governor chose the former. General Johnston allowed great discretion in the movements of the escort to the commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, whom he mentions as “a cavalry-officer of great experience, and well acquainted with frontier service.”

So much was General Johnston impressed with the necessity of celerity that, leaving Fort Leavenworth on the 18th of September, with an escort of forty dragoons, he made the journey to camp, near South Pass, 920 miles, over bad and muddy roads in twenty-seven days, arriving there October 15th. But this speed was not at the expense of any important interest, as he availed himself of every opportunity on the route to further the ends of the expedition, by providing for the safe and rapid movement of mails, trains, and troops. Learning that the grass ahead was bad, he arranged to have thirty-one extra wagons of corn with strong teams waiting for Colonel Cooke at Fort Kearny, and attended to many details not necessary to specify here. The journey across the Plains has been so often and so well described that its incidents are familiar to all who take an interest in the subject. There was nothing unusual in General Johnston's progress, except its speed, which was great, considering the absence of relays, and the condition of the roads, softened by the fall rains.

General Fitz-John Porter, then major and assistant-adjutant-general, who accompanied General Johnston on this expedition, rendering him valuable aid, has placed the writer under great obligations by memoranda, of which he has freely availed himself. General Porter says:

Colonel Johnston entered upon no ordinary task. His command and their subsistence, clothing, and means of erecting shelter, were stretched over nearly 1,000 miles of almost desert road between Fort Kearny and Salt Lake. So late in the season had the troops started on their march that fears were entertained that, if they succeeded in reaching their destination, it would be only by abandoning the greater part of their supplies and endangering the lives of many men amid the snows of the Rocky Mountains. Colonel Johnston felt and accepted the responsibility, determined, if possible, to reach his destination and to secure the expedition against disaster and perhaps destruction, which the rapidly-approaching winter threatened. So much was a terrible disaster feared by those well acquainted with the rigors of a winter life in the Rocky Mountains, that General Harney was said to have predicted it, and to have induced Governor Walker (of Kansas) to ask for his retention. The route was not then, as now, lined with settlements and ranches, which would afford some comfort to man and beast.

The narrow valleys, already grazed over by thousands of animals, yielded a scanty subsistence for his horses; yet he pushed on at the rate of from thirty to sixty miles a day, stopping at Forts Kearny and Laramie only time enough to rest his teams — a day at each.