On this day, General George W. Morgan, who had been in command of the 16th Ohio and the brigades in which it resided since Cumberland Gap, was relieved of his command. As described by Pvt. Frank Mason, Company A, 42nd Ohio:

On the 28th of January, Gen. Morgan, our Division and Corps commander since the Previous April, was relieved from command at his own request on account of failing health. For a month past he had kept the field in defiance of the protests of his surgeon, and upon the reorganization of the army at Young's Point he consented to retire.

The re-organization was by virtue of Military Order, No. 210, of December 18th, 1862, from the War Department, which had been received while the troops were returning from Arkansas Post. It divided the Western armies into five Corps d'Armee, as follows: The Thirteenth Corps, commanded by Major-Gen. McClernand; the Fourteenth, by Major-Gen. Geo. H. Thomas; the Fifteenth, by Major-Gen. Sherman; the Sixteenth, by Major-Gen. Hurlbut; and the Seventeenth, by Major-Gen. McPherson. Gen. Thomas' Corps was in Middle Tennessee; Hurlbut's was at Memphis; McPherson's in the rear of Memphis, and on its way to join forces in front of Vicksburgh; and the Corps of McClernand and Sherman, as already stated, were at Young's Point. The Thirteenth Corps, the largest of the five named, comprised four divisions, commanded respectively by Generals P. J. Osterhaus, A. J. Smith, E. A. Carr and A. P. Hovey. DeCourcy's Brigade, including the (Sixteenth and) Forty-Second Ohio, had been assigned to the Division of Gen. Osterhaus, a German officer of admirable qualities, who had distinguished himself at Pea Ridge and in other important engagements in the West.

Our own Pvt. Newt Gorsuch tells us that on this day, the soldiers had to quickly build a levee to keep water from rising into their camp. It had been rainy for several days and the Mississippi River was on the rise.

* Some information and italicized text, above, taken from The Forty-Second Ohio Infantry - A History of the Organization and Services of That Regiment In the War of the Rebellion, 1876 - F. H. Mason, late Private of Company A - Cobb, Andrews & Co., Publishers.