ville, perhaps not any. All fighting men should be stopped there. I think we may retrieve the disaster of the morning.

"I never saw better fighting than our men are now doing. The rebel ammunition must be nearly exhausted, ours fast failing. If we can hold out an hour more it will be all right. Granger thinks we can defeat them badly to-morrow, if our forces all come in. I think that you had better come to Rossville to-night and bring ammunition."(")

Not till Garfield arrived did Thomas know what had happened on the right; that Rosecrans had gone to Chattanooga. Undisturbed by the intelligence, and being now commander on the field, he quickly decided what to do to stay where he was-to fight on till night, and then under cover of darkness retire to Rossville. The uproar was then beginning to die away. Hazen's and Grose's brigades of Palmer's division were, with Steedman, Brannan, Wood, and the troops which Sheridan had brought, repulsing every assault of Longstreet.

The sun went down behind Missionary Ridge, throwing the shadows of the long, level outline of its summit over the valley. With its departing rays the cannons' brazen lips were cooling, the rolls of musketry becoming less frequent, though the cheers of the Confederates were ringing upon the evening air over the achievements of the day. As the darkness deepened, Thomas ordered his divisions one by one to retire, but to come into position at Rossville, along the eastern slope of Missionary Ridge; and there at midnight the stout-hearted commander, who had stood immovable amid the storm, who had saved the army and rendered immortal service to his country, laid himself down calmly to sleep. So at midnight the army was upon the spot which, if it had been selected the night before, would in all probability have resulted in victory.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when Rosecrans reached Chattanooga. He had been in the saddle from five in the morning. Not a mouthful of food had passed his lips. For two weeks his active brain had been under the utmost tension. He had seen his right wing crushed under the impetuous advance of Longstreet. He was thinking how to secure the bridges across the Tennessee, and of rallying his scattered divisions behind breast works around Chattanooga. The battle was lost. All the consequences of defeat rolled in upon him as he rode along the dusty road, reaching the town at last so exhausted that he could not dismount without assistance. He sent a despatch to Washington that his right wing had been crushed. President Lincoln read it with a heavy heart. Thousands of lives sacrificed; the army in retreat, when victory was confidently expected!

An officer dashed into Chattanooga as the sun was disappearing, with the message from Garfield. Rosecrans read it, swung his hat, and shouted, "Thank God! The day is ours yet! Go to your commands, gentlemen."

General Wagner, who with a brigade of cavalry had been holding Chattanooga, moved out towards Rossville, stopping all stragglers; but the passes across Missionary Ridge south of Rossville were open to Bragg, and Thomas advised the withdrawal of the army to the town. The Confederates were in possession of the field where the battle had been fought— to that extent Bragg was victor; but Rosecrans was holding Chattanooga, to gain which he made the strategic movement, and the victory to Bragg was barren of results. The Confederate commander had lost nearly onethird of his army, and one more victory like it would have been his ruin. The loss of the Union army was one thousand six hundred and fifty killed, nine thousand five hundred wounded, and four thousand and five taken prisoners-nearly sixteen thousand. Rosecrans lost fifty-one cannon and more than fifteen thousand muskets.

No complete return of the Confederate loss has ever been given; but being the attacking party, Bragg's loss must have been much greater than Rosecrans's, and, from the partial returns, is supposed to have been nearly or quite twenty thousand, and fifteen pieces of artillery.

(1) Rosecrans's Report.

(2) Thomas's Report.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XX.

(3) Pollard, "The Lost Cause," p. 450.

(4) D. H. Hill, Century Magazine, April, 1887.

(5) Pollard, "The Lost Cause," p. 450.

(6) Col. Morton C. Hunter, quoted in the National Tribune.

(7) Gen. H. V. Boynton, National Tribune.

(8) Col. J. S. Fullerton, Granger's chief of staff, Century Magazine, April, 1887.

(9) Longstreet, letter to D. H. Hill, Century Magazine, April, 1887.

(10) Col. J. S. Fullerton, Century Magazine, April, 1887.

(1) D. H. Hill, Century Magazine, April, 1887.

(12) General Hindman's Report.

(13) General Garfield's Report.

GE

CHAPTER XXI.

HOLDING CHATTANOOGA.

ENERAL BRAGG, after the battle of Chickamauga, was very angry with some of his officers. He arrested Lieutenant-general Polk and General Hindman for not executing their orders promptly. He was displeased with General Breckinridge and with General Forrest, and so disliked Gen. D. H. Hill, who had been sent to him from the east by Jefferson Davis, that he directed him to return to Richmond. The Confederate newspapers criticised Bragg for his mismanagement of the battle, and for not following up the victory, and said that unless Rosecrans was driven out of Chattanooga nothing would have been gained. General Bragg was holding Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, and could send shot and shell into Rosecrans's lines. He held the railroad which runs along the southern side of the river from Chattanooga to Bridgeport, compelling Rosecrans to bring all his supplies by a long, circuitous route over Walden's Ridge by narrow roads, a distance of sixty miles.

With great satisfaction General Bragg could look down from his headquarters on Missionary Ridge upon the white tents of the Union army, with the confident expectation that in a short time Rosecrans would be starved out, and compelled to retreat to Murfreesboro. He said: "Possessed of the shortest route to his depot, and the one by which reinforcements must reach him, we held him at our mercy, and his destruction was only a question of time.”

Bragg could afford to wait and let starvation do its work; so the Confederate soldiers, outnumbering the Union, rested. The soldiers of both armies drew water from Chattanooga Creek, held conversations, exchanged newspapers, and chaffed one another good-naturedly - the Confederates looking for starvation to the Union army; the Union, for they knew not what.

There was energetic action in the War Department at Washington when the news of the disaster at Chickamauga and the retreat of Rosecrans to Chattanooga came flashing over the wires. It was seen that the transfer

of Longstreet's corps from Lee's army to Bragg's had enabled the Confederates to strike a crushing blow. It was plain that to give up Chattanooga would be a worse disaster. It must be held. The Army of the Cumberland must be reinforced. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, was a man of great energy, and so was his Assistant Secretary, Thomas A. Scott, who, before the war, had been manager of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and who knew how many cars would be required to transport one thousand men; how many for a battery of artillery, with its horses. The Eleventh Corps, under General Howard, and the Twelfth Corps, under General Slocum, were with the Army of the Potomac on the Upper Rapidan at Raccoon Ford. The order for the movement of both corps was issued on September 23d, three days after the battle of Chickamauga, and on the 24th the cars were ready. The infantry and artillery, cannon, horses, equipments, tents-everything belonging to the two corps-were taken on board the trains and transported through Washington, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, to the banks of the Tennessee-train following train without accident-men and horses receiving regular rations, arriving October 4th at Stevenson, Alabama. It was the foreknowledge, method, and energy of Thomas A. Scott which accomplished this. The two corps were placed under the command of General Hooker. They were halted at Stevenson and Bridgeport; for had they been taken to Chattanooga they would have been a hinderance rather than a help to the Army of the Cumberland, with so little to eat, and the difficulties of obtaining supplies constantly increasing.

General Grant was at Vicksburg. While Rosecrans was making his movement to Chickamauga, General Halleck sent a message to General Grant asking him to send troops to aid the Army of the Cumberland.

Three divisions of Sherman's corps were encamped on the bank of Big Black River, twenty miles from Vicksburg, but in forty-eight hours Osterhaus's division was on board steamboats moving up the Mississippi to Memphis, followed, as soon as steamboats could be obtained, by the other divisions.

There was no telegraph between Vicksburg and Cairo, and all despatches had to be carried by steamboat. On October 10th General Grant received this despatch: "It is the wish of the Secretary of War that as soon as General Grant is able to take the field he will come to Cairo and report by telegraph." It was nearly noon when the message was placed in his hands, but before night he was on his way up the Mississippi with the members of his staff. He reached Cairo October 17th, where he received a despatch instructing him to proceed at once to the Galt House, Louis

ville. There was no railroad leading from Cairo directly to that city; the quickest route was by rail north through Illinois to Mattoon, thence east to Indianapolis, then south to Louisville. At Indianapolis a very able and energetic man stepped on board the train-Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, who had arrived from Washington by a special train, and who rode with General Grant the remainder of the journey. They never had met before. "Here are two orders," said Mr. Stanton; "you may take your choice of them."() The orders made the whole of the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River into one military department under his command. One order left General Rosecrans in command of the Army of the Cumberland; the other relieved him, and conferred the command of that army upon General Thomas. General Grant chose the second.

On the evening after their arrival at Louisville a despatch was sent by the Assistant Secretary of War, Charles A. Dana, who was with the army at Chattanooga, to Mr. Stanton informing him that General Rosecrans was just ready to abandon the place and retreat, and advising that peremptory orders be issued for holding it. General Grant sent a message informing Thomas that he had been appointed to command, and that Rosecrans had been relieved; that Chattanooga must be held at all hazards; and the answer came, "We will hold the town till we starve."

To have retreated would have been a great disaster; the cannon and the wagon-trains could not have been taken over the mountains for want of horses. These the words of General Grant: "It would not only have been the loss of the most important strategic position to us, but it would have been attended with the loss of all the artillery still left with the Army of the Cumberland, and the loss of that army itself, either by capture or annihilation."()

The supplies for the army were all brought from Nashville by railroad to Bridgeport. The distance between Bridgeport and Chattanooga was twenty-six miles, but when General Rosecrans gave up Lookout Mountain he lost control of the railroad which winds along its base. The wagonroad on the north bank was commanded by Bragg's artillery and his sharpshooters, who, with their long-range Whitworth rifles, made in England, secreting themselves amid the rocks, suddenly opened fire upon a wagontrain, killing the mules, and putting a stop to the further use of the road. The shutting up of the route compelled the wagon trains to pass over Walden's Ridge. It took a week for a wagon to go to Bridgeport and return to Chattanooga. The fall rains were setting in, and the roads were deep with mud, the wheels sinking to the axles. One day a teamster saw