favorable position, but just at daylight the Twenty-first Massachusetts and Forty-eighth Pennsylvania regiments charged upon them, and regained all that had been lost. It was disheartening news that reached Longstreet three days laterthat Hooker had swept over Lookout Mountain; that Sherman had been pounding at the northern end of Missionary Ridge; that Thomas had rushed up the slopes, carrying all before him; that eighty cannon had been lost; that the army was retreating into Georgia, and that communication with Bragg had been severed; that Sherman was marching to relieve Burnside; that he must take care of himself. Longstreet saw that one of two things must be done, that he must act at once, or Sherman would be falling upon him: he must assault the Union fortifications- carry them at the point of the bayonet, or make his way eastward towards Virginia without a battle, which would be humiliating to his pride. If he could carry the intrenchments, gain Knoxville, defeat Burnside, before Sherman arrived, it would in some measure redeem what Bragg had lost. If he were to fail in the attempt, he could then make his way to Virginia. He determined to make the assault. We come to November 29th. The key to Burnside's position was Fort Sanders. If that could be gained, the Union troops would be compelled to abandon Knoxville, and they would have no way of retreat except northward, over mountain roads, where they could obtain no subsistence. General Longstreet did not know just what his troops would encounter in the way of obstructions. He probably knew that there was an abatis of fallen trees, with their branches interlocked, in front of Fort Sanders, but did not know that lines of telegraph-wire had been stretched from stump to stump, to trip his men in their rush up the hill-side. Daylight was the hour chosen for the assault, to be made by three brigades. There are only two regiments in the fort the Seventy-ninth New York and the Seventeenth Michigan. Up to the line of telegraph-wire, which trips them up, rush the Confederates; others go down before the fire from the fort; but the men pull the wires from the fastenings and rush on up to the abatis, the pioneers hewing their way with axes through the trees. They reach the ditch, with canister sweeping them down, and climb the parapet, only to be shot down upon the embankment. Sergeant Frank Judge, of the Seventy-ninth New York, seizes the foremost Confederate by the collar and drags him into the fort a prisoner. Grenades have been piled along the parapet, which the soldiers touch off and toss into the ditch. Lieutenant Benjamin lights the fuses of the shells and rolls them down the parapet. Then come explosions and terrible slaughter. Two howitzers in the bastion at the angle of the fort sweep the ditch with canister. The Confederates, reinforced by the troops of the second line, once more climb the parapet. A soldier waves his flag to cheer them on, but he goes down, his life-blood pouring from a ghastly wound. Men dash out one another's brains with the butts of their muskets. There are sabrestrokes, pistol-shots, bayonet-thrusts; but the Confederate column has lost its aggressive force, and the living quickly flee. The ditch is filled with dead and dying, ninety-six dead bodies lying there when the struggle is One company of the Twentieth Michigan on the right, another of the Twenty-ninth Massachusetts on the left, leap over the parapet, and bring in more than two hundred prisoners and two flags. over. In a very few minutes one thousand one hundred Confederates have been killed or wounded, and three hundred captured. Burnside has lost only eight killed and a few wounded. It is a pitiable sight-the ground strewn with men who have fought so bravely, and given their lives to establish a government founded on human slavery. General Burnside is a humane man. He cannot endure the spectacle, and sends out a flag of truce, offering to Longstreet the privilege of removing the wounded and burying the dead. The offer is courteously accepted, the Confederate hospital corps appears upon the scene, and before night the slopes of Fort Sanders bear little evidence of the bloody conflict of the morning. The attacking force was McLaws's division. Burnside brought to the assistance of the troops in the fort five companies of the Twenty-ninth Massachusetts and two of the Twentieth Michigan and a brigade of Hascall's division. While Longstreet is being repulsed with such slaughter, let us go back to Chattanooga, or rather to Ringgold, where the troops under General Sherman have halted in their pursuit of Bragg. They were destroying the railroad, and marching to Cleveland. General Howard advanced so rapidly that he captured five car-loads of flour, the few Confederates there retreating north across the Hiawassee and hastening to join Longstreet. General Sherman did not receive orders to hasten to Burnside's relief till the evening of the 29th('), when a messenger came with a letter from General Grant, informing him that General Granger had left Chattanooga by the river road, but feared he would not be able to reach Knoxville in season to relieve Burnside, and ordering him to take command of all the troops and move as rapidly as possible. The troops of General Sherman's corps had marched from Memphis to Chattanooga, and fought the battle of Missionary Ridge. They needed clothing, boots, blankets, and food. The nights were cold. They must ford streams and endure great hardships, but without a murmur they started. Through the night General Howard's troops were repairing the bridge which the Confederates had partially destroyed, and on the morning of the 30th the divisions began their march towards Knoxville, nearly ninety miles distant. General Longstreet had left General Vaughn's brigade at Loudon to protect his pontoon-bridge across the Tennessee at that point. General Sherman's cavalry, on the evening of the 2d of December, came suddenly upon the Confederates, who destroyed the bridge, ran three locomotives and forty-three cars into the Tennessee River, abandoned all their provisions and four cannon, and fled in the night towards Knoxville. The Union troops helped themselves to the provisions. The cars and locomotives were a serious loss to the Confederates, for they could not readily be replaced. The loss of a locomotive to the Union army was of little account, for all over the North founderies and machine-shops were constructing engines to meet the demand. General Sherman could not cross the Tennessee at Loudon, and pushed on to Morgantown to a ford; but the river was swollen, and the water too deep to be forded. Houses were torn down, trees felled, a bridge constructed, and at dark on the evening of the fourth the troops began to cross. Seven miles above Morgantown, General Howard, having captured a large number of wagons from the Confederates, ran them into the river in a line where the water was shoal, and the troops, by stepping from wagon to wagon, crossed the stream.() General Longstreet knew that the Union troops had a scant supply of provisions. Although repulsed in the attack on Fort Sanders, he still remained, hoping that Burnside would be obliged to surrender before the arrival of Sherman; but he could linger no longer, and must begin his march towards Virginia. During the night of December 5th the Confederates disappeared, marching eastward, followed by Burnside and Granger. There was skirmishing between Longstreet's rear-guard and Burnside's advance; but the Confederates destroyed bridges and blocked the roads behind them. With their departure the Confederate flag disappeared forever from East Tennessee, which from the beginning of the war had been loyal to the Union. NOTES TO CHAPTER XXIII. (1) "Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. i., p. 407. THE CHAPTER XXIV. EVENTS IN VIRGINIA. HE two great armies of the east-the Union Army of the Potomac, under General Meade, and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under General Lee-through August and September were on the banks of the Rapidan. We have seen Longstreet, with Hood's and McLaws's divisions of Lee's army, at Chickamauga and Knoxville, and we have also seen the Eleventh and Twelfth corps of Meade's army transported to the West, and winning victory at Wauhatchie and Lookout Mountain, and turning Bragg's flank on Missionary Ridge. Both armies had been made smaller by the sending of those troops to the West. The term of service of several thousand Union soldiers had expired. On the Confederate side the remorseless conscription had brought new recruits to General Lee. No Confederate soldier could claim that his term of service had expired. The autocratic Confederate Government did not recognize any limit of service. Death or maiming for life was the only discharge the Confederate soldier could hope for. Had we been with the officers of the Signal Corps of the Army of the Potomac during September, we should have seen them looking steadily through their telescopes towards the Confederate signal-station on the top of Clark's Mountain, near General Lee's headquarters. By patient observation they discovered the key of the Confederate code of signals, and read the despatches waved to the different commanders. On the afternoon of October 7th they read a message from General Stuart to FitzHugh Lee, commanding a division of Confederate cavalry, to draw three days' rations of hard-bread and bacon, which indicated a movement of some kind.() General Meade was on the alert, and learned that Confederate cavalry and infantry were crossing the Upper Rapidan on the afternoon of the next day. General Lee felt himself strong enough to attempt. to march round the right flank of the Army of the Potomac, repeating the movement of 1862 against Pope. He would, if possible, get between Meade and Washington, cut him off from his supplies, defeat him, and then cross the Potomac and menace the capital. |