Part 4 (1/2)

If Thomas had not occupied these pa.s.ses in the night, Bragg could have done so, and the object he had in view would then have been accomplished. Had Thomas allowed it, Bragg would have been only too glad to have withdrawn from the field and ”retreated” on Rossville. Thomas did not permit it, but went there first, and Chattanooga was won.

The withdrawal involved some fighting. The movement began on the right of Reynolds. Palmer, Johnson, and Baird were to follow in succession, all leaving their skirmishers in their works.

Reynolds formed his brigades by the flank on each side of the Lafayette road, King on the right and Turchin on the left. Thus he advanced northward along the Kelly field toward Rossville. General Thomas followed at the head of the column. As they pa.s.sed a short distance beyond the south line of the field they encountered the advancing troops which had taken part in the last rebel attack. Instantly Thomas ordered Reynolds to cause Turchin to file to the left, and after thus changing front to ”charge and clear them out.” The line of Turchin's charge is shown on the map. Filing into the wood to the left at double-quick, he faced to the front while thus moving, and his lines darted at a run into the faces of the enemy. It was one of the bravest and most brilliant, most important and effective charges of the day--the fifth over those Kelly fields. At the same moment King, forcing his way along the road, fell on the flank of Liddell's division and broke it. Dan McCook, who had been active during the day on the flank of Forrest, advanced and opened with his artillery on the rebel rear, and after short but sharp fighting the formidable array was driven back and the way to Rossville was open.

Turchin and King moved by the roads to McFarland's Gap. Baird, Johnson, and Palmer followed over the same roads. They were attacked as they left their works and crossed the Kelly field, but order in their columns was restored as soon as they gained the shelter of the woods on the west of the road. Hazen and Wood then followed without molestation. Steedman withdrew at six o'clock from the extreme right, and Brannan was left alone on Horseshoe Ridge. The sun was down. The shadows were thickening in the woods before him, and yet Longstreet's men remained on the slopes, and several times appeared in detachments close along his lines.

Suddenly a line of Hindman's men were found on the slope where Steedman had been. By some strange oversight Brannan had not been notified that his right was unprotected. A hasty examination in the gathering dusk showed another rebel line on the slope directly in the rear, and which had come round through the gap where Steedman's right had been, and was evidently forming for an a.s.sault. The Thirty-fifth Ohio, of Van Derveer's brigade, was thrown back to face both these lines. Fragments of five regiments more, which had opportunely arrived, were given to the commander of the Thirty-fifth. His own regiment had one round and one in the guns. This was placed in front. The others, with fixed bayonets, were formed in the rear. Just before dark a rebel officer rode in on the line and asked what troops were here. He was shot by the near outposts.

Then came a scattering fire from the flank of the rebel line along the ridge, next a volley from the Thirty-fifth, and a silent awaiting results behind its line of bayonets. The volley had scattered the enemy on the ridge, and the force in the rear had withdrawn. These were the last shots on the right. Following them there was absolute quiet everywhere on the field. The stillness was painful and awful. Brannan's officers and men, peering down into the dim and smoking ravine, saw long lines of fire creeping over the leaves, and in and out among the wounded and the dead. It was a sight far more horrible than any of the pictured presentations of Dante's Inferno. From this scene, with the low wailings of the sufferers in their ears, they turned in triumph and exultant to form the rear guard of Thomas's advance to Rossville. Turchin and Willich fought last on the left and formed the rear guard there; Van Derveer covered the right. And thus the Army of the c.u.mberland at midnight occupied the pa.s.ses which made the possession of Chattanooga secure.

There had been no such disordered rush of the broken portions of the army on Chattanooga as the panic-stricken correspondent of an Eastern paper depicted, who gave visions of his own early flight to the country as news. Only a small part of the broken wing drifted to Chattanooga.

From 7,000 to 10,000 stopped at Rossville, and were fairly organized there. When Thomas's forces arrived the whole army was placed in position on Missionary Ridge, and in front of it, and remained in line of battle throughout the whole of the 21st.

At nightfall the army advanced to Chattanooga--advanced is the word; the term ”retreated,” so persistently used in regard to this movement has no place in the truthful history of this campaign. The Army of the c.u.mberland was on its way to Chattanooga, the city it set out to capture. It had halted at Chickamauga, on its line of advance, to fight for its objective. On the night of the 21st it began its last march for the city. Every foot of it was a march in advance, and not retreat. At sunrise of the 22d Brannan's division, which was the rear guard, reached the city, and the campaign for Chattanooga was at an end. Until that morning broke the great bulk of the Army of the c.u.mberland had never seen the place.

Thus, crowned with success, though won at terrible cost, closed the last campaign of General Rosecrans. It was matchless in its strategy, unequaled in the skill and energy with which his outnumbered army was concentrated for battle. Its stubborn, desperate, and heroic fighting throughout the two days' battle was not surpa.s.sed, and, judged by its returns of dead and wounded, not equaled in any one of the great battles of the war. It secured the city which it marched to capture. The loss was no greater than the country would have expected at any time in attaining that result. If Rosecrans had crossed the river in front of the city and captured it with even greater loss, the country would have gone wild with enthusiasm. Had he been properly supported from Was.h.i.+ngton he would have entered it without a battle, since, if there had been even a show of activity elsewhere, Bragg's army would not have been nearly doubled with re-enforcements and thus enabled to march back on Chattanooga after its retreat from the city. The reverse on the field on Sunday was not the disaster which at the time it was declared to be, and which it has ever since suited several writers of military fiction to persistently represent. The account herewith presented shows that after General Thomas consolidated his lines at 1 o'clock on Sunday not a single position was carried and held by the enemy. The withdrawal, which began soon after 5 o'clock, was not in any sense forced. There is not an officer or soldier who fought on those lines but knows that they could have been held throughout till dark.

The accepted version of Sunday's break on Rosecrans's right is that the two corps of Crittenden and McCook were swept off the field; but only five brigades of McCook's entire corps left the field, and the fragments which went from Crittenden would not exceed two brigades. Palmer's and Johnson's divisions, which fought splendidly to the end under Thomas on the left, were respectively from Crittenden's and McCook's corps. Wood belonged to Crittenden. Barnes's brigade, which fought on the extreme left, and part of d.i.c.k's and Samuel Beatty's were all of Van Cleve's division of Crittenden's corps. In other words, the large part of Crittenden's force fought to the last. Four regiments of Wilder's brigade of Reynolds's division were detached and cut off with the right, and a considerable part of Negley's division of Thomas went to the rear, chiefly through the bad conduct of its commander. We have seen, however, how persistently and effectively Stanley's and John Beatty's brigades of that division fought, and Beatty and General Charles Grosvenor and Sirwell and Stoughton, of these brigades, were all found fighting like private soldiers on the hill with Wood and Brannan to the last. The battle of Sunday was, then, not the fight of any one corps, but of the Army of the c.u.mberland. There was no disorderly retreat of the army on Chattanooga, and nothing approaching it. The greater portion of the right wing, which was cut off and certainly thrown into much confusion, was reorganized at Rossville, and occupied its place in line at that point throughout the next day and until the army moved on in the night to occupy Chattanooga. The battle was desperate from the moment it opened till its close. For the most part the lines fought at close range and, in the countless a.s.saults, often hand to hand. On the first day there were no field works of any kind. On the second Thomas was protected by such rude log works as could be hastily thrown together.

Brannan and Steedman were without a semblance of works. The battle in the main, on both sides, was dogged, stand-up fighting far within the limit of point blank range. For the second day, on the Confederate side, the contest was one continued series of brave and magnificent a.s.saults.

General Rosecrans had crossed the Tennessee with an effective force of all arms equipped for duty of a few hundred more than 60,000. Of this number Wagner's brigade, with 2,061 effectives, held Chattanooga, leaving the Union force in front of Bragg slightly less than 58,000. It was several thousand less at the battle, Post's brigade of Davis'

division and three regiments of infantry and one battery being engaged in guarding supply trains.

In a letter from General Lee to President Davis, dated September 14, 1863, the following figures of Bragg's actual and prospective strength are thus stated: