Transferred to Georgia—Scenes Along the Route.
While in camp great stress was laid on drills. The brigade drill was the most important. Every day at 3 o'clock the whole brigade was marched to a large old field, and all the evolutions of the brigade drill were gone through with. Crowds of citizens from the surrounding country came to witness our maneuvers, especially did the ladies grace the occasions with their presence. The troops were in the very best of spirits—no murmurs nor complaints. Clothing and provision boxes began coming in from home. A grand corps review took place soon after our encampment was established, in which Generals Lee and Longstreet reviewed the troops.
All expected a good, long rest after their many marches and bloody battles in Maryland and Pennsylvania, but we were soon to be called upon for work in other fields. General Bragg had been driven out of Tennessee to the confines of Georgia, and it seemed that, without succor from the Army of the East to aid in fighting their battles, and to add to the morale of the Western Army, Bragg would soon be forced through Georgia. It had long been the prevailing opinion of General Longstreet that the most strategic movement for the South was to reinforce General Bragg with all the available troops of the East (Lee standing on the defensive), crush Rosecrans, and, if possible, drive him back and across the Ohio. With this end in view, General Longstreet wrote, in August, to General Lee, as well as to the Secretary of War, giving these opinions as being the only solution to the question of checking the continual advance of Rosecrans—renewing the morale of the Western Army and reviving the waning spirits of the Confederacy, thus putting the enemy on the defensive and regaining lost territory.
It should be remembered that our last stronghold on the Mississippi, [263] Vicksburg, had capitulated about the time of the disastrous battle of Gettysburg, with thirty thousand prisoners. That great waterway was opened to the enemy's gun boats and transports, thus cutting the South, with a part of her army, in twain.
This suggestion of General Longstreet was accepted, so far as sending him, with a part of his corps, to Georgia, by his receiving orders early in September to prepare his troops for transportation.
The most direct route by railroad to Chattanooga, through Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee, had for some time been in the hands of the enemy at Knoxville. We were, therefore, forced to take the circuitous route by way of the two Carolinas and Georgia. There were two roads open to transportation, one by Wilmington and one by Charlotte, N.C., as far as Augusta, Ga., but from thence on there was but a single line, and as such our transit was greatly impeded.
On the morning of the 15th or 16th of September Kershaw's Brigade was put aboard the trains at White Oak Station, and commenced the long ride to North Georgia. Hood's Division was already on the way. Jenkins' (S.C.) Brigade had been assigned to that division, but it and one of the other of Hood's brigades failed to reach the battleground in time to participate in the glories of that event. General McLaws, also, with two of his brigades, Bryan's and Wofford' (Georgians), missed the fight, the former awaiting the movements of his last troops, as well as that of the artillery.
Long trains of box cars had been ordered up from Richmond and the troops were loaded by one company being put inside and the next on top, so one-half of the corps made the long four days' journey on the top of box cars. The cars on all railroads in which troops were transported were little more than skeleton cars; the weather being warm, the troops cut all but the frame work loose with knives and axes. They furthermore wished to see outside and witness the fine country and delightful scenery that lay along the route; nor could those Inside bear the idea of being shut up in a box car while their comrades on top were cheering and yelling themselves hoarse at the waving of handkerchiefs and flags in the hands of the pretty women and the hats thrown in the air by the old men and boys along the roadside [264] as the trains sped through the towns, villages, and hamlets of the Carolinas and Georgia, No, no; the exuberant spirits of the Southern soldier were too great to allow him to hear yelling going on and not yell himself. He yelled at everything he saw, from an ox-cart to a pretty woman, a downfall of a luckless cavalryman to a charge in battle.
The news of our coming had preceded us, and at every station and road-crossing the people of the surrounding country, without regard to sex or age, crowded to see us pass, and gave us their blessings and God speed as we swept by with lightning speed. Our whole trip was one grand ovation. Old men slapped their hands in praise, boys threw up their hats in joy, while the ladies fanned the breeze with their flags and handkerchiefs; yet many a mother dropped a silent tear or felt a heart-ache as she saw her long absent soldier boy flying pass without a word or a kiss.
At the towns which we were forced to stop for a short time great tables were stretched, filled with the bounties of the land, while the fairest and the best women on earth stood by and ministered to every wish or want. Was there ever a purer devotion, a more passionate patriotism, a more sincere loyalty, than that displayed by the women of the South towards the soldier boys and the cause for which they fought? Was there ever elsewhere on earth such women? Will there ever again exist circumstances and conditions that will require such heroism, fortitude, and suffering? Perhaps so, perhaps not.
In passing through Richmond we left behind us two very efficient officers on a very pleasant mission, Dr. James Evans, Surgeon of the Third, who was to be married to one of Virginia's fair daughters, and Captain T.W. Gary, of same regiment, who was to act as best man. Dr. Evans was a native South Carolinian and a brother of Brigadier General N.G. Evans, of Manassas fame. While still a young man, he was considered one of the finest surgeons and practitioners in the army. He was kind and considerate to his patients, punctual and faithful in his duties, and withal a dignified, refined gentleman. Such confidence had the soldiers in his skill and competency, that none felt uneasy when their lives or limbs, were left to his careful handling. Both officers rejoined us in a few days.
We reached Ringold on the evening of the 19th of September, and [265] marched during the night in the direction of the day's battlefield. About midnight we crossed over the sluggish stream of Chickamauga, at Alexander's Bridge, and bivouaced near Hood's Division, already encamped. Chickamauga! how little known of before, but what memories its name is to awaken for centuries afterwards! What a death struggle was to take place along its borders between the blue and the gray, where brother was to meet brother—where the soldiers of the South were to meet their kinsmen of the Northwest! In the long, long ago, before the days of fiction and romance of the white man in the New World, in the golden days of legend of the forest dwellers, when the red man chanted the glorious deeds of his ancestors during his death song to the ears of his children, this touching story has come down from generation to generation, until it reached the ears of their destroyers, the pale faces of to-day:
Away in the dim distant past a tribe of Indians, driven from their ancestral hunting grounds in the far North, came South and pitched their wigwams along the banks of the "river of the great bend," the Tennessee. They prospered, multiplied, and expanded, until their tents covered the mountain sides and plains below. The braves of the hill men hunted and sported with their brethren of the valley. Their children fished, hunted, played, fought, and gamboled in mimic warfare as brothers along the sparkling streamlets that rise in the mountain ridges, their sparkling waters leaping and jumping through the gorges and glens and flowing away to the "great river." All was peace and happiness; the tomahawk of war had long since been buried, and the pipe of peace smoked around their camp fires after every successful hunting expedition. But dissentions arose—distrust and embittered feelings took the place of brotherly love. The men of the mountains became arrayed against their brethren of the plains, and they in turn became the sworn enemies of the dwellers of the cliffs. The war hatchet was dug up and the pipe of peace no longer passed in brotherly love at the council meeting. Their bodies were decked in the paint of war, and the once peaceful and happy people forsook their hunting grounds and entered upon, the war path.
Early on an autumn day, when the mountains and valleys were clothed in golden yellow, the warriors of the dissenting factions met along [266] the banks of the little stream, and across its turbid waters waged a bitter battle from early morn until the "sun was dipping behind the palisades of Look-Out Mountain"—no quarters given and none asked. It was a war of extermination. The blood of friend and foe mingled in the stream until its waters were said to be red with the life-blood of the struggling combatants. At the close of the fierce combat the few that survived made a peace and covenant, and then and there declared that for all time the sluggish stream should be called Chickamauga, the "river of blood." Such is the legend of the great battleground and the river from whence it takes its name.
General Buckner had come down from East Tennessee with his three divisions, Stewart's, Hindman's, and Preston's, and had joined General Bragg some time before our arrival, making General Bragg's organized army forty-three thousand eight hundred and sixty-six strong. He was further reinforced by eleven thousand five hundred from General Joseph E. Johnston's army in Mississippi and five thousand under General Longstreet, making a total of sixty thousand three hundred and thirty-six, less casualties of the 18th and 19th of one thousand one hundred and twenty-four; so as to numbers on the morning of the 20th, Bragg had of all arms fifty-nine thousand two hundred and forty-two; while the Federal commander claimed only sixty thousand three hundred and sixty six, but at least five thousand more on detached duty and non-combatants, such as surgeons, commissaries, quartermasters, teamsters, guards, etc. Bragg's rolls covered all men in his army. Rosecrans was far superior in artillery and cavalry, as all of the batteries belonging to Longstreet's corps, or that were to attend him in the campaign of the West, were far back in South Carolina, making what speed possible on the clumsy and cumbersome railroads of that day. So it was with Wofford's and Bryan's Brigades, of McLaw's Division, Jenkins' and one of Hood's, as well as all of the subsistence and ordnance trains. The artillery assigned to General Longstreet by General Lee consisted of Ashland's and Bedford's (Virginia), Brooks' (South Carolina), and Madison's (Louisiana) batteries of light artillery, and two Virginia batteries of position, all under the command of Colonel Alexander.
As for transportation, the soldiers carried all they possessed on [267] their backs, with four days of cooked rations all the time. Generally one or two pieces of light utensils were carried by each company, in which all the bread and meat were cooked during the night.
Our quartermasters gathered up what they could of teams and wagons from the refuse of Bragg's trains to make a semblance of subsistence transportation barely sufficient to gather in the supplies. It was here that the abilities of our chiefs of quartermaster and commissary departments were tested to the utmost. Captains Peck and Shell, of our brigade, showed themselves equal to the occasion, and Captain Lowrance, of the Subsistence Department, could always be able to furnish us with plenty of corn meal from the surrounding country.
The sun, on the morning of the 20th, rose in unusual splendor, and cast its rays and shadows in sparkling brilliancy over the mountains and plains of North Georgia. The leaves of the trees and shrubbery, in their golden garb of yellow, shown out bright and beautiful in their early autumnal dress—quite in contrast with the bloody scenes to be enacted before the close of day. My older brother, a private in my company, spoke warmly of the beautiful Indian summer morning and the sublime scenery round about, and wondered if all of us would ever see the golden orb of day rise again in its magnificence. Little did he think that even then the hour hand on the dial plate of destiny was pointing to the minute of "high noon," when fate was to take him by the hand and lead him away. It was his turn in the detail to go to the rear during the night to cook rations for the company, and had he done so, he would have missed the battle, as the details did not return in time to become participants in the engagement that commenced early in the morning. He had asked permission to exchange duties with a comrade, as he wished to be near me should a battle ensue during the time. Contrary to regulations, I granted the request. Now the question naturally arises, had he gone on his regular duties would the circumstances have been different? The soldier is generally a believer in the doctrine of predestination in the abstract, and it is well he is so, for otherwise many soldiers would run away from battle. But as it is, he consoles himself with the theories of the old doggerel quartet, which reads something like this:—
"He who fights and runs away,
May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain,
Will ne'er live to fight again."
Longstreet's troops had recently been newly uniformed, consisting of a dark-blue round jacket, closely fitting, with light-blue trousers, which made a line of Confederates resemble that of the enemy, the only difference being the "cut" of the garments—the Federals wearing a loose blouse instead of a tight-fitting jacket. The uniforms of the Eastern troops made quite a contrast with the tattered and torn homemade jeans of their Western brethren.
General Bragg had divided his army into two wings—the right commanded by Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk (a Bishop of the M.E. Church, and afterwards killed in the battles around Atlanta.) and the left commanded by that grand chieftain (Lee's "Old War Horse" and commander of his right), Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Under his guidance were Preston's Division on extreme left, Hindman's next, with Stewart's on extreme right of left wing, all of Major General Buckner's corps. Between Hindman and Stewart was Bushrod Johnson's new formed division. In reserve were Hood's three brigades, with Kershaw's and Humphries', all under Major General Hood, standing near the center and in rear of the wing.
The right wing stood as follows: General Pat Cleburn's Division on right of Stewart, with Breckenridge's on the extreme right of the infantry, under the command of Lieutenant General D.H. Hill, with Cheatham's Division of Folk's Corps to the left and rear of Cleburn as support, with General Walker's Corps acting as reserve. Two divisions of Forrest's Cavalry, one dismounted, were on the right of Breckenridge, to guard that flank, while far out to the left of Longstreet were two brigades of Wheeler's Cavalry. The extreme left of the army, Preston's Division, rested on Chickamauga Creek, the right thrown well forward towards the foot hills of Mission Ridge.
In the alignment of the two wings it was found that Longstreet's right overlapped Folk's left, and fully one-half mile in front, so it became necessary to bend Stewart's Division back to join to Cleburn's left, [269] thereby leaving space between Bushrod Johnson and Stewart for Hood to place his three brigades on the firing line.
Longstreet having no artillery, he was forced to engage all of the thirty pieces of Buckner's. In front of Longstreet lay a part of the Twentieth Corps, Davis' and Sheridan's Divisions, under Major General McCook, and part of the Twenty-first Corps, under the command of General Walker. On our right, facing Polk, was the distinguished Union General, George H. Thomas, with four divisions of his own corps, the Fourteenth, Johnson's Division of the Twentieth, and Van Cleve's of the Twenty-first Corps.
General Thomas was a native Virginian, but being an officer in the United States Army at the time of the secession of his State, he preferred to remain and follow the flag of subjugation, rather than, like the most of his brother officers of Southern birth, enter into the service of his native land and battle for justice, liberty, and States Rights. He and General Hunt, of South Carolina, who so ably commanded the artillery of General Meade at Gettysburg, were two of the most illustrious of Southern renegades.
In the center of Rosecrans' Army were two divisions, Woods' and Palmer's, under Major General Crittenden, posted along the eastern slope of Mission Ridge, with orders to support either or both wings of the army, as occasions demanded.
General Gordon Granger, with three brigades of infantry and one division of cavalry, guarded the Union left and rear and the gaps leading to Chattanooga, and was to act as general reserve for the army and lay well back and to the left of Brannan's Division that was supporting the front line of General Thomas.
The bulk of the Union cavalry, under General Mitchell, was two miles distant on our left, guarding the ford over Chickamauga at Crawfish Springs. The enemy's artillery, consisting of two hundred and forty-six pieces, was posted along the ridges in our front, giving exceptional positions to shell and grape an advancing column.
Bragg had only two hundred pieces, but as his battle line occupied lower ground than that of the enemy, there was little opportunity to do effective work with his cannon.
The ground was well adapted by nature for a battlefield, and as the attacking party always has the advantage of maneuver and assault in [270] an open field, each commander was anxious to get his blow in first. So had not Bragg commenced the battle as early as he did, we would most assuredly have had the whole Federal Army upon our hands before the day was much older. Kershaw's Brigade, commanded by General Kershaw, stood from right to left in the following order: Fifteenth Regiment on the right, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Gist; Second Regiment, Colonel James D. Kennedy; Third, Colonel James D. Nance; Third Battalion, by Captain Robert H. Jennings; Eighth, Colonel John W. Henagan; Seventh, Colonel Elbert Bland.