Recollections of the Civil War / With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties

by Charles A. Dana

I had a prolonged conversation that morning with Governor Johnson, who expressed himself in cheering terms in regard to the general condition of Tennessee. He regarded the occupation of Knoxville by Burnside as completing the permanent expulsion of Confederate power, and said he should order a general election for the first week in October. He declared that slavery was destroyed in fact, but must be abolished legally. Johnson was thoroughly in favor of immediate emancipation both as a matter of moral right and as an indispensable condition of the large immigration of industrious freemen which he thought necessary to repeople and regenerate the State.

On the 10th of September we started for the front, going by rail to Bridgeport, on the Tennessee River. This town at that date was the terminus of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. The bridge across the river and part of the railroad beyond had been destroyed by Bragg when he retreated in the preceding summer from Tullahoma. It was by way of Bridgeport that troops were joining Rosecrans at the far front, and all supplies went to him that way. On reaching the town, we heard that Chattanooga had been occupied by Crittenden's corps of Rosecrans's army the day before, September 9th; so the next day, September 11th, I pushed on there by horseback past Shellmound and Wauhatchie. The country through which I passed is a magnificent region of rocks and valleys, and I don't believe there is anywhere a finer view than that I had from Lookout Mountain as I approached Chattanooga.

When I reached Chattanooga I went at once to General Rosecrans's headquarters and presented my letter. He read it, and then burst out in angry abuse of the Government at Washington. He had not been sustained, he said. His requests had been ignored, his plans thwarted. Both Stanton and Halleck had done all they could, he declared, to prevent his success.

"General Rosecrans," I said, "I have no authority to listen to complaints against the Government. I was sent here for the purpose of finding out what the Government could do to aid you, and have no right to confer with you on other matters."

He quieted down at once, and explained his situation to me. He had reached Chattanooga, he said, on the 10th, with Crittenden's troops, the Twenty-first Corps, the town having been evacuated the day before by the Confederates. As all the reports brought in seemed to indicate that Bragg was in full retreat toward Rome, Ga., Crittenden had immediately started in pursuit, and had gone as far as Ringgold. On the night before (September 11th) it had seemed evident that Bragg had abandoned his retreat on Rome, and behind the curtain of the woods and hills had returned with the purpose of suddenly falling with his whole army upon the different corps and divisions of our army, now widely separated by the necessity of crossing the mountains at gaps far apart.

This was a serious matter for Rosecrans, if true, for at that moment his army was scattered over a line more than fifty miles long, extending from Chattanooga on the north to Alpine on the south. Rosecrans pointed out to me the positions on the map. Crittenden, he explained, had been ordered immediately to leave Ringgold and move westward to the valley of the West Chickamauga. He was near a place known as Lee and Gordon's Mills. General Thomas, who commanded the Fourteenth Corps, had marched across Lookout Mountain and now held Stevens's Gap, perhaps twenty-five miles south of Chattanooga. McCook, with the Twentieth Corps, had been ordered, after crossing the Tennessee, to march southeast, and now was at Alpine, fully thirty-five miles south of Crittenden. Orders had been sent McCook, when it was found that Bragg had made a stand, to rest his left flank on the southern base of Mission Ridge, and, extending his line toward Summerville, fall on the flank of the enemy should he follow the valley that way. The reserve, under Gordon Granger, was still north of the Tennessee, although one division had reached Bridgeport and the rest were rapidly approaching. Notwithstanding the signs that Bragg might not be retreating so fast as he at first appeared to have been, Rosecrans was confident as late as the 12th that the Confederate commander was merely making a show of the offensive to check pursuit, and that he would make his escape to Rome as soon as he found our army concentrated for battle east of Lookout Mountain.

The next day (the 13th) I left Chattanooga with Rosecrans and his staff for Thomas's headquarters at Stevens's Gap. We found everything progressing favorably there. The movements for the concentration of the three corps were going forward with energy. Scouts were coming in constantly, who reported that the enemy had withdrawn from the basin where our army was assembling; that he was evacuating Lafayette and moving toward Rome. It seemed as if at last the Army of the Cumberland had practically gained a position from which it could effectually advance upon Rome and Atlanta, and deliver there the finishing blow of the war. The difficulties of gaining this position, of crossing the Cumberland Mountains, passing the Tennessee, turning and occupying Chattanooga, traversing the mountain ridges of northern Georgia, and seizing the passes which led southward had been enormous. It was only when I came personally to examine the region that I appreciated what had been done. These difficulties were all substantially overcome. The army was in the best possible condition, and was advancing with all the rapidity which the nature of the country allowed. Our left flank toward East Tennessee was secured by Burnside, and the only disadvantage which I could see was that a sudden movement of the enemy to our right might endanger our long and precarious line of communications and compel us to retreat again beyond the Tennessee. I felt this so keenly that I urged Mr. Stanton, in a dispatch sent to him on the 14th from Thomas's headquarters, to push as strong a column as possible eastward from Corinth, in northeastern Mississippi. It seemed to me that it would be better to recall the troops from the West rather than to risk a check here, where the heart of rebellion was within reach and the final blow all prepared.

But, after all, there was something of a mystery about the real location of Bragg's army, its strength, and the designs of its chief. At any rate it was soon manifest that Bragg was not withdrawing to the southward, as at first supposed. Some queer developments down the Chickamauga on the 16th and 17th caused Rosecrans considerable anxiety for Chattanooga. The impression began to grow, too, that Bragg had been playing 'possum, and had not retreated at all. Rosecrans at once abandoned all idea of operations against the Confederate line of retreat and supply, drew his army in rapidly, and began to look sharply after his own communications with Chattanooga, which had now become his base.

By noon of September 18th the concentration was practically complete. Our army then lay up and down the valley, with West Chickamauga Creek in front of the greater part of the line. The left was held by Crittenden, the center by Thomas, and the right by McCook, whose troops were now all in the valley except one brigade. The army had not concentrated any too soon, for that very afternoon the enemy appeared on our left, and a considerable engagement occurred. It was said at headquarters that a battle was certain the next day. The only point Rosecrans had not determined at five o'clock on the afternoon of the 18th was whether to make a night march and fall on Bragg at daylight or to await his onset.

But that night it became pretty clear to all that Bragg's plan was to push by our left into Chattanooga. This compelled another rapid movement by the left down the Chickamauga. By a tiresome night march Thomas moved down behind Crittenden and below Lee and Gordon's Mills, taking position on our extreme left. Crittenden followed, connecting with Thomas's right, and thus taking position in the center. McCook's corps also extended down stream to the left, but still covered the creek as high up as Crawfish Spring, while part of his troops acted as a reserve. These movements were hurriedly made, and the troops, especially those of Thomas, were very much exhausted by their efforts to get into position.