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

by Charles A. Dana

I attempted to make my way from this point in the woods to Sheridan's division, but when I reached the place where I knew it had been a little time before, I found it had been swept from the field. Not far away, however, I stumbled on a body of organized troops. This was a brigade of mounted riflemen under Colonel John T. Wilder, of Indiana. "Mr. Dana," asked Colonel Wilder, "what is the situation?"

"I do not know," I said, "except that this end of the army has been routed. There is still heavy fighting at the left front, and our troops seem to be holding their ground there yet."

"Will you give me any orders?" he asked.

"I have no authority to give orders," I replied; "but if I were in your situation I should go to the left, where Thomas is."

Then I turned my horse, and, making my way over Missionary Ridge, struck the Chattanooga Valley and rode to Chattanooga, twelve or fifteen miles away. The whole road was filled with flying soldiers; here and there were pieces of artillery, caissons, and baggage wagons. Everything was in the greatest disorder. When I reached Chattanooga, a little before four o'clock, I found Rosecrans there. In the helter-skelter to the rear he had escaped by the Rossville road. He was expecting every moment that the enemy would arrive before the town, and was doing all he could to prepare to resist his entrance. Soon after I arrived the two corps commanders, McCook and Crittenden, both came into Chattanooga.

The first thing I did on reaching town was to telegraph Mr. Stanton. I had not sent him any telegrams in the morning, for I had been in the field with Rosecrans, and part of the time at some distance from the Widow Glenn's, where the operators were at work. The boys kept at their post there until the Confederates swept them out of the house. When they had to run, they went instruments and tools in hand, and as soon as out of reach of the enemy set up shop on a stump. It was not long before they were driven out of this. They next attempted to establish an office on the Rossville road, but before they had succeeded in making connections a battle was raging around them, and they had to retreat to Granger's headquarters at Rossville.

Having been swept bodily off the battlefield, and having made my way into Chattanooga through a panic-stricken rabble, the first telegram which I sent to Mr. Stanton was naturally colored by what I had seen and experienced. I remember that I began the dispatch by saying: "My report to-day is of deplorable importance. Chickamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run." By eight o'clock that evening, however, I found that I had given too dark a view of the disaster.

Early the next morning things looked still better. Rosecrans received a telegram from Thomas at Rossville, to which point he had withdrawn after the nightfall, saying that his troops were in high spirits, and that he had brought off all his wounded. A little while before noon General James A. Garfield, who was chief of Rosecrans's staff, arrived in Chattanooga and gave us the first connected account we had of the battle on the left after the rout. Garfield said that he had become separated from Rosecrans in the rout of our right wing and had made his way to the left, and spent the afternoon and night with General Thomas. There he witnessed the sequel of the battle in that part of the field. Thomas, finding himself cut off from Rosecrans and the right, at once marshalled the remaining divisions for independent fighting. Refusing both his right and left, his line assumed the form of a horseshoe, posted along the slope and crest of a partly wooded ridge. He was soon joined by Granger from Rossville, with Steedman and most of the reserve; and with these forces, more than two thirds of the army, he firmly maintained the fight till after dark. Our troops were as immovable as the rocks they stood on. Longstreet hurled against them repeatedly the dense columns which had routed Davis and Sheridan in the early afternoon, but every onset was repulsed with dreadful slaughter. Falling first on one and then another point of our lines, for hours the rebels vainly sought to break them. Thomas seemed to have filled every soldier with his own unconquerable firmness, and Granger, his hat torn by bullets, raged like a lion wherever the combat was hottest with the electrical courage of a Ney. When night fell, this body of heroes stood on the same ground they had occupied in the morning, their spirit unbroken, but their numbers greatly diminished.