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

by Charles A. Dana

[CHAPTER IX.]

THE REMOVAL OF ROSECRANS.

Preparing to defend Chattanooga—Effect on the army of the day of disaster and glory—Mr. Dana suggests Grant or Thomas as Rosecrans's successor—Portrait of Thomas—The dignity and loyalty of his character illustrated—The army reorganized—It is threatened with starvation—An estimate of Rosecrans—He is relieved of the command of the Army of the Cumberland.

All the news we could get the next day of the enemy's movements seemed to show that the Confederate forces were concentrating on Chattanooga. Accordingly, Rosecrans gave orders for all our troops to gather in the town at once and prepare for the attack which would probably take place within a day or two. By midnight the army was in Chattanooga. The troops were in wonderful spirits, considering their excessive fatigues and heavy losses, and the next morning went to work with energy on the fortifications. All the morning of the 22d the enemy were approaching, resisted by our advance parties, and by the middle of the afternoon the artillery firing was so near that it seemed certain that the battle would be fought before dark. No attack was made that day, however, nor the next, and by the morning of the 24th the Herculean labors of the army had so fortified the place that it was certain that it could be taken only by a regular siege or by a turning movement. The strength of our forces was about forty-five thousand effective men, and we had ten days' full rations on hand. Chattanooga could hold out, but it was apparent that no offensive operations were possible until re-enforcements came. These we knew had been hurried toward us as soon as the news of the disaster of the 20th reached Washington. Burnside was coming from Knoxville, we supposed, Hooker had been ordered from Washington by rail, Sherman from Vicksburg by steamer, and some of Hurlbut's troops from Memphis.

The enemy by the 24th were massed in Chattanooga Valley, and held Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. The summit of Lookout Mountain, almost the key to Chattanooga, was not given up by Rosecrans until the morning of the 24th; then he ordered the withdrawal of the brigade which held the heights, and the destruction of the wagon road which winds along its side at about one third of its height and connects the valleys of Chattanooga and Lookout. Both Granger and Garfield earnestly protested against this order, contending that the mountain and the road could be held by not more than seven regiments against the whole power of the enemy. They were obviously right, but Rosecrans was sometimes as obstinate and inaccessible to reason as at others he was irresolute, vacillating, and inconclusive, and he pettishly rejected all their arguments. The mountain was given up.

As soon as we felt reasonably sure that Chattanooga could hold out until re-enforcements came, the disaster of the 20th of September became the absorbing topic of conversation in the Army of the Cumberland. At headquarters, in camp, in the street, on the fortifications, officers and soldiers and citizens wrangled over the reasons for the loss of the day. By the end of the first week after the disaster a serious fermentation reigned in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Army Corps, and, indeed, throughout the whole army, growing out of events connected with the battle.

There was at once a manifest disposition to hold McCook and Crittenden, the commanders of the two corps, responsible, because they had left the field of battle amid the rout of the right wing and made their way to Chattanooga.[D] It was not generally understood or appreciated at that time that, because of Thomas's repeated calls for aid and Rosecrans's consequent alarm for his left, Crittenden had been stripped of all his troops and had no infantry whatever left to command, and that McCook's lines also had been reduced to a fragment by similar orders from Rosecrans and by fighting. A strong opposition to both sprang up, which my telegrams to Mr. Stanton immediately after the battle fully reflect. The generals of division and of brigade felt the situation deeply, and said that they could no longer serve under such superiors, and that, if this was required of them, they must resign. This feeling was universal among them, including men like Major-Generals Palmer and Sheridan and Brigadier-Generals Wood, Johnson, and Hazen.

The feeling of these officers did not seem in the least to partake of a mutinous or disorderly character; it was rather conscientious unwillingness to risk their men and the country's cause in hands which they thought to be unsafe. No formal representation of this unwillingness was made to Rosecrans, but he was made aware of the state of things by private conversations with several of the parties. The defects of his character complicated the difficulty. He abounded in friendliness and approbativeness, and was greatly lacking in firmness and steadiness of will. In short, he was a temporizing man; he dreaded so heavy an alternative as was now presented, and hated to break with McCook and Crittenden.

Besides, there was a more serious obstacle to Rosecrans's acting decisively in the fact that if Crittenden and McCook had gone to Chattanooga, with the sound of artillery in their ears, from that glorious field where Thomas and Granger were saving their army and their country's honor, he had gone to Chattanooga also. It might be said in his excuse that, under the circumstances of the sudden rout, it was perfectly proper for the commanding general to go to the rear to prepare the next line of defense. Still, Rosecrans felt that that excuse could not entirely clear him either in his own eyes or in those of the army. In fact, it was perfectly plain that, while the subordinate commanders would not resign if he was retained in the chief command, as I believe they certainly would have done if McCook and Crittenden had not been relieved, their respect for Rosecrans as a general had received an irreparable blow.