About nine o'clock the battle was commenced on Sherman's line on our left, and it raged furiously all that forenoon both east of Missionary Ridge and along its crest, the enemy making vigorous efforts to crush Sherman and dislodge him from his position on the ridge. All day, while this battle was going on, I was at Orchard Knob, where Grant, Thomas, Granger, and several other officers were observing the operations. The enemy kept firing shells at us, I remember, from the ridge opposite. They had got the range so well that the shells burst pretty near the top of the elevation where we were, and when we saw them coming we would duck—that is, everybody did except Generals Grant and Thomas and Gordon Granger. It was not according to their dignity to go down on their marrow bones. While we were there Granger got a cannon—how he got it I do not know—and he would load it with the help of one soldier and fire it himself over at the ridge. I recollect that Rawlins was very much disgusted at the guerilla operations of Granger, and induced Grant to order him to join his troops elsewhere.
As we thought we perceived, soon after noon, that the enemy had sent a great mass of their troops to crush Sherman, Grant gave orders at two o'clock for an assault upon the left of their lines; but owing to the fault of Granger, who was boyishly intent upon firing his gun instead of commanding his corps, Grant's order was not transmitted to the division commanders until he repeated it an hour later.
It was fully four o'clock before the line moved out to the attack. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and, as the forces marched across the valley in front of us as regularly as if on parade, it was a great spectacle. They took with ease the first rifle-pits at the foot of the ridge as they had been ordered, and then, to the amazement of all of us who watched on Orchard Knob, they moved out and up the steep ahead of them, and before we realized it they were at the top of Missionary Ridge. It was just half past four when I wired to Mr. Stanton:
Glory to God! the day is decisively ours. Missionary Ridge has just been carried by the magnificent charge of Thomas's troops, and the rebels routed.
As soon as Grant saw the ridge was ours, he started for the front. As he rode the length of the lines, the men, who were frantic with joy and enthusiasm over the victory, received him with tumultuous shouts. The storming of the ridge by our troops was one of the greatest miracles in military history. No man who climbs the ascent by any of the roads that wind along its front can believe that eighteen thousand men were moved in tolerably good order up its broken and crumbling face unless it was his fortune to witness the deed. It seemed as awful as a visible interposition of God. Neither Grant nor Thomas intended it. Their orders were to carry the rifle-pits along the base of the ridge and capture their occupants; but when this was accomplished, the unaccountable spirit of the troops bore them bodily up those impracticable steeps, in spite of the bristling rifle-pits on the crest, and the thirty cannons enfilading every gully. The order to storm appears to have been given simultaneously by Generals Sheridan and Wood because the men were not to be held back, dangerous as the attempt appeared to military prudence. Besides, the generals had caught the inspiration of the men, and were ready themselves to undertake impossibilities.
The first time I saw Sheridan after the battle I said to him, "Why did you go up there?"
"When I saw the men were going up," he replied, "I had no idea of stopping them; the rebel pits had been taken and nobody had been hurt, and after they had started I commanded them to go right on. I looked up at the head of the ridge as I was going up, and there I saw a Confederate general on horseback. I had a silver whisky flask in my pocket, and when I saw this man on the top of the hill I took out my flask and waved my hand toward him, holding up the shining, glittering flask, and then I took a drink. He waved back to me, and then the whole corps went up."
All the evening of the 25th the excitement of the battle continued. Bragg had retreated down the Chickamauga Valley and was burning what he could not carry away, so that the east was lit by his fires, while Sheridan continued his fight along the east slope of Missionary Ridge until nine o'clock in the evening. It was a bright moonlight night, and we could see most of the operations as plainly as by day. The next morning Bragg was in full retreat. I went to Missionary Ridge in the morning, and from there I could see along ten miles of Chickamauga Valley the fires of the depots and bridges he was burning as he fled.
At intervals throughout the day I sent dispatches to Washington, where they were eagerly read, as the following telegram sent me on the 27th shows: