The fire of Longstreet's batteries from the angle down Thomas' lines, forced that General to begin withdrawing his troops from their entrenchments, preparatory to retreat. This movement being noticed by the commanding General, Liddell's Division on the extreme right was again ordered to the attack, but with no better success than in the morning. The enemy had for some time been withdrawing his trains and broken ranks through the gaps of the mountain in the direction of Chattanooga, leaving nothing in front of the left wing but the reserves of Granger and those of Crittenden. These held their ground gallantly around Snodgrass Hill, but it was a self-evident fact to all the officers, as well as the troops, that the battle was irretrievably lost, and they were only fighting for time, the time that retreat could be safely made under cover of darkness. But before the sun was fairly set, that great army was in full retreat. But long before this it was known to the brilliant Union commander that fate had played him false—that destiny was pointing to his everlasting overthrow. He knew, too, that the latter part of the battle, while brief and desperate, the lurid cloud of battle settling all around his dead and dying, a spectre had even then arisen as from the earth, and pointing his bony fingers at the field of carnage, whispering in his ear that dreaded word, "Lost!"
As night closed in upon the bloody scenes of the day, the Federal Army, that in the morning had stood proud and defiant along the crests and gorges of the mountain ridges, was now a struggling mass of beaten and fleeing fugitives, or groups groping their way through the darkness towards the passes that led to Chattanooga.
Of all the great Captains of that day, Longstreet was the guiding genius of Chickamauga. It was his masterful mind that rose equal to the emergency, grasped and directed the storm of battle. It was by the unparalleled courage of the troops of Hood, Humphreys, and Kershaw, and the temporary command under Longstreet, throwing themselves athwart the path of the great colossus of the North, that checked him and drove him back over the mountains to the strongholds around Chattanooga. And it is no violent assumption to say that had the troops on the right under Polk supported the battle with as fiery zeal as those on the left under Longstreet, the Union Army would have been [277] utterly destroyed and a possible different ending to the campaign, if not in final, results might have been confidently expected.
The work of the soldier was not done with the coming of night. The woods along the slopes where the battle had raged fiercest had caught fire and the flames were nearing the wounded and the dead. Their calls and piteous wails demanded immediate assistance. Soldiers in groups and by ones and twos scoured the battlefield in front and rear, gathering up first the wounded then the dead. The former were removed to the field infirmaries, the latter to the new city to be built for them—the city of the dead. The builders were already at work on their last dwelling places, scooping out shallow graves with bayonets, knives, and such tools that were at hand. Many pathetic spectacles were witnessed of brother burying brother. My brother and five other members of the company were laid side by side, wrapped only in their blankets, in the manner of the Red Men in the legend who fought and died here in the long, long ago. Here we left them "in all their glory" amid the sacred stillness that now reigned over the once stormy battlefield, where but a short while before the tread of struggling legions, the thunder of cannon, and the roar of infantry mingled in systematic confusion. But now the awful silence and quietude that pervades the field after battle—where lay the dreamless sleepers of friend and foe, victor and vanquished, the blue and the gray, with none to sing their requiems—nothing heard save the plaintive notes of the night bird or the faint murmurs of grief of the comrades who are placing the sleepers in their shallow beds! But what is death to the soldier? It is the passing of a comrade perhaps one day or hour in advance to the river with the Pole Ferryman.
Bragg, out of a total of fifty-nine thousand two hundred and forty-two, lost seventeen thousand eight hundred. Rosecran's total was sixty thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven (exclusive of the losses on the 18th and 19th). His loss on the 20th was sixteen thousand five hundred and fifty. The greater loss of the Confederates can be accounted for when it is remembered that they were the assaulting party—the enemy's superior position, formidable entrenchments, and greater amount of artillery.
The Battle of Chickamauga was one of the most sanguinary of the war, [278] when the number of troops engaged and the time in actual combat are taken into consideration. In the matter of losses it stands as the fifth greatest battle of the war. History gives no authentic record of greater casualties in battle in the different organizations, many of the regiments losing from fifty to fifty-seven per cent, of their numbers, while some reached as high as sixty-eight per cent. When it's remembered that usually one is killed out right to every five that are wounded, some idea of the dreadful mortality on the field can be formed.