CHAPTER XXIV
Longstreet to Reinforce Bragg
The movement to reinforce Bragg—Good work of the Quartermaster-General—General A. R. Lawton, of Georgia—The journey through the States—Ovations to the troops.
The important movement now impending was the subject of deep and secret discussion by the President, Generals Lee and Longstreet, and General Lawton, Quartermaster-General, whose part in it would be of the first consideration. Its gravity can scarcely be overstated.
Rosecrans, commanding the Federal forces in Tennessee and Georgia, had suffered himself to be in position inviting attack by a competent force. It was believed that Bragg, his opponent, if reinforced, could strike a swift, crushing blow, relieve the wide region in which he was operating from the presence of the enemy, and enable masterly reinforcements to return rapidly to Virginia without endangering the safety of the Confederate capital or that of Lee's army, thus temporarily weakened.
Indeed it was the military calculation that so large a detachment from the Southern army would be instantly followed by a still greater withdrawal of troops from Lee's front, and that too by the outer line of the segment, while our own contingent was hurrying by the short, straight cord of the circle.
This expectation proved correct. Meade was silent and inactive, and our own army was stiffening in material and numbers. Meade was apparently without a plan. His predecessors had suffered so cruelly at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville that his well-known prudence and lack of initiative might be trusted to keep him quiet during our great strategic coup. The movement was, therefore, determined on, and in the first half of September the details were settled. Longstreet was to take on the expedition his two splendid divisions, McLaws and Hood, the latter by this time quite cured of his wound, and Alexander's battalion of artillery—six batteries. Supply trains were to be furnished at destination.
The movement was to be wholly by train, and to any one familiar with the railroad service at the South in the last part of 1863 little need be said of the difficulties facing the Quartermaster-General.
He was to pick up their camps near Gordonsville and the Rapidan, nine strong brigades of infantry and six batteries of artillery, and land them without serious accident and no delay with their ambulances and light vehicles near Chattanooga or Lookout Mountain. This feat was accomplished without stint of honor or praise, be it said, to the Quartermaster-General's department. Never before were so many troops moved over such worn-out railways, none first-class from the beginning. Never before were such crazy cars—passenger, baggage, mail, coal, box, platform, all and every sort wabbling on the jumping strap-iron—used for hauling good soldiers. But we got there nevertheless. The trains started day after day from Virginia and worked through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia by different routes, all converging at a point not far east of Chattanooga—Catoosa Station, I think, was the name.