And the loud cannon rattle,
They hear not, they heed not,
They're free from all pain.
They sleep their last sleep,
They have fought their last battle,
No sound can awake them to glory again."
More than twenty-seven years have passed since that heroic struggle on the steep mountain side of Missionary Ridge. The blue and the gray sleep side by side in the National Cemetery at its base. Chattanooga, then a small war-battered village, has grown, by northern capital and northern industry, to be an important iron manufacturing city. The Tennessee runs its bright and winding way around the proud Lookout, but no rebel yell pollutes the air, and no rebel rag defies the national authority, but all is peace and order, industry and law. And so we bid farewell to the contemplation of one of those great sacrifices that "saved us a nation."
THE EAST TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN, AND THE MARCH
FROM CHATTANOOGA TO KNOXVILLE.
Hooker's victorious legions had descended from Lookout. The battle of Missionary Ridge had been fought and won. General Geary's division of the 20th Corps had followed the beaten and disheartened Bragg to Ringgold, and there attacking the enemy in his entrenched position on the White Oak mountains, had suffered a repulse in which the gallant 7th and 8th Ohio lost severely. It was there that the idols of the 7th, Colonels Crane and Creighton, fell. But our portion of the army advanced no further south at that time, and the 20th Corps went into winter quarters. But no such needed rest and recuperation, after the long time of siege and starvation at Chattanooga, seemed to fall to the lot of the 4th Corps of the Army of the Cumberland.
The twenty-sixth day of November, 1863, the day after the battle of Missionary Ridge, we spent in gathering up our beloved dead from off the mountainside where they had charged so gallantly the day before. We brought each regiment's sleeping braves and composed them in long lines, each company's by itself. I wish those that love war, that are filled with martial ardor, that are hoping that some complication will involve us in a war with Great Britain, could have walked with me along those lines of noble dead. There lay in peaceful slumber all ages, all sizes and forms of men, from the heavy, tall and bearded man of fifty to the smooth-faced lad of fifteen.