Garfield called for volunteers to accompany him, but only a single orderly with his personal aide-de-camp followed him; and he made his way to the right, passed through the gap at Rossville, saw Granger, who was preparing to move Steedman's division to the front, and rode on to join Thomas, running the gantlet of the enemy's fire as he passed near them on the Kelley farm. He never tired of telling of the calm and quiet heroism of Thomas, holding his position on the horse-shoe ridge till night put an end to the fighting, and then retiring in perfect order to the Rossville Gap, to which he was ordered. This part of the story has been made familiar to all. An eyewitness has told how, when Rosecrans reached Chattanooga, he had to be helped from his horse. His nerves were exhausted by the strain he had undergone, and only gradually recovered from the shock. [Footnote: Cist, The Army of the Cumberland, p. 226.] His first dispatch to Washington was the announcement that his army had met with a serious disaster, the extent of which he could not himself tell. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. i. p. 142.] The most alarming feature of the news was that he was himself a dozen miles from the battlefield and had evidently lost all control of events. The truth turned out to be that two divisions would include all the troops that were broken,--namely, Sheridan's, two brigades of Davis's, and one of Van Cleve's,--whilst seven other divisions stood firm and Thomas assumed command of them. As these retired in order, and as the enemy had suffered more in killed and wounded than our army, Bragg was entitled to claim a victory only because the field was left in his hands with large numbers of wounded and numerous trophies of cannon. It was then claimed by some of our best officers, and is still an open question whether, if Rosecrans had been with Thomas and, calling to him Granger's troops, had resumed the offensive, the chances were not in our favor, and whether Bragg might not have been the one to retreat.
Unfortunately there was no doubt that the general was defeated, whether his army was or not. The most cursory study of the map showed that the only practicable road by which the army could be supplied was along the river from Bridgeport. Lookout Mountain commanded this; and not to hold Lookout was practically to announce a purpose to retreat into middle Tennessee. Dana informed the Secretary of War that Garfield and Granger had urged Rosecrans to hold the mountain, but that he would not listen to it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. i. p. 215.] He could much better afford to intrench a division there than Bragg could, for the Confederates were tied to Mission Ridge by the necessity of covering the Atlanta Railroad, which was their line of supply, and any troops put across the Chattanooga valley were in the air and likely to be cut off if the long and thin line which connected them were broken. Had Lookout Mountain been held, Hooker could have come at once into his place in line when he reached the Tennessee, and the reinforced army would have been ready, as soon as it was rested and supplied, to resume an offensive campaign. Instead of this, the country was for a month tortured with the apprehension that the Army of the Cumberland must retreat because it could not be fed by means of the mountain road over Walden's Ridge. After the fortifications at Chattanooga were strong enough to put the place beyond danger from direct assault, it would only be adding to the danger of starvation to send more men there before a better line of supply was opened.
The problem which the President and Secretary of War pondered most anxiously was the capacity and fitness of Rosecrans to conduct the new campaign. Would he rise energetically to the height of the great task, or would he sink into the paralysis of will which so long followed the battle of Stone's River? Dana's dispatches were studied for the light they threw on this question more than for all the other interesting details they contained. For the first three or four days, they teemed with impressions of the battle itself and the cause of the disaster to the right wing. Then came the assurance that Chattanooga was safe and could withstand a regular siege. Next, in logical order as in time, was the attempt to look into the future and to estimate the commander by the way he grappled with the difficulties of the situation. On the 27th of September Dana discussed at some length the army feeling toward the corps and division commanders who had been involved in the rout, and the embarrassment of Rosecrans in dealing with the subject. "The defects of his character," he wrote, "complicate the difficulty. He abounds in friendliness and approbativeness, and is greatly lacking in firmness and steadiness of will. He is a temporizing man, dreads so heavy an alternative as is now presented." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. i p. 202.] On the 12th of October he returned to the subject of Rosecrans's characteristics, mentioning his refusal to listen to the urgent reasons why he should hold Lookout Mountain to protect his supply line. "Rosecrans," he said, "who is sometimes as obstinate and inaccessible to reason as at others he is irresolute, vacillating, and inconclusive, rejected all their arguments, and the mountain was given up." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. i. p. 215.] Picturing the starvation of the horses and mules and the danger of it for the soldiers, he added: "In the midst of this the commanding general devotes that part of the time which is not employed in pleasant gossip, to the composition of a long report to prove that the government is to blame for his failure. It is my duty to declare that while few persons exhibit more estimable social qualities, I have never seen a public man possessing talent with less administrative power, less clearness and steadiness in difficulty, and greater practical incapacity than General Rosecrans. He has inventive fertility and knowledge, but he has no strength of will and no concentration of purpose. His mind scatters. There is no system in the use of his busy days and restless nights, no courage against individuals in his composition, and with great love of command he is a feeble commander." [Footnote:Ibid.]
It needs no proof that such a report would have great influence at Washington, and if it at all harmonized with the drift of impressions caused by the inaction and the wrangling of the summer, it would be decisive. It was with it in his pocket that Mr. Stanton had cross-questioned Garfield, and drew out answers which, as he said, corroborated it. The same correspondence had set forth the universal faith in Thomas's imperturbable steadiness and courage, and the admiring faith in him which had possessed the whole army. The natural and the almost necessary outcome of it all was that Thomas should be placed in command of the Department and Army of the Cumberland, and Grant in supreme control of the active operations in the whole valley of the Mississippi. As to Rosecrans's removal, Grant did not bring it about, he only acquiesced in it; willingly, no doubt, but without initiative or suggestion on his part. [Footnote: Grant's Personal Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 18.]
It may be well here to say a word upon the subsequent relations of Garfield and Rosecrans. In the next winter a joint resolution was offered in Congress thanking General Thomas and the officers and men under his command for their conduct in the battle of Chickamauga. The established etiquette in such matters is to name the general commanding the army, whose services are recognized, and not his subordinates; these are included in the phrase, "officers and men under his command." To omit Rosecrans's name and to substitute Thomas's was equivalent to a public condemnation of the former. Garfield had been promoted to be major-general for his conduct in the battle, and it was popularly understood that this meant his special act in volunteering to make his way to Thomas after Rosecrans and the staff were swept along the Dry Valley road in the rout. The promotion was recognized as a censure by implication on his chief. As Garfield was now chairman of the committee of the House of Representatives on military affairs, he was placed in a peculiarly embarrassing position. His sincere liking for Rosecrans made him wish to spare him the humiliation involved in the passage of such a resolution, and his generosity was the more stimulated by the knowledge that his own promotion had been used to emphasize the shortcoming of his friend. He could not argue that on the battlefield itself there had been no faults committed; but he was very earnest in insisting that the general strategy of the campaign had been admirable, and the result in securing Chattanooga as a fortified base for future operations had been glorious. He therefore moved to amend the resolution by inserting Rosecrans's name and modifying the rest so as to make it apply to the campaign and its results. He supported this in an eloquent speech which dwelt upon the admirable parts of Rosecrans's generalship and skilfully avoided the question of personal conduct on the field. He carried the House with him, but a joint resolution must pass the Senate also, and it never came to a vote in that body.
When in 1880 Garfield was elected President, and in the midst of a heated campaign had to run the gantlet of personal attacks infinitely worse than the picket fire under which he had galloped across the Kelley farm, a letter was produced which he had written to Mr. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, in June, 1863, when he was urging Rosecrans to terminate the inglorious delays at Murfreesboro by marching on Tullahoma. In his letter to Mr. Chase he had expressed in warmest terms his personal affection for Rosecrans, but had also condemned the summer's delays as unnecessary and contrary to military principles. In the violence of partisan discussion the letter was seized upon as evidence of a breach of faith toward his chief, who was now acting with the political party opposed to Garfield's election. The letter was a personal one, written in private friendship to Mr. Chase, with whom Garfield had kept up an occasional correspondence since the beginning of the war. I had done the like, for Mr. Chase had admitted us both to his intimacy when he was Governor of Ohio. It cannot for a moment be maintained that military subordination is inconsistent with temperate and respectful criticism (for such this was) of a superior, in private communications to a friend. But it was argued that the relation of chief of staff involved another kind of confidence. It unquestionably involved the duty of observing and maintaining perfectly every confidence actually reposed in him. But the public acts of the chief were anything but confidential. They were in the face of all the world, and these only were the subject of his private and friendly criticism. That criticism he had, moreover, expressed to Rosecrans himself as distinctly as he wrote it to Mr. Chase, and had declared it publicly in the written consultation or council of war to which the corps and division commanders were called. [Footnote:Ante, vol. i. p. 483.]
But Garfield was also at that time a member of Congress, having duties to the President, the Cabinet, and his colleagues and fellow members growing out of that relation. Rosecrans not only knew this, but was supposed by many to have invited Garfield to take the staff appointment partly by reason of this. Under all the circumstances, therefore, the ground of complaint becomes shadowy and disappears. Rosecrans, however, was made to think he had suffered a wrong. He forgot the generosity with which Garfield had saved him from humiliation in the session of 1863-64, and said bitter things which put an end to the friendly relations which had till then been maintained.
To return to Chattanooga in October, 1863: one thing remained to be done before a new campaign could begin. A better mode of supplying the army must be found. Thomas had answered Grant's injunction to hold Chattanooga at all hazards by saying, "I will hold the town till we starve." The memorable words have been interpreted as a dauntless assurance of stubborn defence; but they more truly meant that the actual peril was not from the enemy, but from hunger. Rosecrans had begun to feel the necessity of opening a new route to Bridgeport before he was relieved, and on the very day he laid down the command, he had directed Brigadier-General W. F. Smith, sent to him to be chief engineer of his army since the battle, to examine the river banks in the vicinity of Williams Island, six or seven miles below the town by the river, and to report upon the feasibility of laying a pontoon bridge there which could be protected. The expectation had been that Hooker would concentrate his two corps at Bridgeport, make his own crossing of the Tennessee, and push forward to the hills commanding Lookout Valley. By intrenching himself strongly in the vicinity of Wauhatchie, he would confine the Confederates to Lookout Mountain on the west, and cover the roads along the river so as to make them safe for supply trains. The only interruption in the connected communications would then be around the base of Lookout itself, where the road could not be used, of course, so long as Bragg should be able to hold the mountain. If, however, a bridge could be laid somewhere in rear of such a fortified position, the road on the north bank of the river could be used, for this road ran across the neck of Moccasin Point, out of range of a cannonade from the mountain, and after a short haul of a mile or two, the wagon trains could recross the river by the bridge at the town.
Hooker had showed no eagerness to take the laboring oar in this business, and excused his delay in concentrating at Bridgeport by the lack of wagons. General Smith's reconnoissance satisfied him that Brown's Ferry, a little above the island, would admirably serve the purpose. A roadway to the river on each side already existed. On the south side was a gorge and a brook, which sheltered the landing there, and would cover and hide troops moving toward the top of the ridge commanding Lookout Valley. Smith reported his discovery to Thomas and suggested that pontoons be built in Chattanooga, and used to convey a force by night to the ferry, where they might be met by Hooker coming from below. Thomas approved the plan, and as soon as Grant arrived, he inspected the ground in company with Thomas and Smith, and ordered it to be executed. The boats were completed by the end of a week, and on the night of the 26th of October the expedition started under the command of General Smith in person. Brigadier-Generals Hazen and Turchin and Colonel T. R. Stanley of the Eighteenth Ohio [Footnote: Colonel Stanley had been one of my associates in the Ohio Senate in the winter of 1860-61. On the origin and development of the plan and its complete execution, see Reports of General Smith and others, Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. i. pp. 77-137.] were assigned to command the three detachments of troops and boats assigned to the duty, and reported to Smith. Covered by the darkness and in absolute silence, they were to float down the stream which flowed around Moccasin Point in a great curve under the base of Lookout, on which batteries commanded long reaches of the river both above and below. Reaching the ferry on the enemy's side, they would land and carry the picket posts with a rush, Hazen to move to the left and seize the ridge facing the mountain, and Turchin to do the like toward the right, facing down stream. Colonel Stanley's detachment had the charge of the boats, which were fitted with row-locks and oars, and these were to do the ferrying when the proper place was reached. Each boat contained a corporal and four men as a crew, and twenty-five armed soldiers. They were fifty in number, besides two flatboats to be used as a ferry to cross the artillery. The whole force consisted of 5000 men and three batteries of artillery. The boats carried about a third of the whole, and the principal columns marched by the road on the north bank to the places assigned and were concealed in the forest. The plan worked beautifully. Starting at three o'clock in the morning of the 27th, the darkness of the night and a slight fog hid the boats from the Confederate pickets. The oars were only used to keep the boats in proper position in the current, and great care was taken to move silently. Colonel Stanley took the lead with General Hazen in one of the flatboats, having a good guide. The landing on the south bank was found, and the troops landed and drove off the enemy's picket, which was taken completely by surprise. The boats were swiftly pulled to the north bank, where the troops which marched by the road were already in position. The ferrying was hurried with a will, and before the Confederates had time to bring any considerable force to oppose, strong positions were taken covering the ferry, these were covered by an abatis of slashed forest trees and intrenched. The surprise had been complete, and the success had been perfect.
Hooker crossed the river on the bridge at Bridgeport, and on the morning of the 28th marched by way of Running Waters and Whitesides to Wauhatchie. Geary's division reached Wauhatchie about five in the afternoon, and about midnight was fiercely attacked by Jenkins' division of Longstreet's corps. The combat continued for some time, the enemy having some advantage at first as they attacked Geary's left flank in a direction from which he did not expect them. Other troops were urged forward to Geary's assistance, but the enemy retired as they approached the scene of action and only his division was seriously engaged. He reported a list of 216 casualties, whilst the Confederates admitted a loss of about 400. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. i. pp. 119, 233.] Hooker's position was made strongly defensible, so that Bragg did not again venture to disturb it, and the easy lines of supply for Chattanooga were opened. The subsistence problem was solved.