The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

Just as the hand of the clock reached ten there was a report from a gun. It came from the extreme left, miles away. General Garfield stepped quickly to the door, and listened. There was another gun, and another, and fifty more, swelling to a roar. Turning to Rosecrans, Garfield said: “It has begun.” To which the commander replied: “Then, God help us.” Heavier and heavier became the roar. The engagement on the left was evidently becoming heavier. A quarter of an hour later messengers began to arrive. The enemy was endeavoring to turn the left-flank, but was being repulsed with heavy loss. A few moments later came the word that the enemy had captured ten pieces of artillery. The order had been given for one division of the troops to fall back. It was obeyed. But the artillerymen had been unable to move the guns back in time. The heavy undergrowth in the forest, the fallen and rotting logs, had made it slow work to drag back the ponderous cannon. The red-shirted cannoneers were still bravely working to move their battery to the rear after the line had fallen back from them a long distance. Suddenly, with a fierce yell, the rebel column poured in upon them. Guns and gunners were captured.

At 11:30 came a call from General Thomas for reinforcements. General Garfield swiftly wrote an order for divisions in the center to march to the left and reinforce General Thomas. Another courier was dispatched to the right, ordering troops to take the place of those removed from the center. At half-past twelve these movements were completed. So far, the only attack had been on the left, though the tide of battle was rolling slowly down the line. General Rosecrans and General Garfield held an earnest consultation. It was decided to order an advance on the right center, in order to prevent the enemy from concentrating his whole army against our left wing.

Before long the din of conflict could be heard opposite the cabin. The advance was being fiercely contested. Messengers one after another came asking for reinforcements. General Garfield received their messages, asked each one a question or two, turned for a few moments to his map, and then issued orders for support to the right center. As the battle raged fiercer in front of the cabin, the sounds from the extreme left grew lighter. At two o’clock they ceased altogether. The battery had been recaptured, and the enemy silenced for the time being. Meanwhile, the battle at the center became more terrible. Ambulances hurried along. Poor fellows, pale and bleeding, staggered back to the road. Occasionally a shell dropped near the cabin, exploding with frightful force. The roar was deafening. General Garfield had to shout to General Rosecrans in order to be understood. The domestic animals around the cabin were paralyzed with fright. No thunder-storm, rattling among the mountain peaks, had ever shaken the earth like the terrific roar of the shotted guns. A half mile in front of the cabin, a dense smoke rose over the tops of the trees. All day long it poured upward in black volumes. The air became stifling with a sulphurous smell of gunpowder. The messengers hurrying to and from the cabin had changed in appearance. The bright, clean uniforms of the morning were torn and muddy. Their faces were black with smoke; their eyes bloodshot with fever. Some of them came up with bleeding wounds. When General Garfield called attention to the injury, they would say: “It is only a scratch.” In the excitement of battle men receive death wounds without being conscious that they are struck. Some of the messengers sent out came back no more forever. Their horses would gallop up the road riderless. The riders had found the serenity of death. “They were asleep in the windowless palace of rest.”

It was impossible to predict the issue of the conflict in the center. At one minute, a dispatch was handed Garfield, saying that the line was broken, and the enemy pouring through. Before he had finished the reading, another message said that our troops had rallied, and were driving the enemy. This was repeated several times.

The scene of this conflict was Vineyard’s farm. It was a clearing, surrounded on all sides by the thickest woods. The troops of each army, in the alternations of advance and retreat, found friendly cover in the woods, or fatal exposure in the clearing. It was this configuration of the battle-field which caused the fluctuations of the issue. Time after time a column of blue charged across the clearing, and was driven back to rally in the sheltering forest. Time after time did the line of gray advance from the shade into the sunlight only to retire, leaving half their number stretched lifeless on the field. It was a battle within a battle. The rest of the army could hear the terrific roar, but were ignorant of the whereabouts of the conflict. The farm and the surrounding woods was a distinct battle-field. The struggle upon it, though an important element in a great battle on a vast field, was, during the later hours of its continuance, a separate battle, mapped upon the open field and forest in glaring insulation by the bodies of the slain.

Meanwhile, in hurrying reinforcements to this portion of the line of battle, a chasm was opened between the center and left. Troops were thrown forward to occupy it, but the enemy had discovered the weakness, and hurled forward heavy columns against the devoted Union lines. The struggle here was the counterpart of the one at the Vineyard farm. At the latter place the line was, at one time in the afternoon, driven back to the Lafayette road; but, towards evening, the divisions which had repulsed the attack on General Thomas’s extreme left were shifted down to the scene of these other conflicts, and the enemy was finally driven back with heavy loss.

When this was accomplished, the sun had already sunk behind the western range. Night swiftly drew her mantle over the angry field, and spread above the combatants her canopy of stars. The firing became weaker; only now and then a sullen shot was fired into the night. The first day of Chickamauga was done. In a little while ten thousand camp-fires blazed up in the forest, throwing somber shadows back of every object. At every fire could be seen the frying bacon and the steaming coffee-pot, singing as merrily as if war and battle were a thousand miles away. The men had eaten nothing since five o’clock in the morning. They had the appetites of hungry giants. Many a messmate’s place was empty. Many a corpse lay in the thicket, with a ball through the heart. But in the midst of horror the men were happy. The coffee and bacon and hard-tack tasted to the heroes like a banquet of the gods. With many a song and many a jest they finished the meal, rolled up in their blankets, and, lying down on the ground, with knapsacks for pillows, were fast asleep in the darkness. The red embers of the camp-fires gradually went out. The darkness and the silence were unbroken, save by the gleam of a star through the overarching branches, or the tramp of the watchful sentinels among the rustling leaves.

But at Widow Glenn’s cabin there was no sleep. General Garfield dispatched messengers to the different generals of the army to assemble for a council of war. It was eleven o’clock before all were present. Long and anxious was the session. The chief of staff marked out the situation of each division of the army upon his map. The losses were estimated, and the entire ground gone over. On the whole, the issue of the day had been favorable. The army having been on the defensive, might be considered so far victorious in that it had held its own. The line of battle was now continuous, and much shorter than in the morning. The general movement of troops during the day had been from right to left. The battle front was still parallel with the Chattanooga roads. General Thomas still held his own. The losses had been heavy, but not so severe as the enemy’s. But it was evident that the battle would be renewed on the morrow. The troops, already exhausted by forced marches in the effort to concentrate before attack, had all been engaged during the day. It was tolerably certain, General Garfield thought, from the reports of his scouts, that the enemy would have fresh troops to oppose to the wearied men. This would necessitate all the army being brought into action again on the next day. In case the enemy should succeed in getting the roads to Chattanooga, there was no alternative but the entire destruction of the splendid Army of the Cumberland. Still further concentration of the forces on the left, to reinforce General Thomas, was decided on. Many of the tired troops had to be roused from their sleep for this movement. There was no rest at head-quarters. When morning dawned the light still shone from the cabin window.

On the morning of September 20, 1863, a dense fog rose from the Chickamauga River, and, mixing with the smoke from the battle of the day before, filled the valley. This fact delayed the enemy’s attack. The sun rose, looking through the fog like a vast disk of blood. General Garfield noticed it, and, pointing to the phenomenon, said: “It is ominous. It will indeed be a day of blood.” By nine o’clock the fog lifted sufficiently for the attack. As on the day before, it began on the left, rolling down the line. From early morning General Thomas withstood the furious assaults of the constantly reinforced enemy. The change of the line in the night had been such that it was the right wing instead of the center which was now in front of the Widow Glenn’s. The battle was fierce and more general than the day before. The demands for reinforcements on the left came faster and faster. Division after division was moved to the left. In the midst of a battle these movements are dangerous. A single order, given from head-quarters without a perfect comprehension of the situation of the troops, a single ambiguous phrase, a single erroneous punctuation mark in the hastily-written dispatch, may cost thousands of lives in a few minutes. In a battle like Chickamauga, where the only unity possible is by perfect and swift obedience to the commands from head-quarters, a single misunderstood sentence may change the destiny of empires.

The information received at Widow Glenn’s up to ten o’clock of the 20th showed that the troops, though wearied, were holding their own. Up to this time General Garfield, appreciating each emergency as it occurred, had directed every movement, and written every order during the battle. Not a blunder had occurred. His clear, unmistakable English, had not a doubtful phrase or a misplaced comma. Every officer had understood and executed just what was expected of him. The fury of the storm had so far spent itself in vain.