GARFIELD AT THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.
Then began that world-famous ride. No one knew the situation of the troops, the cause of the disaster, and the way to retrieve it like the chief of staff. To convey that priceless information to Thomas, Garfield determined to do or to die. He was accompanied by Captain Gano, who had come from General Thomas before the disaster, and knew how to reach him; besides these two, each officer had an orderly. On they galloped up the Dry Valley road, parallel with, but two miles back of, the morning’s line of battle. After reaching a point opposite the left wing, they expected to cross to General Thomas. But Longstreet’s column, after passing the Union center, had turned to its right at Widow Glenn’s, to march to the rear of General Thomas, and thus destroy that part of the army which still stood fighting the foe in its face. The course of Longstreet was thus parallel with the road along which Garfield galloped. At every effort to cross to the front he found the enemy between him and General Thomas.
It was a race between the rebel column and the noble steed on which Garfield rode. Up and down along the stony valley road, sparks flying from the horse’s heels, two of the party hatless, and all breathless, without delay or doubt on dashed the heroes. Still the enemy was between them and Thomas. They were compelled to go almost to Rossville. At last General Garfield said: “We must try to cross now or never. In a half hour it will be too late for us to do any good.” Turning sharply to their right, they found themselves in a dark-tangled forest. They were scratched and bleeding from the brier thickets and the overhanging branches. But not a rider checked his horse. General Garfield’s horse seemed to catch the spirit of the race. Over ravines and fences, through an almost impenetrable undergrowth, sometimes through a marsh, and then over broken rocks, the smoking steed plunged without a quiver.
Suddenly they came upon a cabin, a Confederate pest-house. A crowd of unfortunates, in various stages of the small-pox, were sitting and lying about the lonely and avoided place. The other riders spurred on their way, but General Garfield reined in sharply, and, calling in a kind tone to the strongest of the wrecks, asked, “Can I do any thing for you, my poor fellow?” In an instant the man gasped out, “Do not come near. It is small-pox. But for God’s sake give us money to buy food.” Quick as thought the great-hearted chief of staff drew out his purse and tossed it to the man, and with a rapid but cheerful “good-bye” spurred after his companions. Crashing, tearing, plunging, rearing through the forest dashed the steed. Poet’s song could not be long to celebrate that daring deed.
Twice they stopped. They were on dangerous ground. At any moment they might come upon the enemy. They were right on the ground for which Longstreet’s column was headed. Which would get there first? A third time they stopped. The roar of battle was very near. They were in the greatest peril. Utterly ignorant of the course of events, since he had been driven from Widow Glenn’s, General Garfield did not know but what the rebel column had passed completely to Thomas’s rear and lay directly in front of them. They changed their course slightly to the left. Of his own danger Garfield never thought. The great fear in his mind was that he would fail to reach Thomas, with the order to take command of all the forces, and with the previous information of the necessity of a change of front. At last they reached a cotton field. If the enemy was near, it was almost certain death. Suddenly a rifle-ball whizzed past Garfield’s face. Turning in his saddle he saw the fence on the right glittering with murderous rifles. A second later a shower of balls rattled around the little party. Garfield shouted, “Scatter, gentlemen, scatter,” and wheeled abruptly to the left. Along that side of the field was a ridge. If it could be reached, they were safe. The two orderlies never reached it. Captain Gano’s horse was shot through the lungs, and his own leg broken by the fall. Garfield was now the single target for the enemy. His own horse received two balls, but the noble animal kept straight on at its terrific speed. General Garfield speaking of it afterwards said that his thought was divided between poor Thomas and his young wife and child in the little home at Hiram. With a few more leaps he gained the ridge, unhurt. Captain Gano painfully crawling on the ground finally gained the ridge himself.
General Thomas was still a mile away. In ten minutes Garfield was at his side, hurriedly explaining the catastrophe at noon. They stood on a knoll overlooking the field of battle. The horse which had borne Garfield on his memorable ride, dropped dead at his feet while the chief of staff told Thomas the situation. There was no time to be lost. Hurrying down to his right, General Thomas found that a considerable portion of the center had swung around like a door to oppose Longstreet’s advance. For an hour or more his columns had flung themselves with desperate fury on this line so unexpectedly opposed to them. Hour after hour these lines had held him at bay. The slaughter was terrible. But this could not last. There was no uniform plan in this accidental battle front. There were great chasms in it. The Confederate forces were diverging to their left toward the Dry Valley road, and would soon flank this line. But Thomas was a great commander. Without a moment’s delay his line of battle was withdrawn to a ridge in the form of a horse-shoe. The main front was now at right angles with that of the morning; that is, it lay across the Rossville road instead of parallel with it. Thomas’s troops were now arranged in a three-quarter circle. They scarcely numbered twenty-five thousand. Around this circle, as around a little island, like an ocean of fire, raged a Confederate army of sixty thousand troops. Overwhelmed by numbers, General Thomas still held the horse-shoe ridge, through which lay the Rossville road. The storm of battle raged with fearful power. The line of heroes seemed again and again about to be swallowed up in the encircling fire. Again and again Longstreet’s troops charged with unexampled impetuosity, and as many times were beaten back bruised and bleeding. The crisis of the battle at half past four in the afternoon, when Longstreet hurled forward his magnificent reserve corps, is said to have rivaled, in tragic importance and far-reaching consequences, the supreme moment in the battle of Gettysburg, when Pickett’s ten thousand Virginians, in solid column, charged upon Cemetery Ridge.
But all the valor and all the fury was in vain. “George A. Thomas,” in the words of Garfield, “was indeed the ‘rock of Chickamauga,’ against which the wild waves of battle dashed in vain.”
General Garfield, from the moment of his arrival, had plunged into the thickest of the fray. When at last the thinned and shattered lines of gray withdrew, leaving thousands of their dead upon the bloody field, smoked and powder-grimed, he was personally managing a battery of which the chief gunners had been killed at their post. Towards the close of the fight Thomas’s ammunition ran very low. His ammunition trains had become involved with the rout of the right, and were miles in the rear at Rossville. This want of ammunition created more fear than the assaults of the enemy. The last charge was repelled at portions of the line with the bayonet alone.
But the hard-earned victory was won. The Rossville road was still held. The masterly skill and coolness of Thomas, when General Garfield reached him with information as to the rest of the army, which, it must be remembered, was never visible through the dense forests and jagged ridges of the valley, had saved the Army of the Cumberland from destruction. After night the exhausted men withdrew to Rossville and subsequently to Chattanooga.