Thither had been gathered 35,000 of the Army of the Tennessee, who had "Fort Donelson," "Shiloh," "Corinth," "Chickasaw Bayou," "Big Black," "Jackson," and "Vicksburg" in letters of gold on their tattered regimental banners, and whom Sherman proudly boasted were "the best soldiers on earth." The courtly, idolized McPherson was their leader, with such men as John A. Logan, T. E. G. Ransom, Frank P. Blair and P. J. Osterhaus as lieutenants and subordinates.
There was the Army of the Cumberland, 60,000 strong, from which all dross had been burned by the fierce fires of Shiloh, Perryville, Stone River and Chickamauga; and the campaigns across two States. "The noblest Roman of them all," grand old "Pap" Thomas, was in command, with Howard, Stanley, Newton, Wood, Palmer, Davis, Joe Hooker, Williams and Geary as his principal lieutenants.
And thither came—15,000 strong—all of the Army of the Ohio who could be spared from garrisoning dearly-won Kentucky and East Tennessee. They were men who had become inured to hunting their enemies down in mountain fastnesses, and fighting them wherever they could be found. At their head was Gen. J. M. Schofield, whom the Nation had come to know from his administration of the troublous State of Missouri. Gens. Hovey, Hascall and Cox were division commanders.
With what an air of conscious power; of evident mastery of all that might confront them; of calm, unflinching determination for the conflict, those men moved and acted. They felt themselves part of a mighty machine, that had its work before it, and would move with resistless force to perform the appointed task.
The men fell instinctively into their ranks in the companies. Without an apparent effort the companies became regiments, the regiments quietly, but with swift certainty, swung into their places in the brigade, and the brigades massed up noiselessly into divisions and corps.
And while the 100,000 veterans were drilling, organizing and manuvering the railroad was straining every one of its iron and steel tendons to bring in food and ammunition to supply the mighty host, and provide a store from which it could draw when it went forth upon its great errand. There were 35,000 horses to be fed, in addition to the 100,000 veterans, and so the baled hay made heaps that rivalled in size the foothills of the mountains. The limitless cornfields of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois heaped up their golden harvests in other hillocks. Every mountain pass was filled with interminable droves of slow-footed cattle, bringing forward "army beef on the hoof." Boxes of ammunition and crackers, and barrels of pork covered acres, and the railroad brought them in faster than the hundreds of regimental teams could haul them out.
There is no place in the world where the assembling of such a mighty host could be seen to such an advantage as at Chattanooga. The mountains that tower straight up into the clouds around the undulating plain on which the town stands form a glorious natural amphitheater about an arena for gigantic dramas.
Naturally, the boys were big-eyed all the time with the sights that filled the landscape near and far. Wherever they looked they were astonished, and when in a march they came out on a crest that commanded a wide view, they could not help halting, to drink all its wonders in. Even the experienced Si and Shorty were as full of amazement as they, and watched with fascination the spectacle of mighty preparation and concentrated power.
One day they got a pass and took the boys over to Lookout Mountain, for a comprehensive survey of the whole scene. They trudged over the steep, rough, winding road up the mountainside, and mads their way to Pulpit Rock, on the "nose" of the mountain, which commands a view that is hardly equalled in any country. From it they overlooked, as upon a map, the wide plain around Chattanooga, teeming with soldiers and horses, and piled-up war material, the towering line of Mission Ridge, the fort-crowned hills, the endless square miles of white camps.
"'The King sat on the rocky brow
That looks o'er sea-born Salamis,
And ships by thousands lay below,
And men and Nations, all were his,'