Rosecrans, raging like a wounded lion, talked of attacking again, but the rains had been so heavy, the roads were so soft and deep in mud that the cannon and the wagons could not be pushed forward.
Bragg retreated four days later from Murfreesborough, and Dick and his comrades therefore claimed a victory, but as the winter was now shutting down cold and hard, Rosecrans remained on the line of Murfreesborough and Nashville.
The Winchester regiment was sent back to Nashville to recuperate and seek recruits for its ranks. Dick and Warner and Pennington felt that their army had done well in the west, but their hopes for the Union were clouded by the news from the east. Lee and Jackson had triumphed again. Burnside, in midwinter, had hurled the gallant Army of the Potomac in vain against the heights of Fredericksburg, and twelve thousand men had fallen for nothing.
“We need a man, a man in the east, even more than in the west,” said Warner.
“He'll come. I'm sure he'll come,” said Dick.
Appendix: Transcription notes:
This ebook was transcribed from a volume of the 16th printing
Despite the fact that this is a fictional work, I myself find it inappropriate that our fictional hero, Dick Mason, is credited with discovering the “lost” copy of Lee's General Order No. 191. In fact, Sergeant Bloss and Corporal Mitchell, of the 27th Indiana Infantry, found the envelope containing the order, along with the three cigars, in a field of clover on the morning of 09/13/1862.
The following modifications were applied while transcribing the printed book to ebook: