General Thomas’s dispositions to protect his left showed military genius of the highest order, and General Baird greatly assisted him in this matter. This was only one instance, however, of General Thomas’s many equally meritorious tactics in this great battle. He rose to the highest point in the estimation of both officers and men.
Both days’ fighting illustrates the fact that when troops are outflanked or attacked in the rear, however brave they may be in other positions relative to the enemy, they will as a rule go to pieces. It was repeatedly shown on both sides, especially on the 19th, during the battle, that the veteran troops as well as the new regiments, would become disheartened and confused in such a position; many of the regiments on the left during the second day, who did not flinch when attacked in flank and rear on the day before, then went to pieces.
The protected troops on the Union left fought through the entire day of the 20th, entirely unconscious that they were frequently surrounded not only in front and rear of their own line, but that the two flanks of the army were only about three-fourths of a mile apart, although in the morning they were two and a half miles apart. At noon the Union right was contracted, and thrown back against the left. The order to retreat late in evening of the 20th came as a surprise and shock to these troops, who had been repulsing the enemy all day with comparative ease. Thousands of musket bearers were so stiff and sore from the two days’ conflict and the marches over the mountains during the preceding days, that when a regiment lying down on the evening of the 20th attempted to rise there was a distinct creaking of bones and an accompanying groan, slight, but perceptible. Many of them while moving back to Rossville at night, took the desperate chance of lying down for a nap in the woods by the roadside, intending to rest for an hour or two and then join their regiments again before daylight; but hundreds of these awoke to find it was already daylight and many were captured by the enemy’s cavalry.
The Confederate Army itself did not advance from the battlefield until the 23rd; only a small part leaving on the 22nd. The fact is that the Confederate Army was much more used up than the Union Army; General Bragg said to General Longstreet on the 20th that his troops upon his right were used up.[34] The same Confederate troops which had penetrated the line and driven Davis, Sheridan, and others from the field, were so roughly handled by Brannan and Granger on Snodgrass Hill that they could not be brought forward for another attack. The slowness with which the Confederate Army moved to their positions around Chattanooga proves that they were practically defeated. At the time the orders were sent to the divisions behind the log works on the left to prepare for withdrawal, their commanders sent word back to General Thomas that there was no reason for them to retreat; they had been, and were at that moment repulsing easily every assault. They did not know of the disaster to the right, caused by Wood’s withdrawal, nor did General Baird and his brigade commanders know of the movements of either Union or Confederate forces until after the retreat. Many writers have expressed the opinion that the Union Army should not have retreated. But to a soldier who was present on the field and knew the facts—such as the absence of the commander of the army; his order sent from the far rear to fall back to Rossville; the absence of ammunition and rations; the utterly exhausted condition of the rank and file by the superhuman exertions of the two days’ fighting and the preceding hard marching; the fear that if the Union Army remained, the Confederate Army might yet wedge its way between it and Chattanooga, the Union commander not being aware at that time of the exhausted and discouraged condition of the Confederate Army—it seems that the falling back in the way and at the time it did was the correct thing. At least it seems as if Thomas had really nothing else to do than to fall back when the order from General Rosecrans was received. Had General Thomas been the commander of the army, it might have been different.
The Union cavalry did not properly cooperate with the other arms of the Union forces. Forrest, with his large Confederate cavalry force, was close to the right of the Confederate Army, and did fine service; the force was equal to the infantry in number. Forrest should have been opposed by a division of the Union cavalry. Only one cavalry brigade was needed at Crawfish Springs; the other cavalry brigade together with Wilder’s mounted infantry which closed up on the right of McCook, should have given better service at a time when it was most needed. This was not the fault of the cavalry commander, for he only obeyed orders from his superiors. In a dispatch to General R. B. Mitchell, the commander of the cavalry, at 7:15 p. m. September 20, General Rosecrans said, “Had you been on our right today you could have charged the enemy’s flank, and done much incalculable mischief.” Why was not his cavalry as close to the Union right flank as Forrest’s was to the Confederate right flank? Mitchell’s cavalry was too far away to be effective, when disaster overtook the wing: it was supposed to be protecting, but it was farther away from Snodgrass Hill on the right than were the forces of Gordon Granger, at McAffee’s church on the left.
CHAPTER III
The Occupation and Battles of Chattanooga
When the Army of the Cumberland fell back from Chickamauga and Rossville to Chattanooga, the first and most important thing to do was to quickly fortify against attack. The troops marched directly to the places assigned them, and when all were in place, the lines half encircled the city, both flanks terminating at the river. McCook was on the right, Thomas next, and Crittenden on the left. The troops began at once the work of throwing up the ordinary entrenchments; these were from time to time strengthened until satisfactory. Two forts had been partially completed by the enemy; these were finished and occupied by both artillery and infantry. The army was drawn in close around the city; the point of Lookout Mountain and its slopes beyond Chattanooga Creek were left to the enemy. This gave the Confederate Army command of the river, the rail and wagon roads (parallel with the river), between Chattanooga, Bridgeport, and Stevenson. The only other practicable road to the bases of supplies was over Walden’s Ridge on the north side of the river, a distance of 60 miles by wagon; thus it became very difficult to furnish more than half or three-quarters rations to the men, and only very little forage could be furnished to the animals. The road mentioned was so steep and bad that a team of four or six mules would consume almost the entire load of feed in bringing the load and in returning for another.
General Bragg deemed the occupancy of his main line along Missionary Ridge—across the valley to Lookout Mountain, thence on the south side of the river by small detachments at different points—to Bridgeport sufficient to starve out the army in Chattanooga. Meanwhile he sent Wheeler’s cavalry to the north side, in order to raid the line of supplies. Wheeler burned 300 wagons in the Sequatchie Valley and went on north doing what damage he could. Fearing that Bragg might follow Longstreet’s advice and cross the river east of Chattanooga with a large part of his army, Rosecrans soon completed an inside works of circumvallation by which ten thousand men might be able to hold the city, while he might be obliged to protect his base of supplies by marching the rest of his army to meet such a situation. That Bragg did not undertake an enterprise of this character was further proof of the used-up condition of his army, the result of the late battle of Chickamauga. Bragg’s reasoning regarding his ability to starve the forces in the city was good only on the supposition that the Government at Washington would fail to send sufficient reinforcements to protect the rear, and to raise “The Siege of Chattanooga;” it was not more than a semi-siege, however, and has been so called by some authors. If Bragg’s army had occupied both sides of the river and practically surrounded the city, as the German troops surrounded Paris in the Franco-German War of 1871, then it could have been called a siege. Of course the situation of the Union Army was critical, not only here in the fortified city, but ever since it crossed the Tennessee River during the campaign preceding the battle of Chickamauga. As before mentioned, General Rosecrans estimated on September 23, 1863, that he had about 35,000 troops in the entrenchments; the cavalry and Wilder’s brigade of mounted infantry were then on the north side of the river and guarded the crossings for a considerable distance, both above and below. Union reinforcements had been ordered both from the east and from the west; but Burnside, who commanded in East Tennessee, was asking at the same time for help at Knoxville, instead of being able to send any succor to Rosecrans. Before the battle of Chickamauga reinforcements had been ordered from the Army of the Tennessee—at that time on or near the Mississippi at Memphis—and from Burnside, but none had arrived. After the great battle and the falling back of Rosecrans, the commander did not need to urge the President and Secretary of War to be convinced, that unless they really desired to lose Tennessee and all that had so far been gained in the department of the Cumberland, other troops must be sent with the greatest celerity. Two corps from the Army of the Potomac were ordered to the battlefield; the Eleventh commanded by General O. O. Howard, and the Twelfth under General H. W. Slocum; both under the command of General Joseph Hooker. General W. T. Sherman was also to reinforce the Union Army with the Fifteenth Corps, and one division of the Seventeenth from the Army of the Tennessee. In the meantime every exertion was made by the troops present to hold the city at all hazards. When Wheeler captured and burned the 300 wagons near Anderson’s cross roads, in the Sequatchie Valley, Colonel E. M. McCook with the First Wisconsin Cavalry, the Second and Fourth Indiana cavalry and a section of artillery started from Bridgeport up the Sequatchie Valley. Retarded by an incessant rain, he was in time to see the smoke only of the burning wagons; he made a charge and drove a detachment of the enemy’s troops past the fire upon their main body. He followed this Confederate division—which was commanded vigorously by Martin and Wheeler—out of the valley, captured a number of soldiers and 800 mules and saved some of the wagons. Wheeler reached McMinnville in time to capture the garrison and burn the supplies. He was off toward Murfreesboro before the arrival of Crook and his command, who had taken up the pursuit. The Union cavalry corps, commanded by R. B. Mitchell, with McCook’s division, joined Crook at Murfreesboro and saved that place from capture. They followed Wheeler so persistently and fought him so successfully that they prevented the destruction of the railroad, but were unable to save the telegraph lines. Wheeler crossed back at Rogersville to the south of the Tennessee; Mitchell followed and captured at that point a large amount of Confederate cotton and destroyed it. Mitchell prevented the Confederate advance to Winchester and Decherd after having heard at Huntsville, Alabama, that Roddey’s Confederate cavalry was moving towards these cities, having been forced to recross the river. Bragg’s intention was to destroy Rosecrans’s communications and to force him to abandon Chattanooga. The maintenance of the railroad back to Nashville was of vital importance to the Union Army. Wheeler’s loss on this raid was according to the estimate of General Crook, 2,000 men and 6 pieces of artillery. These fatalities made the Confederate commander more cautious. Crook’s loss was only 14 killed and 97 wounded. Wheeler’s raid and the Union pursuit, are specimens of the kind of warfare which cavalry are expected to make, showing the terrible destruction of men and horses, the untiring marches, and watchfulness necessary in a field so extensive and difficult as that of the department of Cumberland. It would have been much more economical and effective, if the War Department had previously protected the railway with sufficient infantry, as it now intended to do, than to protect it by an ordinary force of cavalry. The Department did adopt the plan of protecting the railway with infantry, when Hooker came with a division; this mode was most effectively used also in 1864.
Although the railroad from Nashville to Stevenson was being maintained and supplies were accumulated at the latter city, yet the necessity of hauling supplies by wagons over such an extended and precipitous road as the one over Walden’s Ridge, and the destruction of so many wagons by Wheeler, told heavily on the devoted troops in the entrenched city. The rains were heavy and continuous during the early part of October, making the roads almost impassable in some places. The trips to Bridgeport seemed gradually to lengthen, the mules became thinner, and so the rations had to be reduced from time to time, until men, horses, and mules were in very sore straits. The artillery horses and all extra horses of mounted officers, that had not already died from starvation, were sent back to Bridgeport or Stevenson to be kept there until the strain could be relieved sometime in the indefinite future. Yet no thought of retreat or surrender entered the minds of the devoted soldiers. The fact that the army in the surrounding hills was in a worse condition—too weak to take any advantage of the situation by aggressive movements, except those abortive cavalry raids in the rear—undoubtedly saved the Union Army from destruction.
In the early part of October, General Hooker arrived at Nashville with the Eleventh and Twelfth corps. They were stationed along the railroad to Bridgeport. The corps had come to Nashville by railroad, but were without transportation, therefore did not supply all the relief needed at Chattanooga. What was absolutely necessary was the restoration of rail transportation from Stevenson to Chattanooga, and not exclusively the protection of the railroad from the north to Bridgeport. Sufficient reinforcements were also needed in order to enable the Union Army to attack and destroy or drive back the enemy, who was in too close proximity for safety; and therefore the first thing to be considered, after the Union troops were properly fortified, was to plan means by which the cooperation of these eastern reinforcements could be made available. In preliminary preparation for this, a steamboat which had been captured at Chattanooga, had been repaired and another was being built at Bridgeport. Rosecrans ordered Hooker to bring to Bridgeport all his command, with the exception of what was needed to protect the railroad from Nashville to the Tennessee River. He started also the construction of pontoons for a bridge, at some point over the river below Chattanooga, where his troops might have to cross in order to meet Hooker’s forces coming from Bridgeport, and also in order to shorten the road down the river. General W. F. Smith (“Baldy Smith”) had lately been appointed chief engineer of the Army of the Cumberland. General Rosecrans ordered him to reconnoiter the river near Williams’s Island, a few miles below the points of Lookout Mountain, expecting to make of that island a steamer landing and supply depot. This last order was issued October 19, and on that same day General Rosecrans was relieved from the command of the Army; and General George H. Thomas assumed command.