“So am I,” said De Banyan.
“There will be something done in this department very soon,” continued Barkwood. “The heavy storms have rendered the roads almost impassable; and the provisions for the army in Chattanooga have to be conveyed in wagons about fifty miles. The first move will be to open the river and the railroad between this point and Chattanooga.”
The engineer was correct in his supposition, for a few days later General Hazen’s brigade descended the Tennessee in pontoon boats, intended for the erection of a bridge over the river at Brown’s Ferry, running the rebel batteries in the night, and reaching their destination in safety. The Confederate force under General Bragg was posted on the south side of the river, holding the heights known as Raccoon Mountain, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge. Batteries had been planted on these heights, which swept the river and the valleys; and the operation of dislodging the enemy from their strongholds was a difficult and dangerous one.
A pontoon bridge nine hundred feet in length was built on the river at Brown’s Ferry in five hours, a force having been first sent over the river, and a position captured and fortified to protect the operation. The eleventh and twelfth corps then moved out from Bridgeport, and completed the communication between that place and the pontoon bridge, thus effecting a junction with the army in Chattanooga. A steamboat, built by a company of engineers, and another captured from the enemy, conveyed provision, one above and the other below the pontoon bridge, to the beleaguered town. This vital question being settled, the place was fortified so that it could be held by a small force; and the main army then commenced the work of relieving East Tennessee from the presence of the rebels, which was fully accomplished in spite of the active movement of the enemy to prevent it.
Our volume is not a history, and we do not purpose to narrate in detail the movements of the three armies, which had been united under General Grant. The rebels were whipped in every direction, foiled and defeated in all their plans, and the Union army continued on its march to Atlanta. “Fighting Joe” bore an important part in these operations, and was conspicuous at Lookout Mountain, Resaca, and before Atlanta. He was skilful and brave, energetic and devoted in this campaign, as he had been before. He was faithful to his duty, until, on the death of General McPherson, he was compelled to ask to be relieved. With this summary of the events at the seat of war in the South, we return to Captain Somers.
The general’s command, having opened the communication with Chattanooga, marched up Lookout Valley. “Fighting Joe” was there for a purpose. The rugged steeps of the mountain bristled with rebel cannon, and his army was exposed to a sharp fire as it moved on its way. The general was in the midst of it, and assured the troops that the fire could not harm them. His conduct had the most inspiring effect upon the men.
When the head of the column approached the vicinity of the railroad bridge, near Wauhatchie, the rebel infantry opened upon it, being posted in a dense forest, where their number could not be determined. A brigade was thrown out to flank the position, upon which the enemy precipitately fled over the creek, burning the bridge behind them. The column moved on, and halted for the night in the valley.
At midnight General Geary’s division was savagely attacked, and presently the gloom of the valley was lighted up by the flame of battle; cannon and musketry blazed from the summits of the mountain, but the men fought with the most determined zeal. The general was in his saddle, and his staff were hurled away like arrows from a bow, to strengthen the weak parts of the line. A brigade was despatched to the assistance of Geary, who was hard pressed; but the attack was promptly repelled.
Somers was then sent off with an order to the second brigade to storm the heights and carry them; and he was directed to accompany the force and report progress to the general. The hill was very steep and rugged, and in many places the rocks presented the appearance of palisades. It was covered with wood and underbrush, and it would not have been an easy thing to climb it with a guide in broad daylight; but the general had sent these intrepid fellows to scale its jagged steeps in the middle of the night. It was cloudy, and the moon shed an uncertain light on the scene.
To Somers there was a savor of home in the enterprise, for the thirty-third Massachusetts was one of the two regiments which formed the advance in this perilous movement; the other was the seventy-third Ohio, both numbering only four hundred men. On dashed the intrepid soldiers, climbing up the dangerous steeps, as though all of them had been mountaineers—on, till they penetrated the clouds, while the gloom was lighted up by the glare of the sheets of flame from two thousand rebel muskets. There in the clouds, at midnight, was fought and won this remarkable battle. The crests of the hills were carried at the point of the bayonet, and the gallant thirty-third left one third of its number killed and wounded on the ground; but the victory was complete, and Captain Somers hastened to report the result to the general.