CHAPTER XXVII.
THE BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA.
GRANT'S ARRIVAL AT CHATTANOOGA—GENERAL ROSECRANS'S INACTION—OPENING A NEW LINE OF SUPPLY—DESPERATE FIGHTING UNDER GENERAL SHERMAN—PAROLED PRISONERS FORCED INTO THE CONFEDERATE ARMY—FIGHTING AROUND KNOXVILLE—THE BATTLE ABOVE THE CLOUDS—CAPTURE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE—BRAGG'S ARMY COMPLETELY DEFEATED—PICTURESQUE AND ROMANTIC INCIDENTS.
A month after the battle of Chickamauga the National forces in the West were to some extent reorganized. The departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee were united under the title of Military Division of the Mississippi, of which General Grant was made commander, and Thomas superseded Rosecrans in command of the Army of the Cumberland. General Hooker, with two corps, was sent to Tennessee. Grant arrived at Chattanooga on the 23d of October, and found affairs in a deplorable condition. It was impossible to supply the troops properly by the one wagon road, and they had been on short rations for some time, while large numbers of the mules and horses were dead.
From the National lines the tents and batteries of the Confederates on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge were in plain sight; their sentinels walked the rounds in a continuous line not a thousand yards away; and from these heights their guns occasionally sent a shot within the lines. When General Sherman, on his arrival, walked out and surveyed the situation, he turned to Grant and exclaimed in surprise, "Why, General, you are besieged." "Yes," said Grant, "it is too true," and pointed out to him a house on Missionary Ridge which was known to be Bragg's headquarters. General Rosecrans, like a similar commander at the East, was able to give most excellent reasons for his prolonged inaction. And so able a soldier as Gen. David S. Stanley, in an article read by him before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, seems to justify Rosecrans. The unpleasant and unsatisfactory correspondence of this period, between Rosecrans and the War Department, culminated when the former, having reported the success of an expedition against McMinnville, received a despatch from General Halleck, which said: "The Secretary of War says you always report your successes, but never report your reverses." And Rosecrans replied: "If the Secretary of War says I report my successes, but do not report my reverses, the Secretary of War lies."
It may be that the poor condition of the cavalry, and other discouraging circumstances, were really a proper cause for non-action to a general who was more inclined to study the safety of his own army than the destruction of the enemy; but somehow or other, wherever General Grant appeared, reasons for inactivity seemed to melt away, and the spirit of determined aggression to take their place.
| GENERAL SHERMAN'S HEADQUARTERS AT CHATTANOOGA. |
Grant's first care was to open a new and better line of supply. Steamers could come up the river as far as Bridgeport, and he ordered the immediate construction of a road and bridge to reach that point by way of Brown's Ferry, which was done. Within five days the "cracker line," as the soldiers called it, was opened, and thenceforth they had full rations and abundance of everything. The enemy attempted to interrupt the work on the road; but Hooker met them at Wauhatchie, west of Lookout Mountain, and after a three hours' action drove them off.
Chattanooga was now no longer in a state of siege; but it was still seriously menaced by Bragg's army, which held a most singular position. Its flanks were on the northern ends of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, the crests of which were occupied for some distance, and its centre stretched across Chattanooga Valley. This line was twelve miles long, and most of it was well intrenched.
Grant ordered Sherman to join him with one corps, and Sherman promptly obeyed; but, as he did considerable railroad repairing on the way, he did not reach Chattanooga till the 15th of November. Moreover, he had to fight occasionally, and be ready to fight all the time. At Colliersville he was aroused from a nap in the car by a great noise about the train, and was informed that the pickets had been driven in, and there was every reason to suppose that a large cavalry force would soon make an attack. Sherman immediately got his men out of the train and formed them in a line on a knoll near a railroad cut. Presently a Confederate officer appeared with a flag of truce, and Sherman sent out two officers to meet him, secretly instructing them to keep him in conversation as long as possible. When they returned, it was with the message that General Chalmers demanded the surrender of the place. Sherman ordered his officers to return again to the line and talk as long as possible with the Confederate officer, but finally give him a negative answer. In the little time thus gained he got a telegraph message sent to Memphis and Germantown, ordering Corse's division to hurry forward, and at the same time backed the train into the depot, which was a loopholed brick building, and drew his men into some smaller works that surrounded it. In a few minutes the enemy swooped down, cutting the wires and tearing up the rails on both sides, and then attacked Sherman's little band in their intrenchments. Sherman ordered all the houses that were near enough to shelter the enemy's sharp-shooters to be set on fire, and, finding some muskets in the depot, put them into the hands of the clerks and orderlies, making every man available for an active defence. The Confederates had some artillery, with which they knocked his locomotive to pieces, and set fire to the train; but many of Sherman's men were excellent marksmen and trained soldiers, and they not only kept the enemy at bay but managed to put out the fire. This state of things lasted about three hours, when the approach of Corse's division caused the enemy to withdraw. Corse's men had come twenty-six miles on the double quick.