Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

COLONEL GREEN B. RAUM.	BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN B. TURCHIN.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL CHARLES R. WOODS.

By this brilliant battle, which occupied portions of three days, Bragg's army was completely defeated, and its captured guns were turned upon it as it fled. His men seemed to have lost all respect for him, for when he rode among the fugitives and vainly tried to rally them by shouting, "Here's your commander," he was derisively answered, "Here's your mule," and was obliged to join in the flight. This practically closed his military career. He had been a special favorite of Mr. Davis, who is accused by some Confederate writers of obstinately placing him where it was obvious he should have placed an abler man. He was relieved soon after this battle from command, and called to Richmond as the military adviser of Mr. Davis.

In these battles the National loss was nearly six thousand men. The Confederate loss was about ten thousand (of whom six thousand were prisoners) and forty-two guns. Bragg established the remainder of his army in a fortified camp at Dalton, Ga., and was soon superseded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Granger and Sherman were sent to the relief of Burnside at Knoxville, and Longstreet withdrew to Virginia.

The Chattanooga campaign was perhaps the most picturesque of any in the war, and was full of romantic incidents.

A DEAD CONFEDERATE IN THE TRENCHES.

WAITING FOR ORDERS.

All the armies were followed by correspondents of the great newspapers, some of whom were men of high literary ability and were alive to the inspiration of the great drama they witnessed. Americans may be pardoned for some considerable degree of pride when they consider that in the emergency of that great war they not only had men of sufficient skill and valor for every possible and some seemingly impossible tasks, but also had the resources and the art to manufacture nearly all the arms and material that were called for, and writers capable of putting into dignified and often brilliant literature the rapidly moving story of those terrible days. Among these correspondents was Benjamin F. Taylor, the journalist and poet, who followed the Army of the Cumberland as the representative of the Chicago Journal. He witnessed the battles before Chattanooga, and had a son among the blue-coated boys that scaled the mountain. From his description, written very soon after the events, we take the following passages:

"Let me show you a landscape that shall not fade out from 'the lidless eye of time' long after we are all dead. A half mile from the eastern border of Chattanooga is a long swell of land, sparsely sprinkled with houses, flecked thickly with tents, and checkered with two or three graveyards. On its summit stand the red earthworks of Fort Wood, with its great guns frowning from the angles. Mounting the parapet and facing eastward you have a singular panorama. Away to your left is a shining elbow of the Tennessee, a lowland of woods, a long-drawn valley, glimpses of houses. At your right you have wooded undulations with clear intervals extending down and around to the valley at the eastern base of Lookout. From the fort the smooth ground descends rapidly to a little plain, a sort of trough in the sea, then a fringe of oak woods, then an acclivity, sinking down to a second fringe of woods, until full in front of you, and three-fourths of a mile distant, rises Orchard Knob, a conical mound, perhaps a hundred feet high, once wooded, but now bald. Then ledges of rocks, and narrow breadths of timber, and rolling sweeps of open ground for two miles more, until the whole rough and stormy landscape seems to dash against Missionary Ridge, three miles distant, that lifts like a sea-wall eight hundred feet high, wooded, rocky, precipitous, wrinkled with ravines. This is, in truth, the grand feature of the scene, for it extends north as far as you can see, with fields here and there cut down through the woods to the ground, and lying on the hillsides like brown linen to bleach; and you feel, as you look at them, as if they are in danger of slipping down the Ridge into the road at its base. And then it curves to the southwest, just leaving you a way out between it and Lookout Mountain. Altogether the rough, furrowed landscape looks as if the Titans had ploughed and forgotten to harrow it. The thinly fringed summit of the Ridge varies in width from twenty to fifty feet, and houses looking like cigar-boxes are dotted along it. On the top of that wall are rebels and batteries; below the first pitch, three hundred feet down, are more rebels and batteries; and still below are their camps and rifle-pits, sweeping five miles. At your right, and in the rear, is Fort Negley, the old 'Star' fort of Confederate régime; its next neighbor is Fort King, under the frown of Lookout; yet to the right is the battery of Moccasin Point. Finish out the picture on either hand with Federal earthworks and saucy angles, fancy the embankment of the Charleston and Memphis Railroad drawn diagonally, like an awkward score, across the plain far at your feet, and I think you have the tremendous theatre.... At half-past twelve the order came; at one, two divisions of the Fourth Corps made ready to move; at ten minutes before two, twenty-five thousand Federal troops were in line of battle. The line of skirmishers moved lightly out, and swept true as a sword-blade into the edge of the field. You should have seen that splendid line, two miles long, as straight and unwavering as a ray of light. On they went, driving in the pickets before them. Shots of musketry, like the first great drops of summer rain upon a roof, pattered along the line. One fell here, another there, but still, like joyous heralds before a royal progress, the skirmishers passed on. From wood and rifle-pit, from rocky ledge and mountain-top, sixty-five thousand rebels watched these couriers bearing the gift of battle in their hands. The bugle sounded from Fort Wood, and the divisions of Wood and Sheridan began to move; the latter, out from the right, threatened a heavy attack; the former, forth from the left, dashed on into the rough road of the battle. Black rifle-pits were tipped with fire; sheets of flame flashed out of the woods; the spatter of musketry deepened into volleys and rolled like muffled drums; hostile batteries opened from the ledges; the 'Rodmans' joined in from Fort Wood; bursting shell and gusts of shrapnel filled the air; the echoes roused up and growled back from the mountains; the rattle was a roar—and yet those gallant fellows moved steadily on. Down the slope, through the wood, up the hills, straight for Orchard Knob as the crow flies, moved that glorious wall of blue. The air grew dense and blue, the gray clouds of smoke surged up the sides of the valley. It was a terrible journey they were making, these men of ours; and three-fourths of a mile in sixty minutes was splendid progress. They neared the Knob; the enemy's fire converged; the arc of batteries poured in upon them lines of fire, like the rays they call a 'glory' about the head of the Madonna and Child;—but they went up the rugged altar of Orchard Knob at the double-quick with a cheer; they wrapped like a cloak round an Alabama regiment that defended it, and swept them down on our side of the mound. Prisoners had begun to come in before; they streamed across the field like files of geese. Then on for a second altar, Brush Knob, nearly a half-mile to the northeast, and bristling with a battery; it was swept of foes and garnished with Federal blue in thirty minutes. Perhaps it was eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning when the rumble of artillery came in gusts from the valley to the west of Lookout. Climbing Signal Hill, I could see volumes of smoke rolling to and fro, like clouds from a boiling caldron. The mad surges of tumult lashed the hills till they cried aloud, and roared through the gorges till you might have fancied all the thunders of a long summer tumbled into that valley together. And yet the battle was unseen. It was like hearing voices from the under-world. Meanwhile it began to rain; skirts of mist trailed over the woods and swept down the ravines. But our men trusted in Providence, kept their powder dry, and played on. It was the second day of the drama; it was the second act I was hearing; it was the touch on the enemy's left. The assault upon Lookout had begun! Glancing at the mighty crest crowned with a precipice, and now hung round about, three hundred feet down, with a curtain of clouds, my heart misgave me. It could never be taken. Hooker thundered, and the enemy came down like the Assyrian; while Whittaker on the right, and Colonel Ireland of Geary's command on the left, having moved out from Wauhatchie, some five miles from the mountain, at five in the morning, pushed up to Chattanooga Creek, threw over it a bridge, made for Lookout Point, and there formed the right under the shelf of the mountain, the left resting on the creek. And then the play began; the enemy's camps were seized, his pickets surprised and captured, the strong works on the Point taken, and the Federal front moved on. Charging upon him, they leaped over his works as the wicked twin Roman leaped over his brother's mud wall, the Fortieth Ohio capturing his artillery and taking a Mississippi regiment, and gained the white house. And there they stood, 'twixt heaven and—Chattanooga. But above them, grand and sullen, lifted the precipice; and they were men, and not eagles. The way was strewn with natural fortifications, and from behind rocks and trees they delivered their fire, contesting inch by inch the upward way. The sound of the battle rose and fell; now fiercely renewed, and now dying away. And Hooker thundered on in the valley, and the echoes of his howitzers bounded about the mountains like volleys of musketry. That curtain of cloud was hung around the mountain by the God of battles—even our God. It was the veil of the temple that could not be rent. A captured colonel declared that, had the day been clear, their sharp-shooters would have riddled our advance like pigeons, and left the command without a leader; but friend and foe were wrapped in a seamless mantle, and two hundred will cover the entire Federal loss, while our brave mountaineers strewed Lookout with four hundred dead, and captured a thousand prisoners. Our entire forces bore themselves bravely; not a straggler in the command, they all came splendidly up to the work, and the whole affair was graced with signal instances of personal valor. Lieutenant Smith, of the Fortieth Ohio, leaped over the works, discharged his revolver six times like the ticking of a clock, seized a sturdy foe by the hair, and gave him the heel of the 'Colt' over the head. Colonel Ireland was slightly wounded, and Major Acton, of the Fortieth Ohio, was shot through the heart while leading a bayonet charge. And now, returning to my point of observation, I was waiting in painful suspense to see what should come out of the roaring caldron in the valley, now and then, I confess, casting an eye up to the big gun of Lookout, lest it might toss something my way, over its left shoulder—I, a non-combatant, and bearing no arms but a Faber's pencil 'Number 2'—when something was born out of the mist (I cannot better convey the idea) and appeared on the shorn side of the mountain, below and to the west of the white house. It was the head of the Federal column! And there it held, as if it were riveted to the rock, and the line of blue, a half mile long, swung slowly around from the left, like the index of a mighty dial, and swept up the brown face of the mountain. The bugles of this city of camps were sounding high noon, when in two parallel columns the troops moved up the mountain, in the rear of the enemy's rifle-pits, which they swept at every fire. Ah, I wish you had been here! It needed no glass to see it; it was only just beyond your hand. And there, in the centre of the columns, fluttered the blessed flag. 'My God! what flag is that?' men cried. And up steadily it moved. I could think of nothing but a gallant ship-of-the-line grandly lifting upon the great billows and riding out the storm. It was a scene never to fade out. Pride and pain struggled in my heart for the mastery, but faith carried the day; I believed in the flag, and took courage. Volleys of musketry and crashes of cannon, and then those lulls in a battle even more terrible than the tempest. At four o'clock an aid came straight down the mountain into the city—the first Federal by that route in many a day. Their ammunition ran low—they wanted powder up on the mountain. He had been two hours descending, and how much longer the return!