Here they waited under a hot fire. The orders did not come; and then without orders, first one regiment and then another, with their colors raised, pushed up the mountain covered with rocks and fallen timber.
The centre of Sheridan's division reached the crest first, and almost at the same time the ridge was carried in six places. Almost entire regiments were taken from the enemy, and batteries, the Confederates often bayoneted at their guns. In an hour the work had been accomplished, and the storming of Missionary Ridge had passed into history as a memorable instance of bravery. "After it was over," says General Fullerton, "some madly shouted, some wept from very excess of joy, some grotesquely danced out their delight,—even our wounded forgot their pain to join in the general hurrah."
Grant and Thomas were watching the battle through their glasses. Grant asked, "By whose orders are those troops going up the hill?"
"I don't know," said Thomas, "I did not."
"I didn't order them up," said Sheridan, "but we are going to take the ridge."
Grant remarked that "it was all right if it turned out all right, but, if not, some one would suffer."
By the capture of the ridge, Sherman was enabled to take the tunnel as he had been ordered. Captain S. H. M. Byers, who was captured at the tunnel with sixty of his regiment and put in Libby prison for seven months—the sixty were soon reduced to sixteen by death—thus describes the scene. "As the column came out upon the ground, and in sight of the rebel batteries, their renewed and concentrated fire knocked the limbs from the trees above our heads.... In front of us was a rail-fence. 'Jump the fence, boys,' was the order, and never was a fence scaled more quickly. It was nearly half a mile to the rebel position, and we started on the charge, running across the open fields. I had heard the roaring of heavy battle before, but never such shrieking of cannon balls and bursting of shells as met us on that run."
Sherman, in his official report, gave his officers and men due credit for their "patience, cheerfulness, and courage." "For long periods," he said, "without regular rations or supplies of any kind, they have marched through mud and over rocks, sometimes barefooted, without a murmur. Without a moment's rest after a march of over four hundred miles, without sleep for three successive nights, we crossed the Tennessee, fought our part of the battle of Chattanooga, pursued the enemy out of Tennessee, and then turned more than a hundred and twenty miles north, and compelled Longstreet to raise the siege of Knoxville."
Congress soon passed a resolution of thanks to Sherman and his army for their "gallant and arduous services in marching to the relief of the Army of the Cumberland, and for their gallantry and heroism in the battle of Chattanooga, which contributed in a great degree to the success of our arms in that glorious victory."