During the night of the 19th of September Rosecrans withdrew McCook's corps on his right, and formed a new line on the low hills southwest of Widow Glenn's, Wilder withdrawing his brigade and forming a new line south of McCook's corps; but my regiment mounted before daylight covered the entire front of Wilder's Brigade, ordered to fall back to the new line when pressed by the enemy.
Daylight came; with it white flags in our front where the Confederates were burying their dead. An hour after daylight I discovered a heavy column of the enemy, in column of companies doubled on the center, slowly and silently creeping past my left flank toward the left flank of McCook's corps. I repeatedly sent him information of the approach of that heavy column of the enemy, but he testily declared that there was no truth in it, and refused to send a skirmish line of his own, that he might easily have done, and found out for himself. When Longstreet's corps sprang with a yell upon the left flank of McCook's corps, the line in my front advanced, and I retired to join Wilder as ordered. McCook's corps was wiped off the field without any attempt at real resistance, and floated off from the battlefield like flecks of foam upon a river. His artillerymen cut the traces, and leaving the guns, rode away toward Chattanooga. The rout of McCook's corps was complete. I found Wilder, who proposed to charge through Longstreet's corps with his brigade, and join Thomas on Snodgrass Hill, but Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, rode up and ordered Wilder not to make the charge, declaring the battle was lost, and ordering Wilder to Chattanooga by the Dry Valley road. Lingering long on the field, taking up the Union hospitals at Crawfish Spring, and taking with him the abandoned artillery of McCook's corps, Wilder sullenly retired, followed by a light force of the Confederate cavalry.
The heroic conduct of Thomas on Snodgrass Hill saved the Army of the Cumberland from total rout and defeat, but that gallant soldier with his jaded but brave troops sought safety in flight to Rossville Gap under the cover of the friendly darkness of the night.
The useless battle had been fought, the useless sacrifice of thousands of brave men of the Army of the Cumberland had been made, and the shattered remnant of the Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga, where the entire army might have been and ought to have been on the evening of September 10th, 1863, without the loss of a man or a wheel.
I cannot linger to tell how Hooker and Howard came from the Army of the Potomac to rescue the Army of the Cumberland from its terrible plight: how the Army of the Tennessee hastened under Sherman from Vicksburg, of the battle above the clouds by Hooker's brave soldiers, or how the brave men of the Army of the Cumberland, without orders and against orders, sprung forward, up, and up, and up, for three hundred feet to the very mouths of the Confederate cannon belching grape and canister in their faces, sweeping Bragg and his Confederate Army off from Missionary Ridge. It is a magnificent story that the surviving soldiers of the grand old Army of the Cumberland will not cease telling while life lasts.
The volunteer soldiers were not only brave always, but they were sensible always. They complained very loudly when they had a right to complain, and they submitted to every hardship without complaint when there was necessity for it. Let me illustrate that. After the battle of Chickamauga my regiment was sent north of Chattanooga, on the north side of the river, to guard the river for forty miles. We were without rations for animals or men, living on a few grains of corn gathered from the rubbish left in the fields where all the corn had been taken long before, and unripe chestnuts, that we had to cut down the chestnut trees to gather. But we had a pack mule train, seventy-five mules with pack-saddles, and I sent the train over the mountains to bring rations from Bridgeport for the men of my regiment. One night we heard that the pack mule train loaded with rations was encamped on the mountain above Poe's Tavern, and would be down in the morning about 10 o'clock. That was joyful news for the men of my regiment. But at 8 o'clock the next morning I received a letter from General Garfield, Chief of Staff of the Army of the Cumberland, ordering me not to take one ration from the train, but to send the train on to Chattanooga. I gave the information to the men of my regiment. Did they complain? No. Not one man made one word of complaint. When the train came along about 10 o'clock, without any order of any kind, the men of the Ninety-Second lined up by the side of the road, swinging their hats and cheering when their own rations went by and onward toward Chattanooga, where their brave comrades of the Army of the Cumberland could not get green chestnuts to eat. That was the kind of men that composed the volunteer Army of the Union who saved the Republic.
Some of them are here tonight. They compose your Grand Army post here in Mendota. Honor them while yet you may, for, in only a few years more, the last one of that Grand Army will have gone beyond the dark river.
But the young men of today are as patriotic as the young men of 1861, and if the time ever comes when the Republic is in danger they will spring to arms and repeat the heroic deeds of their fathers, and the Republic will last "until the sun grows cold, and the stars are old, and the leaves of the judgment book unfold."
