While some of us were yet sipping our hot coffee, saved out of the general wreck in packing up, the bugles called "the assembly," and in ten minutes the brigade was stretching out at a lively rate on the road the aide had taken. At the river was the detail of mechanics who had been at work on the scow in the bayou. Their task had been suddenly abandoned. It was useless: the enemy had left the opposite bank and fallen back from Chattanooga. The crossing was made, and the brigade struck out into the country toward Ringgold and the Georgia line. We belonged to Palmer's division of Crittenden's corps, but we had no idea where our comrades were. Passing over the uninviting country, and by the cornfields wasted by Bragg's men that we might not gather the grain, the brigade fell in with the rest of its division near a lonely grist-mill at a junction of cross-roads, where a battalion of Southern cavalry had just galloped in upon an infantry regiment lying under its stacked arms by the wayside. So the enemy was not entirely out of the country, it appeared. Still, we saw nothing of him, save in a trifling skirmish the next day on the road from Ringgold to Gordon's Mills. Near this place, however, we fell in with General Thomas J. Wood, who had had a little encounter which convinced him that Bragg's infantry was in force near by. The gallant old soldier was in something of a passion because the theories of his superiors did not coincide with his demonstrations, and of course the demonstrations had to give way in that case.
Passing Gordon's Mills, our division stretched away on the road toward La Fayette, and after a day's march bivouacked in a wilderness of wood and on a sluggish stream different enough from the sparkling waters which came down by the old camp below Waldron's Ridge. McCook's corps, they said, having crossed the Tennessee below Chattanooga and advanced southward on the western side of the Lookout range, was to come through a gap opposite our present position and join us. Then the army, being together once more, and having gained Chattanooga by McCook's flank movement, would return to that point. To get Chattanooga was the object of the campaign, and the movements since we crossed the river were simply to assure the safe reunion of the several corps.
The idle days wore on until the afternoon of the 18th of September. Then "the general" was suddenly sounded from brigade head-quarters, the regimental buglers took up the signal, and in twenty minutes we were on the road and moving back toward Gordon's Mills and Chattanooga. No leisurely march this time, however, but a race which tasked even the legs of the veterans. Two hours of this brought the command to the crest of a ridge from which, away to the right, a wide expanse of country lay in view. There was a broad valley running parallel to the road we were traveling and covered by a dense growth of low oaks, which effectually hid roads, streams, and even the few lonely habitations of the people. But, looking from our eminence over the unbroken expanse of tree-tops, we could see a light yellow snake-like line stretching down the valley. It was dust from the road on which Bragg's army was hurrying toward the Rossville Pass, through which was the way to Chattanooga and all our communications and supplies. The line of dust extended miles down the valley, far in advance of the point we had reached. The rest of our army might be ahead of us and ahead of Bragg, or it might be on our left, or even behind us, for aught we knew, but it was plain enough why we were making such haste back toward Chattanooga.
The afternoon passed: darkness came, and still the march continued. Late in the evening we came upon a group of tents by the roadside—Rosecrans's head-quarters, with Rosecrans himself, and not in the best of humors, as some of us discovered on riding up to see friends on his staff. In his petulance and excitability the commanding general forgot to be gentlemanly, some of them said; and they left him not at all relieved of any doubts they had concerning our sudden and forced march.
It was long after midnight when we reached Gordon's Mills. Here the road was full of ambulances, wagons, artillery and infantry, while in the thickets on the left were heard the confused noises of the bivouac. There were no fires, which showed that we were supposed to be in the immediate presence of the enemy, and that our commander did not want his position revealed by camp-fires. At some distance past the mills Palmer's division was halted in the road, and the troops were massed by regiments, and moved some yards into the thicket to pass the few hours before daylight.
In the morning it was said that Bragg had indeed beaten in the race the day before, and had halted at night, if he halted at all, much nearer to the Rossville Pass than we were. The Chickamauga River was supposed to be between the two armies, but it is a stream which is easily fordable in many places, and a mile or two below where we lay was a bridge over which Bragg could cross rapidly with his artillery and trains, and then strike our road to Rossville ahead of us. A division moved out early in the day and went off toward this bridge. Soon after there was lively musketry and some cannonading in that direction. Word came back that the enemy had crossed the river in force too heavy to be successfully encountered by our reconnoitering division. Another division followed in the path of the first, and there was more firing. Finally, General Palmer moved his division out upon the road, and along it for some distance toward Rossville, approaching the firing down by the bridge. Halting near the Widow Glenn's cottage, about which were a little cloud of cavalry and many officers, we saw that Rosecrans was there, directing the movements in person. Palmer got his orders quickly. He was to move down the road toward Rossville to an indicated point, then form his division en échelon by brigade from the left, and move off the road to the right and attack. When he struck the enemy's left flank he was to envelop and crush it. The formation en échelon was to facilitate this enveloping and crushing.
Moving off the road as ordered, the division passed through several hundred yards of forest, and came upon a wide open field of lower ground, through the centre of which ran, parallel to our front, a narrow belt of timber. The skirmishers passed through this belt and a few yards beyond, and were then driven back by an overpowering fire from the enemy's skirmishers. Our main line came up to the timber and passed through it to the farther side; and then the edge of the forest beyond, in front, on the right and on the left, was suddenly fringed with a line of flashing fire, above which rose a thin white smoke. The tremendous crash of musketry was measured by the deep thunder of artillery farther back, and soon columns of dense white smoke rising above the tree-tops indicated the positions of several swift-working batteries. A storm of bullets whizzed through the ranks of the attacking échelons, while shrieking shells filled the air with a horrid din, and, bursting overhead, sent their ragged fragments hurtling down in every direction. In an instant a hundred gaps were opened in the firm ranks as the men sank to the ground beneath the smiting lead and iron. In an instant the gaps were closed, and in another a hundred more were opened. Every yard of the advance was costing the assailants a full company of men—every rod at least half a regiment. They wavered, halted and fell back to the shelter of the narrow belt of timber. The attack had failed, the flank of the enemy had not been struck.
But the other divisions of the army? Sent in as ours had been, some one of them must surely strike the opposing flank, unless Bragg's whole army had crossed the river and was in position before Rosecrans moved. Palmer's division held its place, fired its sixty rounds of cartridges into the wood where the unseen foe was, and waited for the attack of the succeeding division which should strike Bragg's flank. But we waited in vain. When Rosecrans's last division was forming its échelons it was itself enveloped on its outer flank by the active foe. Rosecrans's line, as he formed it a division at a time, had been constantly outflanked.
The battle was a failure thus far. We could all see that, and some of us saw how nearly it became an irretrievable disaster. Hazen's brigade had been withdrawn to replenish its ammunition after the attack, and was lying along the Rossville road. The men were filling their cartridge-boxes, and the captains were counting their diminished ranks and noting who were dead and who but wounded. Out at the front the fight still went on, but in a desultory way. Suddenly there was an ominous sound in front of Van Cleve's division, which was in the main line next on the right of Palmer.
Hazen leaped upon his horse. "Now Van Cleve is in for it!" he exclaimed. "They're coming for him!"