CHAPTER XXVIII
Bragg Dislodged from Chattanooga.—1863
WITHIN a little over a week after I left it, the Army
of the Cumberland had compelled Bragg's forces to
abandon the fortified line described in the preceding chapter,
by the literally “brief and brilliant” so-called Tullahoma
campaign. Had the full execution of Rosecrans's
strategic programme not been prevented by the extra
ordinary inclemency of the unseasonable weather, he would
probably have succeeded in working around the enemy's
right flank and upon his lines of communication, and
inflicting a complete defeat upon him. As it was, he forced
the enemy, with a loss of about two thousand in killed,
wounded, and prisoners, and some guns, out of middle
Tennessee, while his own loss hardly reached five hundred.
Bragg, in his official reports to the rebel authorities,
admitted that our flanking movements compelled him to fall
back first from the Shelbyville-Wartrace line to Tullahoma,
and thence to Elk River, and finally to retreat over the
mountains to Chattanooga. He claimed that he did this
to save his army from “destruction without a battle,” which
latter issue, much desired by himself and his command,
he had offered to the enemy, but failed to bring him to it.
His retreat was fully approved by the commanders under
him, as is shown by a direct communication from
Lieutenant-General Polk to President Davis, but was nevertheless
a great disappointment to the Confederate Government.
It had a right to expect different results from an army
whose condition, according to the reports of an aide-de-camp
of Jefferson Davis who had made a thorough inspec-
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