seen and experienced. I remember that I began the despatch by saying, "My report to-day is of deplorable importance. Chickamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run." By eight o'clock that evening, however, I found I had given too dark a view of the disaster.
THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA.
Early the next morning things looked still better. Rosecrans received a telegram from Thomas at Rossville, to which point he had withdrawn after nightfall, saying that his troops were in high spirits and that he had brought off all his wounded. A little while before noon, General James A. Garfield, who was chief of Rosecrans's staff, arrived in Chattanooga and gave us the first connected account we had of the battle on the left after the rout. Thomas, finding himself cut off from Rosecrans and the right, at once marshaled the remaining divisions for independent fighting. Refusing both his right and left, his line assumed the form of a horseshoe, posted along the slope and crest of a partly wooded ridge. He was soon joined by Gordon Granger from Rossville, with Steedman and most of the reserve, and with these forces, more than two-thirds of the army, he firmly maintained the fight till after dark. Our troops were as immovable as the rocks they stood on. Longstreet hurled against them repeatedly the dense columns which had routed Davis and Sheridan in the early afternoon, but every onset was repulsed with dreadful slaughter. Falling first on one and then another point of our lines, for hours the rebels vainly sought to break them. Thomas seemed to have filled every soldier with his own unconquerable firmness; and Granger, his hat torn by bullets, raged like a lion, wherever the combat was hottest, with the electrical courage of a Ney. When night fell this body of heroes stood on the same ground they had occupied at the outset, their spirit unbroken, but their numbers greatly diminished.
PREPARING TO DEFEND CHATTANOOGA.
All the news we could get of the enemy's movements on the 21st seemed to show that the Confederates were concentrating on Chattanooga. Accordingly Rosecrans gave orders for all our troops to gather in the town at once and prepare for the attack which would probably take place within a day or two. By midnight the army was in Chattanooga. The troops were in wonderful spirits, considering their excessive fatigues and heavy losses, and the next morning went to work with energy on the fortifications. All the morning of the 22d the enemy were approaching, resisted by our advance parties, and by the middle of the afternoon the artillery firing was so near that it seemed certain that the battle would be fought before dark. No attack was made that day, however, nor the next, and by the morning of the 24th the herculean labors of the army had so fortified the place that it was certain that it could only be taken by a regular siege or a turning movement. The strength of our forces was about 45,000 effective men, and we had ten days' full rations on hand. Chattanooga could hold out, but it was apparent that no offensive operations were possible until reinforcements came. These we knew had been hurried towards us as soon as the news of the disaster of the 20th reached Washington. Burnside was coming from Knoxville, we supposed; Hooker had been ordered from Washington by rail, Sherman from Vicksburg, and some of Hurlbut's troops from Memphis.
EFFECT ON THE ARMY OF THE DISASTER OF SEPTEMBER 20TH.
As soon as we felt reasonably sure that Chattanooga could hold out until reinforcements came, the disaster of the 20th of September became the absorbing topic of conversation in the Army of the Cumberland. At headquarters, in camp, in the street, on the fortifications, officers and soldiers and citizens wrangled over the reasons for the loss of the day. By the end of the first week after the disaster a serious fermentation reigned in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Army Corps, growing out of events connected with the battle.
There was at once a manifest disposition to hold McCook and Crittenden, the commanders of the two corps, responsible because they had left the field of battle amid the rout of the right wing and made their way to Chattanooga.[1] It was not
- ↑ The feeling of the army towards McCook and Crittenden was afterwards greatly modified. A court of inquiry examined their cases, and in February, 1864, gave its final finding and opinion. McCook it relieved entirely from responsibility for the reverse of September 20th, declaring that the small force at his disposal was inadequate to defend, against greatly superior numbers, the long line he had taken under instructions, and adding that, after the line was broken, he had done everything he could to rally and hold his troops, giving the necessary orders to his subordinates. General Crittenden's conduct, the court likewise declared, showed no cause for censure, and he was in no way responsible for the disaster to the right wing.
