Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/144

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CHAPTER XXX


The Battle of the Second Day.—1863


BOTH armies bivouacked, or rather lay on their arms, during the night. Excepting the pickets and their supports and the working parties, the rank and file enjoyed some hours of rest. But the commanding officers on either side were not allowed that boon. Rosecrans summoned his corps commanders to his headquarters at the Glenn House between nine and ten o'clock, where they remained till midnight to report the location and condition of their troops and to receive their instructions for the next day. Most of the remainder of the night the tired Union generals devoted to conforming their lines to their orders.

The position in which our army awaited the next attempts of the enemy was as follows: Thomas formed the left on substantially the line he held at nightfall, which was almost at a right angle to that from which he had opened the action in the morning, and extended from the road to Reed's Bridge to the direct road from Lee and Gordon's Mills to Rossville and thence to the so-called Dry Valley road, leading through Missionary Ridge from Crawfish Springs to Rossville. McCook formed the right — his left, Negley's division, filling the place of Johnson's, still on Thomas's line, connecting with Thomas's right; and his right, Sheridan's division, near the Glenn House in front of the gap through which the Dry Valley road runs. Davis's two brigades were the reserve of the corps. As the divisions of Generals Johnson and Palmer remained under Thomas's orders, McCook and Crittenden had only two divisions each to command on the 20th,

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