CHAPTER XXXI
Federal Concentration and Reorganization.—1863
WHEN the Government at Washington became
convinced that part of Lee's army had been detached
to reinforce Bragg, the General-in-chief, Halleck, ordered
General Grant, on September 15, four days before the
battle of Chickamauga, to send all the troops he could spare,
with all possible promptness, to the assistance of General
Rosecrans. The order reached Grant at Vicksburg only on
the 22d, but he at once complied with it, and soon
fleets of steamboats were carrying tens of thousands of
men up the Mississippi, bound for Memphis, whence they
were to move by land. The deep effect of the news of the
reverse at Chickamauga upon the Government is shown by
the fact that, for the first time since the outbreak of the
Rebellion, it was led to subordinate the theretofore always
predominant considerations for the safety of the national
capital to the requirements of a crisis elsewhere upon the
theatre of war, and to overcome its reluctance to weaken
the Army of the Potomac by reinforcing other armies from
it. The decision was reached to send the 11th and 12th
Army Corps, under Generals Howard and Slocum, as
quickly as possible, by rail, to the Tennessee, under the
command of General Hooker. The transfer of the nearly
20,000 men of the two corps, of guns, horses and teams and
their belongings, was effected in a week — a very creditable
achievement for those days. It took place as secretly as
possible, and, in response to an appeal from the War
Department to the Northern press, not a single reference was
made to it in the newspapers.
I was just getting ready to start from Cincinnati for
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