Page:Nye's History of the USA.djvu/282

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278
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

being weakened in order to help the Confederate flanks. So with Thomas he crossed through the first line and over the rifle-pits, forgot that he had intended to halt and reform, and concluded to wait and reform after the war was over, when he should have more time, and that night along the entire line of heights the camp-fires of the Union army winked at one another in ghoulish glee.

The army under Bragg was routed, and Bragg resigned his command.

Burnside, who had been relieved of the command of the Army of the Potomac, was sent to East Tennessee, where the brave but frost-bitten troops of Longstreet shut him up at Knoxville and compelled him to board at the railroad eating-house there.

Sherman's worn and weary boys were now ordered at once to the relief of Burnside, and Longstreet, getting word of it, made a furious assault on the former, who repulsed him with loss, and he went away from there as Sherman approached from the west.

Hooker had succeeded Burnside in the command of the Army of the Potomac, and he judged that, as Lee was now left with but sixty thousand men, while the Army of the Potomac contained one hundred thousand who craved out-of-door exercise, he might do well to go and get Lee, returning in the cool of the evening. Lee, how-