Rose

Union commander in each department.

crans deliberated over the communication and

asked a bystander his opinion. "It would end the rebellion. Co-operating with our forces, it would certainly succeed; but the South would run with blood."

"Innocent blood? Women and children ?"

"Yes; women and children. If you let the blacks loose, they will rush into carnage like horses into a burning barn. St. Domingo will be multiplied by a million."

"But the letter says that no blood is to be shed except in self-defense."

"It says so, and the leaders may mean so, but they cannot restrain the rabble. Every slave has some real or fancied wrong, and he would take such a time to avenge it."

"I am puzzled. I must go and talk with Garfield. Come, go with me."

They crossed the street to Garfield's lodgings and found him bolstered up in bed, quite sick of a fever. Rosecrans sat down at the foot of the bed and handed him the letter. Garfield read it over carefully, and then laying it down, said:

"It will never do, general. We don't want to whip by such means.. If the slaves of their own accord rise and assert their original right to themselves, that will be their own affair; but we can have no complicity with them without outraging the moral sense of the civilized world."

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"I knew you would say so; but the writer speaks of other department commanders. May they not come into it?"

"Yes, they may, and that should be looked to. Send this letter to and let him head off the

movement."

The insurrection, as every one knows, did not take place, save in some unimportant outbreaks in Georgia and Alabama in the following September.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.

T

HERE now sprang up renewed differences between General Rosecrans and the War Department. In the general policy that controlled the movements of the army Garfield heartily sympathized; he had, in fact, given shape to that policy. But he deplored his chief's testy manner of conducting his defense to the complaints of the War Department, and did his best to soften the asperities of that correspondence.

September was now nearly come, the summer almost gone, and the coming autumn was ripe in its promise of immediate results. The air was full of rumors of approaching conflicts, and the North waited the echo from the battle-field.

On August 5th, General Halleck telegraphed Rosecrans peremptory orders to move. Rosecrans quietly waited till the dispositions along his extended lines were completed, till stores were accumulated and the corn had ripened, so that his horses could be made to live off of the country. On the 15th he was ready.

The problem now before him was to cross the Tennessee River and gain possession of Chattanooga, the key to the entire mountain ranges of

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East Tennessee and Northern Georgia, in the face of an enemy of equal strength, whose business it was to oppose him. Two courses were open. Forcing a passage over the river above Chattanooga, he might have essayed a direct at tack upon the town. If not repulsed in the dangerous preliminary movements, he would still have had upon his hands a siege not less formidable than that of Vicksburg, with difficulties incomparably greater in maintaining his supplies. But, if this plan was not adopted, it then behooved him to convince the enemy that he had adopted it, while crossing below he hastened southward over the ruggedest roads, to seize the mountain gaps, whence he could debouch upon the enemy's line of supplies. More briefly, he could either attempt to fight the enemy out of Chattanooga or flank him out. He chose the latter alternative.

By the 28th the singular activity of the National forces along a front of one hundred and fifty miles, had blinded and bewildered Bragg as to his antagonist's actual intentions. Four brigades suddenly began demonstrating furiously against his lines above Chattanooga, and the plan was thought to be revealed.

Rosecrans must be about attempting to force a passage there, and straightway a concentration to oppose him was ordered. Meantime, bridges, secretly prepared, were hastily thrown across thirty miles further down the river at different points,

and, before Bragg had finished preparing to resist à crossing above, Rosecrans, handling with rare skill his various corps and divisions, had securely planted his army south of the Tennessee; and, cutting completely loose from his base of supplies, was already pushing southward—his flank next the enemy being admirably protected by impassable mountains.

For Bragg but one thing was the least feasible. As he had been forced out of Shelbyville, out of Wartrace, out of Tullahoma; precisely had the same stress been placed upon him by the same hand in a still stronger position; and in all haste he evacuated Chattanoogo, leaving it to the nearest corps of Rosecrans's army to march quietly in and take possession. The very ease of this occupation proved its strongest element of danger For men, seeing the objective point in the campaign in their hands, forgot the columns toiling through the mountains away to the southward; whose presence there alone compelled the rebel evacuation. But for them, the isolated troops at Chattanooga would have been overwhelmed. Thenceforward there was need of still greater generalship to reunite the scattered corps. They could not return by the way they had gone, for the moment they began such a movement Bragg, holding the shorter line, and already re-enforced by Longstreet's veteran corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, could sweep back over the