CHAPTER XVI.

T

THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.

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 attack 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 a 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

route of his late retreat. Plainly, they must pass through the gaps, and place themselves between Bragg and Chattanooga before the stronghold -beyond a mere tentative possession-could be within their grasp. And so it came about that a battle the bloody one of Chickamauga-was fought to enable the Federal army to concentrate in the position one of its corps had already occupied for days without firing a shot.

Unfortunately, the concentration was not speedy enough. Indeed, there are some plausible reasons for believing that Rosecrans was, perhaps for a few days, deceived by his easy success, into a belief that Bragg was still in full retreat. Certainly the general-in-chief and the War Department did all they could to encourage such an idea, and even after Rosecrans, every nerve tense with the struggle to concentrate his corps, was striving to prepare for the onset of the re-enforced rebel army, General Halleck informed him of reports that Bragg's army was re-enforcing Lee, and pleasantly added, that after he had occupied Dalton it would be decided whether he should move still further southward!

By this time, Bragg had gathered in every available re-enforcement, Longstreet from the east, Buckner from Knoxville, Walker from the army of Joseph E. Johnston, militia from Georgia and, together waiting near Lafayette, hoped to receive the isolated corps of Rosecrans's army as they

debouched through the gaps, and annihilate them in detail. For a day or two, it looked as if he would be successful. One way or another, however, he failed. Rosecrans gathered together

his army, repelling whatever assaults sought to hinder the concentration, yielding part of the line of the Chickamauga, and marching one of the corps all through the night of the battle. On September 19th, Bragg made his onset with certainly not less than seventy-five thousand men, Rosecrans claimed for him ninety-two thousand. Rosecrans had fifty-five thousand. Of the battle, Whitelaw Reid gives the following account:

"Bragg's plan was to turn his antagonist's left and thus clear the way into Chattanooga, but most unfortunately for Bragg, the left was held by Geo. H. Thomas, and shortly after the attack began, Rosecrans, divining the danger, strengthened Thomas's corps with one or two divisions. Disaster overtook us at first, artillery was lost and ground yielded, but Thomas reformed and advanced his lines, regained all that had been lost, sustained every shock of the enemy, and at night held his position firmly.

"Meanwhile the contest on other parts of our line had been less severe, and had ended decidedly in our advantage. But it was seen that we were outnumbered, and as they came to think how every brigade in the whole army, two only excepted, had been drawn into the fight-the soldiers began to realize the dispiriting nature of the situation.