PART I â ROSECRANS: Gifted eccentric
CHAPTER ONE â A Hoosier Horseman Opens the Gate
ELEMENTS of Rosecransâ Army of the Cumberland entered Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the morning of September 9, 1863, without the loss of a man.
Much as the American people of a later generation would dread the ghastly sacrifice of life they believed would inevitably be exacted at the crossing of the Rhine, or in storming the Japanese mainland, so had the North come to look with terror toward the impending battle for the heart city of the South, protected by its lofty mountains and great, bridgeless river.
But Rosecrans, by skillful maneuvers heralded to the North as comparable to those of Napoleon or Marlborough at their best, had dislodged Bragg, first from Tullahoma, where the Southern army had rested through the spring months while the Northern general leisurely collected horses and prepared his forward movement, and then, as the corn ripened and provisions were promised ahead, from Chattanooga itself.
This railroad communication center, which alone of all the Southern cities tied the Confederacy into a fairly compact nation, had been thus won speedily, artfully, by strategy instead of lead.
Rosecrans had bypassed the fort-girdled city by a feint to his left, then a wide swing to his right, and like over-ripened fruit it fell at the mere tread of the approacher. Colonel John T. Wilder, the Greensburg, Indiana, ironmaster whose brigade of mounted infantry had equipped itself out of its own pocketbooks with the sensational new Spencer repeating rifle, had ridden down the right bank of the Tennessee as early as August 21, at a time when Bragg intended to fight it out for the town. Young Captain Eli Lilly, the Greencastle, Indiana, druggist who had become as proficient with the guns as any artillery instructor in the old army, had set up his battery on the close reaches of Stringerâs Ridge. In compliance with orders from Major General Thomas L. Crittenden, who commanded the 21st Corps that made up the left wing of Rosecransâ army, he had tossed some shells across the Tennessee River to advise the Southern general that the season for evacuation of the city was at hand.
Wilder gave plausibility to Rosecransâ feint to the left by operating ingeniously along the north bank of the river so as to suggest a movement in force above Chattanooga. He with his mounted infantry and Colonel Robert H. G. Minty with a mixed cavalry brigade of Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and United States regular troops, guarded every ford and patrolled every mile of waterfront from Washington to Williams Island, a distance of about fifty miles.
The resourceful Hoosier occupied the attention of an entire Confederate army corps by threatening suddenly and haphazardly to attack at the different crossings. Every night he sent out details to build large campfires behind the fords, thus indicating the presence of sizable forces: divisions or army corps. To give the impression of large-scale pontoon building, he had his men saw boards and throw the end pieces into the creeks feeding the Tennessee River. To enhance the illusion he had them pound on barrels, and even a sailor might mistake the sound for hammering on the sides of boats. Brigadier General William B. Hazen, who commanded a brigade of Major General John M. Palmerâs division, Crittendenâs corps, operated upstream with Wilder and added to Braggâs uncertainty by making diversions and pretenses at crossings. Because of these stratagems, Bragg kept his men busy fortifying the upstream fords, when all the while Rosecrans was shifting his army and covertly crossing behind the mountains downstream.{1}
Wilder had come up in front of Chattanooga so rapidly and unexpectedly that he captured artillerymen and animals of a Confederate battery on the north shore, then bagged a part of the picket, while Captain Lilly was unlimbering his guns. The Federals looked down from their heights and saw soldiers and civilians running about in what they called âgreat consternation.â Soon a Confederate battery west of the town opened. Lilly replied accurately and the fire was quickly silenced. A 32-pounder in the town was handled more effectively, but a Federal shell hit inside the embrasure from which the gun was being fired, and it too was silenced. Lilly pounded and sank a steamboat, the Paint Rock, disabled another, the Dunbar, at the Chattanooga wharf, and tore apart and splintered the pontoons which Bragg had been holding in readiness to be thrown across the river should he decide to recross and operate against Rosecransâ flank or rear. The Northerner already was giving a hint that he was moving impetuously.
Meantime Colonel Smith D. Atkins, the youthful Freeport, Illinois, lawyer who commanded the 92nd Illinois mounted infantry of Wilderâs brigade, had crossed downstream at Battle Creek, after annoying the enemy upstream at Harrison, being protected by two rifled 10-pounders of the 5th Wisconsin battery. The brush at Harrison gave the battery opportunity to test its marksmanship in some of the first firing along the river. As Atkins had approached the riverbank he had seen a Confederate officer with a sash across his shoulder come down to the opposite bank and kneel under a box elder.
âWhat is he doing?â Atkins inquired of his adjutant, but a little puff of blue smoke gave the answer before the rifle ball sang over their heads. The Confederate was getting in a first shot at the approaching enemy. Colonel Atkins observed, âIf you see a man shooting a rifle at you a mile away you have plenty of time to dodge . . . but you may as well stand still.â He knew that one is as likely to dodge into as away from the path of the bullet. The evidence of Confederate resistance caused the lieutenant commanding the Wisconsin battery to take the range on the Confederate gun emplacementsâa fort with a brass gun in the center and two steel guns on the flanks. The lieutenant had a novel device, âa flat piece of brass full of holes of different sizes,â by which, if a man stood up on the opposite shore, he could determine the range and begin what Atkins called âscientific firing.â
No range-finder could have been more exact. When the Federals entered Chattanooga they learned that their first shot had dismantled the brass gun inside the Confederate fort and killed four men.
Once over the river, Atkins was ordered by Major General Joseph J. Reynolds to move toward Chattanooga. He marched at 3 A.M. on the morning of September 9, drove in the enemy pickets, passed over and around the head of Lookout Mountain where it is skirted by the river, and at 9:30 A.M. pushed his advance scouts down the Chattanooga streets.
The only obstacle to Atkinsâ entry was that Wilder and other units still had the city under desultory fire from across the river and it was difficult to inform them that friends, not enemies, were approaching from the southwest. Patiently a lad with a semaphore spelled out the words âNinety-second Illinois.â By the time three letters of the last word had been signaled, a great shout went up from Wilderâs men on the opposite bank. A short time later the Stars and Stripes flew from the roof of the Crutchfield house, three stories high on the Chattanooga skyline. It had been Braggâs head-quarters.{2}
Bragg had at length detected the progress of Rosecransâ two corps under Major Generals George H. Thomas and Alexander McD. McCook toward his left and rear, but he made no effort to retard them at the river. He had, in fact, withdrawn the brigade he had earlier stationed on outpost duty opposite Bridgeport, where he had burned the railroad bridge. He had begun on September 8 to move his army toward Ringgold and La Fayette, Georgia, across the parched land. The 33rd Alabama found the dust âhalf way up to our kneesâ and thought they must look like âa low line of dusty creatures without feetâ as the regiment passed down the Chattanooga street, and, a little later, headed in Indian file through the mountain passes.
As he came around Lookout Mountain, Atkins could witness the withdrawal of Braggâs rear guard. He directed one of his companies to follow toward Rossville, five miles out on the roads to the south, then moved with the balance of the regiment to the Chattanooga railroad depot.
While the initial bombardment was in progress George D. Wagner, commanding a brigade of Woodâs division, Crittendenâs corps, had reinforced Wilder on the north bank and set up additional batteries. They joined for several days in the random firing that preceded the evacuation. Though Wilderâs men insisted they bombed not the town but only the fortifications, someoneâs shell fired from Stringerâs Ridge on Saturday, August 21, the day the bombardment opened, hit in front of the First Presbyterian Church on Market Street. President Davis had requested a âfast dayâ for the Southern cause and it was being observed faithfully in the town. A visiting minister, the Reverend B. M. Palmer of New Orleans, was delivering his prayer before the crowded congregation.
Sudden and frightening as was the explosion, the cool, gritty minister did not break the even tenor of his supplication; nor did the larger part of the congregation leave its place, including Colonel C. W. Heiskell and Dr. W. J. Worsham, both of the 19th Tennessee Infantry.
The main injury was to a little girl, whose leg was broken. Her parents, rushing her from the city, halted at the home of Colonel Beriah F. Moore. The colonel was absent, and his elderly father declined to admit the distressed family, maintaining that his house was already packed with fugitives from the bombardment. The refusal kindled anger among onlookers. Witnessing the incident was Brigadier General Preston Smith, the gallant Memphis militia officer who had been grievously wounded at Shiloh and had commanded Cleburneâs celebrated division on part of the Kentucky campaign. He severely upbraided the old man for barring his door to the wounded child. This so incensed Colonel Moore when he heard the facts that he in turn denounced Smith in writing as a coward and bully. Such heat was not infrequent among the high-spirited officers of Braggâs army, even when an enemy was knocking at the Confederacyâs inner door.
General Smith accepted the challenge, though dueling was supposed to be suspended for the war. But neither the general nor the colonel was in a position to give or receive much satisfaction, for General Smith had an appointment he had to keep with death a few days later in the deep woods at Chickamauga, and Colonel Moore had a like rendezvous within sight of his fatherâs home on Missionary Ridge. Colonel Heiskell interceded to give each a brief, additional span of life.
About the only other result of the bombardment was that twenty-three-year-old Henry Watterson, who sat in the congregation, gained a bride. The young newspaperman had returned to his native Tennessee after a short term as music critic on the New York Times and was editing and printing the daily Chattanooga Rebel on wallpaper, while serving also on the staffs of some of the Confederate generals. He admired the young lady who sat composedly in the choir during the bombardment, escorted her home, and soon made her Mrs. Watterson.{3}
Brigadier General Wagner sent the first foot soldiers into the town. The 97th Ohio under Colonel John Q. Lane crossed the river in boats which the Northerners had secreted in coves and protected with artillery along the riverbank. Wilder went up the river and crossed at Friarâs Island, fighting off a Confederate rear guard. By this time Crittendenâs forces were converging on Chattanooga from three directions. The mixed Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky brigade of Samuel Beatty moved in from the Tennessee River crossing at Shellmound, worked its way up Nickajack Trace and reached the summit of Lookout Mountain on the early morning of September 9, where it looked down on Chattanooga, empty of everything except Confederate rear-guard cavalry. Dust clouds were visible to the south. Beatty hurried word to Rosecrans that Bragg had vacated the town, confirming intelligence already dispatched to army headquarters by Wagner; then he moved toward Rossville to maintain contact and report on the enemyâs retreat.
Colonel William Groseâs brigade followed Samuel Beatty. It scaled Lookout Mountain near the Hawkins farm nine miles southwest of Chattanooga and drove off Braggâs left-wing skirmishers in a neat little action that probably involved about as much severe fighting as Hookerâs more extensive occupation of Lookout Mountain a few weeks later in the widely-heralded âbattle above the clouds.â Now the 24th Ohio, a regiment which had fought at Cheat Mountain in West Virginia, had been a part of Buellâs succoring force that rushed to Grantâs aid at Shiloh, and had stood faithfully at Stoneâs River, distinguished itself by its impetuous assault. Grose gave especial praise to Captain Isaac N. Dryden âfor daring bravery in ascending the mountain and driving and punishing the enemy.â He too would live until he entered the woods at Chickamauga.{4}
CHAPTER TWO â Over the River and Ranges
FEW MORE spectacular feats had occurred during the war than Rosecransâ crossing of the Tennessee River in late August and early September 1863.
The army collected a sufficient number of boats for the construction of a single pontoon, which was thrown over the river at Capertonâs Ferry, the crossing for the town of Stevenson, the important railroad junction of the area. Major General Philip H. Sheridan, a division commander of McCookâs corps, meantime began building a trestle bridge at Bridgeport. It was not very satisfactory because a substantial portion of it collapsed while under construction, but fortunately for the army, no troops were on it when the timbers plunged into the river. By September 2, when a good part of the army was already over the river, it was repaired and serviceable, and Sheridan crossed.
The divisions of Richard W. Johnson and Jefferson C. Davis, both of McCookâs corps, marched across the pontoon bridge during the three days of August 29, 30, and 31. Brigadier General John M. Brannanâs division of Thomasâ corps made a more resourceful and exciting crossing at the mouth of Battle Creek, which enters the river between Shellmound and Bridgeport, about twenty-five air miles below Chattanooga. The locality was shielded from Braggâs army, then still in the town, not only by the great bends of the winding river, but also by the parallel ridges of Raccoon and Lookout mountains.
Brannanâs division crossed mainly in the most primitive of craft, pirogues such as were used by the Indians and the early French settlers. They were hollowed out from the huge Tennessee poplars and would hold a small company, or up to fifty men. The poplars were cut and shaped behind the protecting forests along Battle Creek and floated down to the river when Rosecrans signaled the moment for crossing. From other timbers the soldiers built barges large enough to float the artillery, while the good swimmers fastened fence rails into small rafts that would hold their guns, ammunition, equipment and clothing. These they pushed ahead of them as they breasted the current. The odd-looking flotilla swept out of the mouth of Battle Creek on August 29, covered by Federal sharpshooters along the north bank. Brannan easily effected a landing and drove off the Confederate pickets on the southern shore.{5}
Reynoldsâ division crossed mainly in small boats that had been collected up and down the river. Soon t...