around Chattanooga, directed the manner of retiring from Rossville and of taking positions on these lines, to which the heads of columns were guided by staff and engineer officers. The troops began quietly to withdraw at 10 o'clock P. M., and on Tuesday morning, September 22d, they were intrenching the lines for holding permanent possession of the objective point of our campaign.

It will be remembered that we started for Chattanooga from Murfreesboro', on the 24th of June, 1863. The direct distance by rail is 119 miles. To the battle-ground of Chickamauga is 20 miles farther, or 139 miles. We dislodged our adversary from two strongly fortified camps; crossed the Cumberland Mountains, the Tennessee River, Sand Mountains and Lookout Mountain; fought the battle of Chickamauga; and on the 22d of September, just ninety-two days from starting, we held Chattanooga, for the possession of which at any time within the previous two years we would willingly have paid all that it had cost.

*The records will show [but without data by which might be estimated the relative strength of regiments. -ED.] that at the battle of Chickamauga Bragg had 184 regiments and 20 battalions of infantry, 34 regiments of cavalry, 47 batteries of artillery; and that we had only 133 regiments of infantry, 18 regiments of cavalry, and 35 batteries.

In a note to Halleck, dated from the Executive Mansion, September 21st, 1863, President Lincoln, speaking of this possession, says:

"If held, with Cleveland inclusive, it keeps all Tennessee clear of the enemy and breaks one of his most important railroad lines. To prevent these consequences, so vital to his cause that he cannot give up the effort to dislodge us from the position thus bringing him to us, and saving us the labor, expense, and hazard of going further to find him, and giving us the advantage of choosing our own ground and preparing left to General Rosecrans, while we furnish him the it to fight him upon. The details must, of course, be means to the utmost of our ability. If he can only maintain the position, without more, the rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an

animal may sometimes with a thorn in his vitals."

In presence of the facts I have just stated, and in view of all their marchings, combats, and bloody battles to get possession of Chattanooga, can the reader be made to believe that the Army of the Cumberland and its commander were likely to abandon or fail to hold it ?*

Confederate maps of the battle show the enemy's line of battle on the morning of the 20th of September: Front line, 6,880 yards long; second line, 3,310 yards long. Our front line, 3,400 yards long; second line, 1,750 yards long. (Granger's three brigades, three miles away, not included.)-W. S. R.

ON N the night of September 20th, 1863, after two days of furious fighting, and after a loss of 16,179 men, nearly one-third its strength, the Army of the Cumberland withdrew from Chickamauga to Rossville, not quite four miles in the rear, and there stood in line of battle all the next day. But an attack was not made. The enemy had dashed against the "Rock of Chickamauga," and had been broken in pieces. Two-fifths of the men of Bragg's army had been killed or wounded. Rossville was held till the night of the 21st, when the Army of the Cumberland withdrew to positions in and around Chattanooga. The non-combatants of the town, in great alarm, had taken flight to the hills across the river, or had sought in their cellars refuge from the danger of an impending battle. Every church, public building, and available house had been taken for hospital purposes, for our wounded soldiers filled the town, more than nine thousand having been brought in from Chickamauga.

As soon as the divisions were in the positions assigned to them, the muskets were stacked and ax, pick, and spade were grasped. Day and night the work of fortification went on; trees were felled, houses were torn down, trenches were dug, epaulements for batteries rose from the ground in a single night, and the hills within our line grew into strong breastworks and impregnable fortresses. Looking from the signal station on Lookout Mountain down into the valley two thousand feet below, one could see myriads of boys in blue, like great ants, burrowing in the ground and throwing up hills of dirt. As Rosecrans, with his staff, rode along the lines, his troops greeted him with cheers that proclaimed the spirit of victors. Off to the south, Bragg's army could be seen, swarming through Rossville gap, and spreading over Missionary Ridge and the

east side of Lookout Mountain, and afterwards approaching our front in solid lines of battle. Batteries of artillery hurried into position; staff officers galloped over the field farther up the valley, and, in the direction of Rossville, great clouds of dust, like the "pillar of cloud by day," marked the advance of other unseen masses of troops.

Bragg's army was on its feet again, and another battle seemed imminent. Late that day General Bragg sent General Gracie to Rosecrans requesting an exchange of prisoners. In a conversation with Major Bond, aide-de-camp to General Rosecrans, General Gracie asked him what opinion prevailed among our men as to which army had the advantage in the operations that ended in the battle of Chickamauga and the occupation of Chattanooga, saying that this was a mooted question in Bragg's camp. Major Bond replied that there had been no time in the past two years that we would not have given for the possession of Chattanooga all that it had cost, and he added, "I believe we have got it." After a pause General Gracie remarked, "Well, that is so."

As the flag of truce that came with this message approached our lines, all who saw it believed that it brought a demand from Bragg for the surrender of Chattanooga. A rumor that the demand had been made and refused quickly spread through our camp, and all the troops now eagerly waited for the opening gun of Bragg's attack. But the battle was not to be. Bragg, having drawn his lines as close around Chattanooga as seemed prudent, sat down with his army, and began working with the spade not less energetically than the Army of the Cumberland. For many days, within the range of each other's artillery, the two armies dug as though each was preparing the

grave of the other. After it became apparent that Bragg would not fight at Chattanooga, it was thought that he might cross the river above, threaten our lines of communication with the rear, and thus repeat, on the north side, the manœuvre of Rosecrans. Longstreet advised such a movement; Bragg did not approve it, preferring to adopt the plan of starving us out. On September 24th a brigade that had held the point of Lookout Mountain was withdrawn. Bragg at once took possession, and sent Longstreet's corps over into Lookout valley. He also extended his pickets down the south bank of the river, nearly to Bridgeport, our base of supplies. This cut us off from the river and the roads on its north and south banks, and left us but one open road to the rear,- if the sixty miles of unused way over Waldron's Ridge and through Sequatchie valley could be called a road, inasmuch as in places it was only the bed of winter torrents, or slashes on the mountain sides. Over this, for a time, we might haul supplies; but we were in a state of semi-siege.

Within a few days the trees within our lines had been cut down for use in the fortifications, or for fuel, and even the arbors that had been put up to protect officers and men from the sickening heat of a September sun were sacrificed for fuel. Coffee had to be boiled, though its drinkers broiled. There had been but little rain since early in July. The earth was parched and blistered. Leaves had dried up on the trees, and all grass had withered and turned gray. The moving of men and animals stirred up blinding clouds of dust which every breeze sent whirling through the camps. The troops were longing for rain, the chaplains were praying for it. With the first week in October the rains came, and it was a question whether the deep and sticky mud was not more objectionable than the dust.

The hilly, barren country north of the river - the only country we could reach- could not furnish supplies enough for the povertystricken inhabitants the war had left. Our whole army was therefore obliged to depend for every ration and every pound of forage on the mules that hauled the army wagons over the sixty miles of horrible road from Bridgeport. On its line some of the hills were so steep that a heavy army wagon was almost a load going up, and, now that the rains were falling, that part of it in the little valleys had become so soft and cut up that a lightly loaded wagon would sink up to the axles. In one instance, a wagon having sunk till its bed rested on the mud, the driver did not, as usual, beat his mules and swear; he simply sat on a rock by the wayside, looked at the wretched animals, and cried.

VOL. XXXIV.-20.

In the third week of the occupation of Chattanooga, no one, from commanding general down, any longer expected or even thought of an attack. Both armies had almost ceased their excavations. Missionary Ridge, summit, side, and base, was furrowed with rifle-pits and studded with batteries. The little valley of Chattanooga was dammed up with earthworks, and Lookout Mountain, now a mighty fortress, lifted to the low-hanging clouds its threatening head, crowned with siege guns. Since the 5th of October the guns of Missionary Ridge had been daily growling and barking at our forts on the left, while great shells came tumbling down from Lookout, like meteors shooting from the sky. Our own guns savagely sent back shot for shot, sowing them thickly on the sides of mountain and ridge. The two lines of pickets were not more than three hundred yards apart; but on the picket line it was peaceful and calm, for, by common consent, there was no picket firing. For it is inhuman to shoot the man into whose eyes one can look, even if he be an enemy. The pickets were there to watch, and not to kill. Quietly they sat at the little " gopher pits,"chaffing and sending back and forth boisterous jokes, while perhaps shrieking messengers of death, unheeded and unnoticed, flew over their heads. On a still night, standing on the picket line, one could hear the old negro song" Dixie," adopted by the Confederacy as their national music; while from our line came in swelling response," Hail Columbia " and "The Star-Spangled Banner." With a glass Bragg's headquarters on Missionary Ridge, even the movement of his officers and orderlies, could be seen; while those on the ridge or on Lookout Mountain could bring into view our whole camp. By daylight our troops could be counted, our reveille heard, our roll-call noted, our scanty meals of half rations seen

the last without envy. And we were not only heard and seen, but the enemy's signal flag on Lookout talked, over our heads, with the signal flag on Missionary Ridge.

The fall rains were beginning, and hauling was becoming each day more difficult. Double teams could draw not much more than half loads. Quartermasters could not send mules to the front fast enough to take the place of those that were worked to death. Ten thousand dead mules walled the sides of the road from Bridgeport to Chattanooga. In Chattanooga the men were on less than half rations. Guards stood at the troughs of artillery horses to keep the soldiers from taking the scant supply of corn allowed these starving animals. Indeed, so slight was the allowance of forage that many horses died of starvation, and most of the survivors grew too weak for use in pulling