spring of 1864 muşt see us far from the borders of Georgia, or near to the verge of destruction. Nail it to your door-posts, men of the South, and refuse to be deluded into any other belief! Food and raiment are our needs. We must have them. Kentucky and Middle Tennessee can only supply them. Better give up the seacoast, better give up the Southwest, aye, better to give up Richmond without a struggle, and win these, than los the golden field, whose grain and wool are our sole hope. The enemy has just one army too many in the field for us. We must crush this over. plus; we must gain one signal Stonewall Jackson campaign. Destiny points to the very place. Be Rosecrans the victim. Defeat him, pulverize him, run him to the Ohio River, and then close the war with the next summer. And how? Nothing easier. The bee which has really stung our flank so long, once disposed of, our triumphant legions have a clear road before them. Fed sumptuously through the winter, well shod and clad, they have only to meet a dispirited foe, retake the valley of the Mississippi, secure the election of a peace democrat to the Presidency in the fall, and arrange the terms of treaty and independence. These results can be accomplished nowhere else than in this department. The Northwest is our real adversary.*

The readers of this chapter will see the position of affairs when General Grant assumed his new command. It must, however, not be forgotten that he had under him the troops that had been sorely defeated at Chickamauga, ar d were at that time shut up in Chattanooga by a besiegin,: force of the rebels. The enemy believed that they had this force securely in a trap, and when they heard of the change in the command they began to make light of it. One of their journalists remarked that the Union authorities had removed a hero (Rosecrans), and placed two fools (Grant and Thomas) in command. The President is reported to have said, that "if one fool like Grant can do as much work, and win as profitable victories as he, he had no objection to two of them, as they would surely wipe out the rebellion."

* Chattanooga-Atlanta Rebel, Nov. 9th, 1863.

CHAPTER XLVII.

ACTIVE MOVEMENTS.-LOOKOUT VALLEY.

GENERAL GRANT was not the man to stand idle when there was work to be done. He, therefore, soon left Louisville, after making certain necessary arrangements for co-operation of troops from Kentucky, and arrived in Nashville on the morning of October 21st. He was during the same evening introduced to the people of Nashville, by the Military Governor, but refused to make any speech to them. Having made certain dispositions of his forces in this vicinity, to secure his communications, and having ordered the re-gauging of the railroads, so that one continuous line of communication should exist between the Ohio River and Chattanooga, General Grant took his departure for the latter place, where he arrived on October 23d.

The situation of affairs at this time in the neighborhood of Chattanooga, is thus described by a correspondent:

The sad position of affairs is in nowise changed up to date. I trust that every warrior in this army is alive to it; for I confess I do not see any very brilliant prospects for continuing alive in it all this winter, unless something desperate be done. While the army sits here, hungry, chilly, watching the "key to Tennessee," the "good dog" Bragg lies over against us, licking his Chickamauga sores without whine or growl. He will not reply to our occasional shots from Star Fort, Fort Crittenden, or the Moccasin Point batteries across the river; has forbidden the exchange of newspapers and the compliments of the day between pickets; has returned surly answers to flag of truce messages; in fact, has cut

us dead. They know we have been, and are being largely re-enforced, and fear a flank movement, similar to that which gave Rosecrans possession of Chattanooga. This is a synopsis of the situation. The details, so far as relates to our side of the house, about which I am only expected to know, are far less cheering.

By the Anderson road (north of the Tennessee), from Bridgeport to Chattanooga the distance is something like sixty miles, and since the heavy rains of the past week, the entire route is dismal beyond execration. Mules stage through twenty-five or thirty miles of almost unfathomable mud, toil up and over a mountain-Walden's Ridge-where a single misstep would insure their exit from life over a frightful precipice, grinding along, over enormous boulders and jagged rocks, through more mud, to the muddy banks of the river at Chattanooga. A thousand pounds of provisions or forage were an extraordinary load for the best of six mule teams on their trial trips over this route; but now it is positive inhumanity to ask half that work of the jaded, halfstarved brutes. Yet all the supplies must come by this route, and every animal able to stagger under a burthen, must be kept on the move. Trains, once the pride and boast of proprietary quartermasters, have dwindled away; wagon after wagon worn out, or destroyed by Wheeler's raiders, till the transportation of the army is not half what it was, or onequarter what it should be; and, unless we shall be able to navigate the river soon, want stares us in the face. Half rations for troops will suffice for a time; quarter rations, now darkly hinted, is rather "crowding the mourners," the troops say. A very patient and meek mule can exist on two or three pounds of corn per day; but wagon boxes, dry leaves, and woollen blankets, with harness for relish, are not conducive to mule health, strength, and longevity. Angular skeletons of artillery horses. rattle past my quarters toward the Tennessee-Heaven be thanked there is plenty of water-while I write this, and within my range of vision, up and down the main street, are numbers of weak and trembling horse "frames," glandered and starving, staggering about in search of a convenient spot to die.

The mortality among these innocents is frightful to contemplate. Their corpses line the road, and taint the air, all along the Bridgeport route. In these days, hereabouts, it is within the scope of the most obtuse to distinguish a quartermaster or staff officer, by a casual glance at the animal he strides. "He has the fatness of twenty horses upon his ribs," as Squeers remarked of little Wackford; "and so he has God help the others."

I am assured this state of things will not last long; that hordes of men are energetically at work improving our means of communication, and that we soon shall be benefited by the overflowing plenty of the North. The vigor and good spirits of the army all this time are developed in a most astonishing manner.

Major-General Grant, who presides over the destinies of this, amongst other armies, reached Chattanooga to-day. He was accompanied by Quartermaster-General Meigs, and Mr. Dana, of the War Department, who now returns after a short absence. They have come back, perhaps, to witness operations at the front, which their superior knowledge of the situation may lead them to expect. If I should write what I know of the whereabouts and movements of the troops, above and below us, on the Tennessee River, and elsewhere, all aiming at that grand object, the overthrow of "this accursed rebellion," I would, no doubt, be arrested for dealing in contraband news. Luckily, I know so little about Burnside, General Joe Hooker, and the rest, that it requires but little effort to keep my pencil quiet. They are in their proper places, however. General Grant probably knows where they are, and what they are doing; the enemy will find out when the thing is fully developed. One of Wheeler's couriers was captured the other day, with that chieftain's written reply to a dispatch from General Braxton Bragg, ordering the raider back into Middle Tennessee. Wheeler said it was utterly impossible for him to go back, on account of his impoverished and worn-out condition. His command would not hold together. (He said nothing about the Union troopers, who were following him up in vast force.) He also whined considerably about the difficulty in escaping across the Tennessee to the South. He was prevented, he said, by "Lee's Federal Jayhawkers." How Grant's cavalry could bother the rebels in Southern Tennessee, was something the raider couldn't understand.*

General Grant no sooner made his appearance at Chattanooga, than a change was at once set about in the situation of affairs. He had left directions for the management of the raiders, with the corps and district commanders outside of that position, and he, therefore, was at liberty to direct his personal attention to the re-opening of communications, by proper routes, with his dépôts of supplies.

* Army Correspondence,

After the battles of Chickamauga, the post on Lookout Mountain was abandoned by the Union troops, and was immediately taken possession of by the rebels. From this point the rebels were enabled to shell the supply trains moving along the valley route towards Chattanooga from Bridgeport. From this cause the Union troops were compelled to take their supplies along the mountain roads, described in the foregoing correspondence.

To reopen the valley route was General Grant's primary and most important design. He, therefore, while at Nashville communicated his plans to General Hooker, and when he arrived at Chattanooga, he, with the assistance of his chief-engineer, Brigadier-General W. F. Smith, at once set about the work.

The following correspondence will show what was accomplished during this movement:

CHATTANOOGA, October 28, 1863. The reoccupation of Lookout and the reopening of the "Southern line" to Bridgeport has for some time been the chief aim of strategists in this department. A movement of Major-General Hooker's troops from opposite Bridgeport, along the south bank of the Tennessee, through Shellmound and Whiteside, commenced a week ago.* A large additional force, under Major-General Palmer-spared from the army without weakening our lines-joined Hooker on the march up Lookout Valley, and the combined forces effected a junction with Brigadier-General Hazen's command last night, near the foot of Lookout. The valley route to Bridgeport is now ours, and I am led to believe that movements in progress will give us possession of the mountain itself, and perhaps force an evacuation by Bragg's whole army ere many weeks are gone.

I am, at present, unable to write particularly of the preliminary movements by the forces under General Hooker's immediate command; but I am able to describe the hazardous expedition of the co-operating forces from this end of the line with all the accuracy of an eye-witness. Fourteen hundred men were, on Monday night, October 26th, picked

*While General Grant was at Nashville.