quarrels, but had failed in the undertaking. In the first week of November Bragg detached Longstreet and his corps for an expedition against Knoxville and the troops which held it under Burnside. This proved to be an injudicious movement. Yet the President and General Grant were anxious lest Burnside might be defeated and driven from East Tennessee; and when Grant learned of Longstreet's departure, he determined to attack the Confederates, with the expectation that this force would be recalled. From this attempt he was dissuaded by Thomas and Smith, and became convinced that it was "utterly impracticable" to take the offensive until Sherman should arrive.

Sherman was coming along as fast as possible, but river transportation from Vicksburg to Memphis was attended with difficulty. "Our progress was slow," he wrote, "on account of the unprecedentedly low water in the Mississippi and the scarcity of wood and coal. We were compelled at places to gather fence rails, and to land wagons and haul wood from the interior to the boats."2 Reaching Memphis October 2, his troubles grew. He had three hundred miles to go through the enemy's country, and construed his instructions from Halleck to mean that he should follow the Memphis and Charleston Railroad eastward, repairing it as he moved forward, that it might serve for the transport of his troops and for a line of supply. He set out. Part of his soldiers went by rail; the rest marched, encountering considerable resistance on the way. At Iuka, October 27, a messenger, who had made most of his journey by paddling down the Tennessee in a canoe, under a continual fire from guerillas, handed him a despatch from Grant, saying, "Drop everything . . . and move with your entire force toward Stevenson." He pushed on with vigor, and rode into Chattanooga November 15. His soldiers, who will be mentioned hereafter as the Army of the Tennessee, were close behind him.

1 Grant's report, O. R., vol. xxxi. part ii. p. 29.

2 Sherman's report, Dec. 19, ibid., p. 569.

8 Ibid., part i. p. 713, part ii. p. 571; Sherman's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 357.

CH. XXIII.]

BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA

405

Grant had already matured his plan of attack, and at the earliest moment put it into execution. November 23 Thomas made a reconnaissance in force "in the most gallant style, driving the enemy from his first line, and securing" important ground. At midnight Sherman began to cross the Tennessee, his men capturing all the Confederate pickets but one on the east bank of the river, and by daylight he had 8000 men over, and a rifle-trench dug to serve as the head of a pontoon bridge about to be constructed. Of this operation Sherman wrote: "I will here bear my willing testimony to the completeness of this whole business. All the officers charged with the work were present, and manifested a skill which I cannot praise too highly. I have never beheld any work done so quietly, so well, and I doubt if the history of war can show a bridge of that extent (viz. 1350 feet) laid down so noiselessly and well in so short a time. I attribute it to the genius and intelligence of General William F. Smith." 2 By one o'clock in the afternoon [November 24] the bridge was completed. The rest of the army crossed over, and gained and held "the whole of the northern extremity of Missionary Ridge to near the railroad tunnel." "

"Hooker," wrote Grant, "carried out the part assigned him for this day [November 24] equal to the most sanguine expectations. "4 Through driving mists and rains he fought "above the clouds," and won the battle of Lookout Mountain. "Thus on the night of the 24th," is the report of Grant, "our forces maintained an unbroken line with open communications from the north end of Lookout Mountain through Chattanooga valley to the north end of Missionary Ridge."5 At daylight the stars and stripes waved from the most prominent place in the region, the peak of Lookout. This was a harbinger of victory. Sherman began the battle on the

6

1 Grant, Report of Dec. 23, O. R., vol. xxxi. part ii. p. 32; Dana to Stanton, Nov. 23, ibid., p. 65.

2 Sherman, Report of Dec. 19, ibid., p. 573.

3 Grant's report, O. R., vol. xxxi. part ii. p. 33. 4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

• Nov. 25.

left against a strong force massed in his front, and had a close, stubborn struggle without gaining advantage. About the middle of the afternoon the word was given to Thomas's soldiers, who held the centre, to advance. They carried the first line of rifle-pits, and should have halted for further commands, but were exposed to a murderous fire, and would not fall back. Without orders, indeed in spite of orders, those twenty thousand Western soldiers and their immediate officers, conspicuous among whom was Sheridan, rushed up Missionary Ridge, carried it, and drove away, in panic, the Confederates.

Grant and Thomas were on Orchard Knob, watching the battle. When the troops broke away, Grant demanded, “By whose orders is this?" "By their own, I fancy," was the slow and measured reply of Thomas,1 a testimony to the spirit of initiative which distinguished his soldiers. Dana, who witnessed the charge, gave, the next day, this account of it: "The storming of the ridge by our troops was one of the greatest miracles in military history. No man who climbs the ascent by any of the roads that wind along its front can believe that 18,000 men were moved up its broken and crumbling face unless it was his fortune to witness the deed. It seems as awful as a visible interposition of God. Neither Grant nor Thomas intended it. Their orders were to carry the rifle-pits along the base of the ridge, and capture their occupants; but when this was accomplished the unaccountable spirit of the troops bore them bodily up those impracticable steeps, over the bristling rifle-pits on the crest and the thirty cannon enfilading every gully. The order to storm appears to have been given simultaneously by Generals Sheridan and Wood, because the men were not to be held back, dangerous as the attempt appeared to military prudence. Besides, the generals had caught the inspiration of the men, and were ready themselves to undertake impossibilities." 2

1 Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii. p. 150; see another account of this incident, Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 725.

2 O. R., vol. xxxi. part ii. p. 69.

Сн. ХХІІІ.]

BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE

407

At 4.30 P. M. Dana telegraphed to Stanton: "Glory to God. The day is decisively ours;" and a few hours later, "Our men are frantic with joy and enthusiasm, and received Grant as he rode along the lines after the victory with tumultuous shouts."1 "Bragg is in full retreat, burning his depots and bridges," telegraphed Dana the next day. Some pursuit was made without material result. Sherman was sent to the relief of Burnside, and his approach caused Longstreet to raise the siege of Knoxville.

The action of November 25 is called the battle of Missionary Ridge; that of the three days the battle of Chattanooga.3 Chattanooga and Knoxville, which commanded East Tennessee, were secured by this victory, and were not afterwards retaken by the Confederates. The result of the campaign denoted the waning fortune of the Southern cause. The news of Missionary Ridge reached the people of the North on the last Thursday of November, and gave them the first genuine Thanksgiving since the commencement of the civil war.4

Having assumed the power of a dictator, the President could not, for a long while together, dispense with the support of the people, whose opinion found its clearest manifestation at 2 Ibid., p. 70.

1 O. R. vol. xxxi. part ii. pp. 68, 69.

8 The effective strength of the Union army was 60,000, that of the Confederate 20,000 less. The loss of the Union force 5815, Confederate 6687. -Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 729; Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii. p. 155.

4 My authorities for this account of the campaigns of Chickamauga and Chattanooga are the correspondence and the reports of Rosecrans, Burnside, Bragg, Longstreet, Halleck, Grant, Sherman, W. F. Smith, Meigs, Hooker, Sheridan, in O. R., the several parts of vol. xxx. and vol. xxxi.; C. W., 1865, vol. iii., Supplement, part i.; Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii. ; articles of D. H. Hill, Grant, Smith, Cist, Fullerton, Century War Book, vol. viii.; Dodge, A Bird's-Eye View of the Civil War; Grant's Personal Memoirs, vol. ii.; Sherman's Memoirs, vol. i.; Van Horne, Life of Thomas, Hist. of the Army of the Cumberland; Sheridan's Memoirs, vol. i.; Cist, The Army of the Cumberland; Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomatox; Life of Grant, Church; Warden's Chase; Milt. Hist. of Grant, Badeau, vol. i.; Chas. A. Dana's Reminiscences, McClure's Magazine, Feb. and March, 1898; Report of Board of Army Officers upon claim of Gen. W. F. Smith, Washington, 1901.

the regular fall elections. These of 1863 were almost entirely for state officers, but there were circumstances which gave to some of them a very great importance. For this reason Lincoln, feeling, since Gettysburg and Vicksburg, firmer in his seat and more confident of his measures, took the occasion, in his reply to an invitation to be present at a mass meeting of unconditional Union men at his old home of Springfield, Illinois, to write a letter which may be called a stump speech or a powerful argument and appeal to the people for their support of his policy in carrying on the war. "It would be very agreeable to me to thus meet my old friends at my own home," he wrote, August 26, "but I cannot just now be absent from here so long as a visit there would require.

The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union; and I am sure my old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to those and other noble men whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life.

There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I would say: You desire peace, and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we attain it? There are but three conceivable ways: First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it? If you are, you should say so plainly. If you are not for force, nor yet for dissolution, there only remains some imaginable compromise. I do not believe any compromise embracing the maintenance of the Union is now possible. All I learn leads to a directly opposite belief. The strength of the rebellion is its military, its army. That army dominates all the country and all the people within its range. Any offer of terms made by any man or men within that range, in opposition to that army, is simply nothing for the present, because such man or men have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise if one were made with them.

To illustrate: Suppose refugees from the South and peace