the road reported that many of the Yankee commands passed their dwellings in the utmost disorder, without arms or accoutrements, and many without hats, as a confused and routed mob, not as troops in column, everything in Chattanooga and on the road inviting rather than forbidding attack. Even if they had had good defensive works, with the condition as reported above, by a prompt pursuit our army would have gone into Chattanooga with theirs, and thus broken the effect of their fire; and if such could have been the result with good defensive works, what might not the result have been without them, and the enemy panic-stricken because of the knowledge that none such existed? What hindered General Bragg from pursuing is not known, but it is known that, while pursuit seems to have been invited, he did not pursue. He simply sent out detachments to the battle-field to gather up the fruits of victory, in arins large and small, to be secured and sent to the rear, and caused the captured banners to be collected to be sent to Richmond, and prisoners to be counted and sent to the rear.

The enemy's immediate losses in the battle of Chickamauga were immense. It was officially stated that we captured over eight thousand prisoners, fifty-one pieces of artillery, fifteen thousand stand of small arms, and quantities of ammunition, with wagons, ambulances, teams, medicines, hospital stores, &c., in large quantities.

The enemy's loss in killed and wounded have been by many thousands greater than ours; and General Bragg, in his official report, makes the appalling confession that, on this "River of Death," he lost" two-fifths" of his troops. Our loss in general officers was conspicuous. Brigadier-general B. H. Helm,* Preston Smith, and James Deshler, had died on the field. The

* Brigadier-general Helm was a grandson of Ben Hardin, well known to the oldest inhabitants of Kentucky, as a leading public-spirited gentleman of high moral worth in the earlier days of the Warrior State. General Helm was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1831-graduated at West Point, and afterwards retired from the army of the United States to take up the study of law. He entered the Southern army without a commission, but from the rank of private he was soon made colonel, and commanded the first Kentucky cavalry in the Confederate service. He was made brigadier-general in March, 1862. The Kentucky brigade, which he commanded in the battle of Chicka

lion-hearted Hood, the luminary of Texas chivalry and courage, was so severely wounded that he had to suffer amputation of the thigh. The notice of his extraordinary gallantry by Longstreet, who with generous ardor communicated it in a special letter to his government, obtained for him the commission of a Lieutenant general, and ranged him with the popular heroes of the war.

The day following this terrible conflict, General Bragg ordered the troops under arms, and marched them down the Chattanooga road until they came near to Rossville, where Forest and Pegram were thundering away with their batteries at the retreating enemy, there had them filed to the right, and thrown down the Chickamauga creek, that they might rest from their fatigues and be in a good position to move upon Burnside or flank Rosecrans, as future contingences might dictate. On Wednesday, the 23d of September, an order was issued for the whole army to move upon Chattanooga. It moved up to and over Missionary Ridge, where it was halted. And there it was to remain halted for many long weeks.

Chickamauga had conferred a brilliant glory upon our arms, `but little else. Rosecrans still held the prize of Chattanooga, and with it the possession of East Tennessee. Two-thirds of our nitre beds were in that region, and a large proportion of the coal which supplied our foundries. It abounded in the necessaries of life. It was one of the strongest countries in the world, so full of lofty mountains, that it had been called, not unaptly, the Switzerland of America. As the possession of Switzerland opened the door to the invasion of Italy, Germany and France, so the possession of East Tennessee gave easy access to Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

mauga, went into the fight with seventeen hundred and sixty-three men, and came out with only four hundred and thirty-two.

General Helm's wife was a half-sister of Mrs. Lincoln. Immediately after the fall of Fort Sumter, in 1861, President Lincoln sent him a commission as major in the regular army of the United States; and apprehending that he might not be willing to be employed to murder his own people, the Yankee Secretary of War proposed, as a salve for any scruples, to send him as paymaster to New Mexico. The gallant Kentuckian spurned the bribe, gave his services, and at last his life, to the Confederacy, and fell in the numerous throng of brave defenders of truth, justice and liberty. His wife lives, known as one of the most enthusiastic and devoted patriot women of the South.