BRAGG CHASED BY ROSECRANS.

123

June, 1863.

operations in accordance with his plan were equally successful. General Granger had started from Triune, on the extreme right, on the afternoon of the 23d," and sweeping rapidly on, encountering and pushing back the Confederates in several places, reached Christiana, on the road between Murfreesboro' and Shelbyville, without much trouble. There he was joined by Stanley and his cavalry, and, pressing on to Guy's Gap, secured it after a struggle of about two hours. The Confederates fled, closely pursued for seven miles without stopping, the former making for their rifle-pits, about three miles from Shelbyville. There the fugitives made a stand, but a charge by Stanley's horsemen drove them back upon the near defenses of the town-three guns and a considerable body of foot soldiers. At six o'clock in the evening, Granger came up with his infantry, when Stanley charged again, and before seven o'clock Shelbyville was in possession of the National troops. The spoils were three guns and a quantity of corn, and the trophy, five hundred prisoners. Wheeler and his cavalry escaped by swimming their horses across Duck River, but another troop of horsemen were killed or captured..

June.

Rosecrans pressed through the mountain passes he had seized, and on the 27th his head-quarters were at Manchester, which Wilder had surprised and captured that morning; and two days afterward the whole of the corps of Thomas and McCook were there also. The Nationals were now prepared to flank Tullahoma, to which Bragg had fallen back, as they had done Shelbyville. Wilder was sent to strike the railway in Bragg's rear, at Decherd, destroy the bridge over the Elk River, and do whatever mischief he could to the foe. Decherd was reached and the railway was injured by the bold riders, but the bridge defied them. This raid, and the evidences that Rosecrans was about to move in force to turn his right, so alarmed Bragg, that on the night of the 30th of June he fled from Tullahoma, leaving, without giving a blow in their defense, the extensive works he had cast up in the course of several months in the hill country between Shelbyville, Wartrace, Tullahoma, and Decherd. "Thus," said Rosecrans, in his report, "ended a nine days' campaign, which drove the enemy from two fortified positions, and gave us possession of Middle Tennessee."1 The detention of the Nationals at Hoover's Gap and in front of Winchester, alone prevented their gaining possession of Bragg's communications, and forcing him to give battle or to surrender.

On the day after Bragg retreated, Thomas and McCook advanced to Tullahoma and pressed hard upon the rear of the fugitives, hoping to strike them a fatal blow before they could reach the Elk River. They failed to do so. The roads, cut up by the retreating army and saturated with continual rain-a rain almost without example in Tennessee-were impassable, and Bragg escaped across the river with his trains, his rear gallantly covered by Wheeler's cavalry. The Nationals did not cross it until the 3d, when Sheridan forced a passage at Rock Creek Ford, and other troops crossed at different points. The Confederates, having the railway for use in heavy transportation, were then swarming in comparatively light

July.

1 Rosecrans said the campaign was "conducted in one of the most extraordinary rains ever known in Tennessee at that period, over a soil that became almost a quicksand." In that campaign Rosecrans lost 560 men, and captured from Bragg 1,624 men.

124

BRAGG FLIES TO CHATTANOOGA.

marching order on the lofty and rugged ranges of the Cumberland Mountains, by way of Tantallon and University, and were well on their way toward Chattanooga. Rosecrans advanced his army to near the foot of these mountains, when finding Bragg, who had destroyed all the bridges over the swollen streams in his rear, too far ahead to be easily overtaken, halted his entire force, chiefly on the high rolling table-land between Winchester, Decherd,. Manchester, and McMinnville. On the 5th of July, Van Cleve, who had been left at Murfreesboro', arrived, and moved with his division to McMinnville. Bragg pushed on over the mountains,' crossed the Tennessee Riverat Bridgeport and its vicinity, where he destroyed the railway bridgebehind him, and made his way to Chattanooga. His expulsion from MiddleTennessee, by which a greater portion of that State and Kentucky was left under the absolute control of the National authority, was a disheartening event for the Confederates; and now they felt that every thing depended upon their holding Chattanooga, the key of East Tennessee, and, indeed, of all Northern Georgia. Every effort was therefore made for that purpose;. and the risk of fatally weakening Lee's army in Virginia, by withdrawing Longstreet's corps from it, was taken, and that efficient officer and his troops, as we have observed, were sent to re-enforce Bragg.'

Rosecrans now caused the railway to Stevenson, and thence to Bridgeport, to be put in order under the skillful direction of Colonel Innis and his Michigan engineers, and Sheridan's division was advanced to the latter section of the road, to hold it. At the same time Stanley swept down in a southwesterly direction, by way of Fayetteville and Athens, to cover the line of the Tennessee from Whitesburg up. As forage was scarce in the mountain region over which he was to pass, and Bragg had consumed the last blade of grass, Rosecrans delayed his advance until the Indian corn in cultivated spots was sufficiently grown to furnish a supply. Meanwhile, he gathered army supplies at Tracy City and Stevenson, and thoroughly picketed the railway from Cowan to Bridgeport. Finally, at the middle of August, the army went forward to cross the Tennessee River at dif⚫ferent points, for the purpose of capturing Chattanooga. Thomas's corps:

3

1 The Cumberland range is lofty and rocky, and separate the waters which flow into the Tennessee Riverfrom those which are tributary to the Cumberland River. The range extends from near the Kentucky line almost to Athens, in Alabama. Its northwestern slopes are steep and rocky, with deep coves, out of which flowthe streams that water East Tennessee. Its top is barren and undulating. Its southeastern slope, toward Chattanooga, is precipitous, and the undulating valley between its base and the Tennessee River averages about. five miles in width. In the range, and parallel with its course is a deep clove, known as the Sequatchie Valley, three or four miles in width, and about fifty miles in length, which is traversed by a river of the same name. West of this valley the Nashville and Chattanooga railway crossed the Cumberland range through a low gap by a tunnel near Cowan, and down the gorge of Big Crow Creek to Stevenson, at the foot of the mountain. Walden's Ridge is on the eastern side of the Sequatchie, and its lofty rocky cliffs abut upon the Tennessee River, northward of Chattanooga. 2 See page 99.

3 At the latter place the Nashville and Chattanooga railway and the Memphis and Charleston railway con-join, making it a very important point in a military point of view.

THE NATIONAL ARMY ON THE TENNESSEE.

125 took the general direction of the railway; the divisions of Reynolds and Brannan moving from University on the mountain top, by way of Battle Creek, to its mouth, and those of Negley and Baird by Tantallon and Crow Creek. McCook's moved to the right of the railway, Johnson's division by way of Salem and Larkin's Ford, to Bellefonte; and Crittenden's, designed to feel the enemy and menace Chattanooga with a direct attack, moved well eastward in three columns, commanded respectively by Generals Wood, Van Cleve, and Palmer, with Minty's cavalry on the extreme left, marching by way of Sparta to drive Confederate horsemen from the vicinity of Kingston, strike Buckner's force in the rear, and to cover Van Cleve's column, as it passed at the head of the Sequatchie Valley. From that valley Crittenden sent two brigades of mounted men, under Minty and Wilder, and two of infantry, under Hazen and Wagner, over Walden's Ridge, to proceed to points on the Tennessee, near and above Chattanooga, and make the feigned attack. General Hazen' was in chief command of these four brigades in the Tennessee Valley, with instructions to watch all the crossings of the river for seventy miles above Chattanooga, and to give Bragg the impression that the whole of Rosecrans's army was about to cross near that town. Hazen's command had four batteries of artillery.

In the course of four or five days the mountain ranges were crossed, and the Army of the Cumberland, stretching along the line of the Tennessee River for more than a hundred miles of its course, was preparing to cross that stream at different points, for the purpose of closing around Chattanooga, to crush or starve the Confederate army there. Pontoon-boat, raft, and trestle bridges were constructed at Shellmound, the mouth of Battle Creek, Bridgeport, Caperton's Ferry, and Bellefonte. So early August, 1863. as the 20th," Hazen reconnoitered Harrison's, above Chattanooga, and then took post at Poe's cross-roads, fifteen miles from the latter place; and on the following day, Wilder's cannon thundering from the eminences opposite Chattanooga, and the voice of his shells screaming over the Confederate camp, startled Bragg with a sense of imminent danger. At the same time Hazen was making "show marches," displaying camp-fires at different points, and causing the fifteen regiments of his command to appear like the advance of an immense army. This menace was soon followed by information that Thomas and McCook were preparing to cross below, and that the remainder of Crittenden's corps was swarming on the borders of the river, at the foot of Walden's Ridge, below Chattanooga.

Thomas passed over with his corps at different places, from Caperton's up to Shellmound, and crossed the mountain not far from the latter place, near which is the famous Nickajack Cave, where the Confederates had extensive saltpeter works. On the 8th of September he had concentrated his forces near Trenton, in the valley of the Lookout Creek, at the western foot of Lookout Mountain, and seized Frick's and Stevens's Gaps, the only practicable passes into the broad valley east of Lookout, and stretching toward Chattanooga, called McLemore's Clove. McCook also crossed, advanced to Valley Head, and took possession of Winston's Gap on the 6th, and a large portion of Crittenden's corps passed over and took post the same

1 See page 546, volume II.

126

BRAGG ABANDONS CHATTANOOGA.

day at Wauhatchie, near the Point of Lookout Mountain, where it abuts upon the Tennessee River, well up toward Chattanooga, and threatening

out Mountain passes, and with his cavalry on his extreme right, threaten Bragg's railway communications between Dalton and Resaca Bridge, while his left and center should move through other passes upon the Confederate front. Anticipating this, when he discovered that the main. army was below, Bragg abandoned Chattanooga," passed through the gaps of the Missionaries' Ridge to the West Chickamauga

Sept. 7, 8, 1863.

1 This cave is at the base of Raccoon Mountain, and its wide mouth may be plainly seen from the Shellmound Station, about twenty miles from Chattanooga. The mountain there rises abruptly more than a thousand feet above the level of the Tennessee, and in the face of a perpendicular cliff is the entrance to the cave. It is. not irregularly arched, as such caves generally are, but is in horizontal strata of rock that gives one an idea of the grand Egyptian architecture. The roof is so high above the floor, that a man may ride into it a considerable distance on horseback. Out of it flows a considerable stream of water of a light green color. The opening is about one hundred feet in width and forty feet in height. This cave was one of the chief sources from which the Confederates derived saltpeter, and its possession was of great importance to them. In earlier times it was the habitation of a band of robbers, who murdered and plundered emigrants and traders when descending the Tennessee River.

2 The writer was informed by the late John Ross (see page 476, volume I.), the eminent Cherokee chief that this undulating ridge, which

passes three miles east of Chattanooga and rises about three hundred feet above the Tennessee River, was named the Missionaries' Ridge because missionaries among the Cherokees had a station on the southeastern slope of it. The site of Chattanooga was known as Ross's Landing, the chief having a warehouse and trading port there. His dwelling was near a pass in the Missionaries' Ridge, about five miles from Chattanooga, and was yet standing and well preserved when the writer visited that region and sketched it in May, 1866. It was a long, low building, two stories in height, with heavy stone chimneys. It was called Rossville. A few rods in front of it was the dividing line between Tennessee and Georgia. In the picture, the

ROSS'S HOUSE.

wooded Missionaries' Ridge is seen just in the rear. Near it is a famous spring, known all over that region. Mr.. Ross told the writer that the word Chattanooga was Cherokee, and meant "The Great Catch," the Tennessee

OPERATIONS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF THE OHIO.

127

River, in Georgia, and posted his army along the highway from Lee and Gordon's Mill on that stream, south to the village of Lafayette, in a position facing Pigeon Mountain,' through

THOMAS L. CRITTENDEN.

a

of the deserted village, and on the evening of the following day it encamped at Rossville, within five miles of Chattanooga. Thus, without a battle, the chief object of the grand movement of the Army of the Cumberland over the mountains was gained.

"Sept. 10, 1863.

General Burnside, who had been assigned to the command of the Army

1863.

• March 30.

June.

July.

of the Ohio in March, taking with him the Ninth Corps, with the expectation of speedily undertaking the liberation of East Tennessee, was now brought into active co-operation with the Army of the Cumberland. There had occurred, now and then, some stirring events in his department, the most important of which was the defeat of Pegram by Gillmore, at Somerset, the raid of Colonel H. S. Sanders into East Tennessee, and the extensive raid of Morgan into Indiana and Ohio, already mentioned. Pegram was a Virginian, and crossed the Cumberland Mountains and river with a considerable force of mounted men, professedly the advance of a larger body, under Breckinridge, and commenced plundering Southeastern Kentucky, and expelling Unionists from the State. He was finally attacked in a strong position at Somerset, by General Quincy A. Gillmore, with about twelve hundred men, the united commands of Gillmore and Colonel Wolford, and driven back into Tennessee with a loss of something over two hundred men. The Union loss was about thirty men. A little more than two months later, Colonel Sanders crossed the Cumberland Mountains from Kentucky, struck the East Tennessee and Georgia railway at Lenoir Station, destroyed the road a great

3

River at the bends there around Cameron's Hill and Mocassin Point being celebrated as a place for catching many fish.

1 This is en offshoot of Lookout Mountain. Starting about forty miles south of Chattanooga, and running toward it, it loses itself in the general level near where the West Chickamauga River crosses the road between Chattanooga and Lafayette.

2 The summit of Lookout, near Chattanooga, is about 1,500 feet above the Tennessee River, and 2,400 feet. above the level of the sea.

See page 818, volume II.