ment, to follow up the railroad to Knoxville, destroy Burnside, and from there threaten the enemy's railroad communication in rear of Nashville.

The reasons which induced Gen. Bragg to decline this plan of campaign were detailed in a report to the War Department at Richmond, in which he wrote: "The suggestion of a movement by our right, immediately after the battle, to the north of the Tennessee, and thence upon Nashville, requires notice only because it will find a place on the files of the Department. Such a movement was utterly impossible for want of transportation. Nearly half our army consisted of reinforcements just before the battle, without a wagon or an artillery horse, and nearly, if not quite, a third of the artillery horses on the field had been lost. The railroad bridges, too, had been destroyed to a point south of Ringgold, and on all the road from Cleveland to Knoxville. To these insurmountable difficulties were added the entire absence of means to cross the river, except by fording at a few precarious points too deep for artillery, and the wellknown danger of sudden rises, by which all communication would be cut off, a contingency which did actually happen a few days after the visionary scheme was proposed. But the most serious objection to the proposition was its entire want of military propriety. It abandoned to the enemy our entire line of communication, and laid open to him our depots of supplies, whilst it placed us with a greatly inferiour force beyond a difficult and, at times, impassable river, in a country affording no subsistence to men or animals. It also left open to the enemy, at a distance of only ten miles, our battle-field, with thousands of our wounded and his own and all the trophies and supplies we had won. All this was to be risked and given up for what? To gain the enemy's rear, and cut him off from his depot of supplies by the route over the mountains, when the very movement abandoned to his unmolested use the better and more practicable route of half the length on the south side of the river.

Our supplies

of all kinds were greatly reduced, the railroad having been constantly occupied in transporting troops, prisoners, and our wounded, and the bridges having been destroyed to a point two miles south of Ringgold. These supplies were ordered to be replenished, and as soon as it was seen that we could be subsisted, the army was moved forward to seize and hold the only communication the enemy had with his supplies in the rear. His important road, and the shortest by half to his depot at Bridgeport, lay along the south bank of the Tennessee. The holding of this all-important route was confided to Lieut.-Gen. Longstreet's command, and its possession forced the enemy to a road double the length, over two ranges of mountains, by wagon transportation. At the same time, our cavalry, in large force, was thrown across the river to operate on this long and difficult route. These dispositions, faithfully sustained, ensured the enemy's speedy evacuation of Chattanooga for want of food and forage. Possessed of the

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shortest road his depot and the one by which reinforcements must reach him, we held him at our mercy, and his destruction was only a question of time."

This was a bold statement of Bragg; but it seemed that for once a least his swollen boasts were to be realized, and the enemy at Chattanooga starved into surrender. Starvation or retreat stared in the face of the Army of the Cumberland; its supplies had to be dragged for sixty miles across the country and over abominable roads; and even if it ventured on retreat, it would have to abandon its artillery and most of its materiel. At this critical period, Gen. Rosecrans was relieved, Gen. Thomas succeeding him; and a few days afterwards, Gen. Grant arrived, having been placed in command of a military division, composed of the departments of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee, in which were the armies of Gens. Burnside, Thomas, and Sherman.

It was the first task of Grant to relieve Thomas in Chattanooga. Reinforced by Hooker with two corps, it was decided that this force should cross the Tennessee River at Bridgeport, making a lodgment on the south side of it, three miles below where Lookout Mountain abuts on the river-this movement being intended to open navigation to the ferry, thus shortening land transportation, and securing certain supplies to the Federal army.

Four thousand men were detailed to execute this movement. Fifty pontoons, carrying twelve hundred men, were floated on the night of the 26th October down the river, passing three miles in front of Longstreet's pickets, without drawing their attention. The alarm was not given until the enemy attempted a landing at the ferry; and another body of three thousand Federals, who had marched down to a concealed camp opposite, being quickly ferried across, the Confederates were forced back and compelled to retreat to Lookout Mountain. In less than forty hours a whole corps of the enemy was across the river. A portion of this force halted in a position plainly visible from Lookout Mountain; and a night attack on the 29th October was planned upon it by Longstreet, who hoped by a surprise to frustrate the entire movement, and to capture the whole of Hooker's wagon train. The attack failed from insufficient force; it was made with only six Confederate regiments, and was withdrawn after three hours' fighting with considerable loss. Grant's lodgment on the south side of the Tennessee was now assured; he was in firm possession of the new lines of communication; he had attained all the results he had anticipated; and his relief of Chattanooga was now to be taken as an accomplished fact.

But although the Federal army near Chattanooga had now no fears of starvation or retreat, Grant hesitated to assume the offensive against the strong positions in his front. Gen. Sherman had been ordered from the region of the Mississippi with four divisions; but before his arrival, Grant obtained the astounding news that Longstreet, with eleven thousand infantry, had been detached from Bragg's front (although the Confederates

were in momentary expectation of battle, already overmatched by numbers, and in the face of an enemy drawing reinforcements from every quarter), and that this veteran commander, with the best part of the army, had gone to Knoxville to attack Burnside, and with the visionary project of regaining East Tennessee, and perhaps through its gateways again penetrating Kentucky, and making the battle-ground of the Confederacy in this impossible country.

This extraordinary military movement was the work of President Davis, who seems, indeed, to have had a singular fondness for erratic campaigns. His visits to every battle-field of the Confederacy were ominous. He disturbed the plans of his generals; his military conceit led him into the wildest schemes; and so much did he fear that the public would not ascribe to him the hoped-for results of the visionary project, that his vanity invariably divulged it, and successes were foretold in public speeches with such boastful plainness, as to put the enemy on his guard and inform him of the general nature of the enterprise. On the 12th October President Davis visited the field of Chickamauga. He planned the expedition against Knoxville. He was in furious love with the extraordinary design, and in a public address to the army he could not resist the temptation of announcing that "the green fields of Tennessee would shortly again be theirs."

The announcement of this enterprise alone remained to determine Grant to attack. Burnside was instructed to lure Longstreet to Knoxville, and retire within his fortifications, where he could stand a protracted siege. Lookout Mountain had been evacuated by the Confederates, and Bragg had moved his troops up to the top of Missionary Ridge.

THE BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE.

On the 25th November, the enemy prepared for the grand assault, Sherman's force having come up, and occupied the northern extremity of Missionary Ridge. Hooker had scaled the rugged height of Lookout Mountain, and the Federal forces maintained an unbroken line, with open communications, from the north end of this dizzy eminence, through Cheat Valley, to the north end of Missionary Ridge. There were more than eighty thousand veteran troops in this formidable line. The Confederate army, numbering not half so many, had yet a position that should have decided the day. They held the crest of the ridge, from McFarlan's Gap almost to the mouth of the Chickamauga; the position was four to six hundred feet in elevation; and it had been strengthened by breastworks wherever the ascent was easy. The position was such that the enemy was

BATTLE OF MISSIONARY RIDGE.

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exposed to an artillery fire while in the plain, and to the infantry fire when he attempted the ascent of the hill or mountain.

The right wing of the Confederates was held by Hardee, with the divisions of Cleburne, Walker, Cheatham, and Stevenson. Breckinridge commanded on the left his old division, Stewart's, and part of Buckner's and Hindman's. The enemy's first assault was made upon Hardee, who repulsed it with great slaughter. The attack was made here by Sherman, and his bleeding columns staggered on the hill. A second attack on the Confederate left wing was ordered at noon, and repulsed. It was late in the afternoon, when, with an audacity wholly unexpected, Grant ordered a general advance of his lines to the crest of Missionary Ridge. As the Federal columns moved up at a rapid rate, in face of the batteries, whose illdirected and purposeless fire did not serve to check them, a brigade in the Confederate centre gave way, and in a few moments, what had been a regular and vigorous battle, became a disgraceful panic and an unmitigated rout. Never was a victory plucked so easily from a position so strong. Availing himself of the first gap in the Confederate line, the enemy turned upon their flanks, and poured into them a terrible enfilading fire, that scattered them in confusion. The day was shamefully lost. Gen. Bragg attempted to rally the broken troops; he advanced into the fire, and exclaimed, "Here is your commander," and was answered with the derisive shouts of an absurd catch-phrase in the army, "Here's your mule."

An army notoriously lacking confidence in their commander; made weak and suspicious by the detachment from it of Longstreet's veteran divisions; and utterly demoralized by one of Bragg's freaks of organization before the battle, in shuffling over all the commands, and putting the men under new officers, abandoned positions of great strength; broke into ▲ disorderly retreat from a line which might easily have been held against twice their numbers; and gave to the Confederacy what President Davis unwillingly pronounced "the mortification of the first defeat that had reFulted from misconduct by the troops."

The consequence of this disaster was that Gen. Bragg left in the hands of the enemy all of his strong positions on Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga Valley, and Missionary Ridge, and finally retired with his whole army to a position some twenty or thirty miles to the rear. His army was put in motion on the road to Ringgold, and thence to Dalton. Grant claimed as the fruits of his victory seven thousand prisoners, and forty-seven pieces of artillery.

LONGSTREET'S EXPEDITION AGAINST KNOXVILLE.

We have seen that in the beginning of November Longstreet had been

despatched by Bragg up the valley towards Knoxville, where Burnside was operating. A part of the army of the latter lay at Loudon, where Longstreet first struck and drove the enemy, capturing at Lenoir Station a train of eighty-five wagons, many of them loaded with valuable medical stores. At Bean Station he captured thirty wagons, a quantity of forage, and some horses; and in the Clinch Valley, forty other wagons, laden with sugar and coffee. Burnside continued to fall back upon Knoxville, but was overtaken at Campbell's Station on the 16th of November. Here he was severely pressed by Longstreet, who hoped to break the retreat into a rout. A running fight of two miles ensued, and Burnside reached Knoxville at daylight the next morning; Longstreet advancing, and laying regular siege to the place.

But while he was investing the place, news came of the great disaster at Missionary Ridge, and Longstreet, well understanding that Grant would now detach a column to relieve Knoxville, saw the necessity of quick work, and determined to risk an assault upon the place. On a hill near the Kingston road was a work, called Fort Sanders, which commanded the approaches to the town. It was a very strong work, and in front of it were felled trees, with the tops turning in all directions, and making an almost impassable mass of brush and timber. A space around the fort was cleared, and the ditch in front was about ten feet deep, with the parapet nearly twenty feet high.

In the morning of the 29th November, the assaulting column, consisting of three brigades of McLaw's division, moved up the slope, and was met by a heavy artillery fire, which fearfullly mowed down the advancing soldiers. Still onward they pushed, struggling through the network of fallen timber and other devices laid down to impede them. But, the intricate passage by which they had to mount, was too difficult for them easily to master. The foremost parties stumbled and fell over each other in confusion; at the same time the enemy's fire poured fiercer and fiercer on their heads. The embrasures of the fort, and the whole line of the parapet blazed forth at once. Nevertheless, this did not effectually stop the advance. Pushing on over every obstacle, they soon reached within pistol-shot of the fort; then, suddenly, the enemy's guns launched forth from every quarter, and the Confederate line was shattered. Some, however, managed to spring into the ditch, and clamber up the glacis, planting their flag almost side by side with the Federal colours. They were not supported, however, by the rest of the charging colunin; and the attack was withdrawn after a loss of some seven hundred in killed, wounded, and prisoners.

The assault having failed, and news of Sherman's approach from Chattanooga reaching him, Longstreet had no other alternative than to raise the siege, and occupy a new line of operations. He retreated towards Rut