by Shelby Foote
Whatever effect this may have had on the irascible general’s disposition, a look at the field by daylight quickly convinced him that his army was in no condition for the pursuit his chief subordinates were urging him to undertake. The dead of both sides, stiffened by now in agonized postures, and the wounded, many of them with their hurts yet untended, seemed to outnumber the unhit survivors, and while this was true in the case of a dozen regiments under Longstreet—who afterwards computed his losses at 44 percent—it was of course an exaggeration in the main, proceeding from shock at the grisly scene. The fact was that the two armies had suffered a combined total of nearly 35,000 casualties, and most of them were Bragg’s. Though the Federals had some 2500 more men killed and missing than the Confederates (6414, as compared to 3780) the latter had about 5000 more wounded (9756 in blue, 14,674 in gray) so that the butcher’s bill, North and South, came to 16,170 and 18,454 respectively. The combined total of 34,624 was exceeded only by the three-day slaughter at Gettysburg and by the week-long series of five battles known collectively as the Seven Days, in both of which considerably larger numbers of troops had been engaged. In all the other battles of the war so far—including Chancellorsville, which lasted one day longer and also involved about 50,000 more troops—the losses had been less than at Chickamauga, where they were greater by about 10,000 than at Shiloh, Second Manassas, or Murfreesboro, the three next bloodiest two-day confrontations. These statistics could not yet be broken down in any such manner, being as yet unknown, but they were suggested plainly enough by a tour of the field and a talk with unit commanders along the way. Nine Confederate generals had been killed or wounded, as compared to only one in the Federal ranks, and the loss of artillery horses, as a result of fighting at such close quarters, had been so heavy as to cripple that vital arm. “In one place down in the woods,” a soldier wrote of a walk he took that morning, “I counted sixteen big artillery horses lying in one heap. A little way off was another heap of twelve more. And that was the way it was all through there.” Without horses, Bragg could not haul his guns, and without guns he did not believe that his men could force Rossville Gap or assault the prepared defenses between there and Chattanooga. “How can I?” he replied to urgings that he press northward without delay. “Here is two-fifths of my army left on the field, and my artillery is without horses.” He still felt that way about it, some weeks later, when he touched on the matter in his official report of the campaign. “Any immediate pursuit by our infantry and artillery would have been fruitless,” he declared, “as it was not deemed practicable with our weak and exhausted force to assail the enemy, now more than double our numbers, behind his intrenchments.”
One who did not feel that way about it, then or later, was Bedford Forrest. Early that morning, pressing forward on his own with 400 troopers, the Tennessean charged an outpost detachment of Federals who fired one volley and fled so rapidly that their lookouts had no time to desend from an observation platform they had constructed in the top of a tree on the crest of Missionary Ridge. Forrest’s horse had been struck, a large artery severed in its neck, but the general staunched the spurt of blood by thrusting a finger into the bullet hole and thus gave chase. Pulling rein at last beneath the improvised tower atop the ridge, he withdrew his finger and dismounted before the animal collapsed, then summoned his prisoners down from their high perch, questioned them sharply, and climbed up to see for himself what he could see. That he could see a great deal—including the blue army, feverishly active in his front, and the gray army, immobile in his rear—was shown by a dispatch he dictated to a staff officer on the ground:
We are in a mile of Rossville. Have been on the point of Missionary Ridge. Can see Chattanooga and everything around. The enemy’s trains are leaving, going around the point of Lookout Mountain.
The prisoners captured report two pontoons thrown across [the Tennesee River] for the purpose of retreating.
I think they are evacuating as hard as they can go.
They are cutting timber down to obstruct our passage.
I think we ought to press forward as rapidly as possible.
The message was addressed to Polk, commander of the nearer wing, and ended with the words, “Please forward to Genl Bragg.” Anticipating the response he believed this information would provoke, Forrest continued his policy of “keeping up the scare” by penetrating to within three miles of Chattanooga from the south, meanwhile shifting his guns northward along the ridge to engage the batteries posted in close defense of the town below. All this time, according to one of his troopers, the general was “almost beside himself at the delay.” Finally he learned that the infantry would not be coming as he had advised; Bragg was holding it east of Missionary Ridge and near the railroad, shifting Polk to Chickamauga Station and army headquarters to Ringgold Bridge, while Longstreet remained in position to police the field and wait for McLaws, who arrived in the late afternoon with the rest of his division. Nettled by what seemed to him flagrant neglect of an opportunity gained at the cost of much suffering and bloodshed, Forrest rode back to protest in person, only to be told that the army could not move far from the railroad because of its critical lack of supplies. “General Bragg, we can get all the supplies our army needs in Chattanooga,” he replied. But this too was rejected: Bragg’s mind was quite made up. Forrest returned to his men, exasperated and outdone. “What does he fight battles for?” he fumed.
That was Monday. On Tuesday, unmolested even by Forrest, whose handful of troopers had been recalled, Rosecrans completed the concentration of his army within the Chattanooga defenses, and Bragg ordered the occupation of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, as well as the establishment of a line of posts across the valley that lay between them. By Wednesday, September 23, the date of the autumnal equinox, all of these abandoned points had been seized, and the Federal works, which rose and thickened hour by hour as shovels flashed along the intrenched perimeter, were under long-range fire from the surrounding heights. Three courses of action—or, rather, two of action and one of inaction—were open to the Confederates. 1.) They could attempt to turn the bluecoats out of their position by crossing the river above or below the town, thus gaining their rear and breaking their tenuous supply line. 2.) They could leave a small force to observe the enemy trapped in Chattanooga, and move with the greater part of the army against Burnside, who would then be obliged to evacuate Knoxville or fight against long odds. 3.) They could concentrate on the present investment, hoping to starve the defenders into surrender. Longstreet favored a combination of the first two—“The hunt was up and on the go,” he afterwards explained, “when any move toward [the enemy’s] rear was safe, and a speedy one encouraging of great results”—but Bragg, much to Old Peter’s disgust and over his vigorous objections, chose the third.
This was by no means as impractical as Longstreet seemed to think. By extending his left to include the crest of Raccoon Mountain, Bragg denied his adversary use of the rail and wagon roads not only on the south but also on the immediate north bank of the Tennessee, which lay well within reach of his high-sited batteries, and thus obliged Rosecrans to haul supplies from Stevenson and Bridgeport by a roundabout and barren route, first across the bridgeless Sequatchie River, then up and over Walden’s Ridge, and finally down to the steamboat landing opposite Chattanooga, a distance of some sixty tortuous miles which would become increasingly difficult when the fall rains set in and the mud deepened. Unwilling to leave the harassment entirely to the elements, Bragg on September 30, one week after getting his infantry and artillery into their interdictory positions, ordered Wheeler over the river on a raid. The diminutive Alabamian crossed next morning near Muscle Shoals with 4000 cavalry and eight guns, and on the following day he intercepted a train of 400 heavily loaded wagons at Anderson’s Crossroads, deep in the Sequatchie Valley. After burning the wagons and sabering the mules, he moved north to McMinnville, then west to Shelbyville, both of which he captured, together with their supply depots, which he destroye
d. By now, though, the rains had come in earnest and he was involved in a running fight with superior blue forces that converged upon him from all directions. Repulsed at Murfreesboro, he turned back south, losing four of his guns and more than a thousand of his men before he recrossed the Tennessee near Rogersville on October 9. Despite his considerable success in the execution of his mission—a Union observer afterwards declared that the disruptive and destructive strike was nearly fatal to the army besieged in Chattanooga—the cost had been high, and Wheeler did not suggest that he attempt another such raid, deep in the enemy rear. Nor did Bragg require one of him, apparently being content to watch and wait.
The fact was, he had troubles enough with his own supply lines, unmolested though they were, without concerning himself unduly about those across the way. No matter how hungry the bluecoats might be getting, down in the town, his own troops were convinced that they themselves were hungrier on the heights. “In all the history of the war,” a Tennessee infantryman was to write, “I cannot remember of more privation and hardships than we went through at Missionary Ridge.… The soldiers were starved and almost naked, and covered all over with lice and camp itch and filth and dirt. The men looked sick, hollow-eyed, and heart-broken, living principally upon parched corn which had been picked out of the mud and dirt under the feet of officers’ horses.” There was, as usual, much bitterness over Bragg’s apparent reluctance to gather the fruits of a victory they had won, but this time it was intensified by resentment of his attempts to shift the blame to other shoulders than his own. Within two days of the battle, with the army at last on the march, Polk had received a stiff note demanding an explanation of why his attack had been delayed on the morning of the 20th, and when his reply reached headquarters on the last day of September, Bragg pronounced it “unsatisfactory” and relieved the bishop of his command. Hindman received the same treatment for his conduct earlier that month at McLemore’s Cove, dispite his acknowledged contribution to the triumph that followed ten days later. Hill too came under fire from the army chieftain, who complained of his former lieutenant’s “critical, captious, and dictatorial manner,” as well as of his “want of prompt conformity to orders,” and recommended to Richmond that he be suspended, like the others, from duty with the Army of Tennessee.
All three were incensed: particularly the two lieutenant generals, who in point of fact had taken care to register their protests beforehand, after a secret meeting on September 26 with Longstreet, who outranked them both. Intent on doing to Bragg what he was about to do to them—that is, accomplish his removal—they urged Old Peter to join them, in his semi-independent capacity, in complaining to Richmond of their commander’s “palpable weakness and mismanagement manifested in the conduct of the military operations of this army.” Polk wrote privately to his friend the President along these lines, though not in time to forestall the blow which he described as “part of [Bragg’s] long-cherished purpose to avenge himself on me for the relief and support I have given him in the past.… The truth is, General Bragg has made a failure, notwithstanding the success of the battle, and he wants a scapegoat.” Figuratively, but with dignity, the bishop gathered his robes about him for the train ride to Atlanta, where he was sent to await the disposition of his case. “I feel a lofty contempt for his puny effort to inflict injury upon a man who has dry-nursed him for the whole period of his connection with him, and has kept him from ruining the cause of the country by the sacrifice of its armies.” So he complained in private, after the blow fell. But Longstreet had already made a stronger statement to the Secretary of War, adopting Prayer Book phraseology to add weight to his words. “Our chief has done but one thing that he ought to have done since I joined his army,” Old Peter informed Seddon on the day of his meeting with Polk and Hill. “That was to order the attack upon the 20th. All other things that he has done he ought not to have done. I am convinced that nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander.”
Such was the unhappy state of affairs in the Army of Tennessee, the men hungry and disgruntled and the generals bitterly resentful, on the morrow of what Longstreet, in his letter to Richmond, called “the most complete victory of the war—except, perhaps, the first Manassas,” he added, remembering past glory and gladder times.
Beyond the semicircular rim of earthworks, down in the town and off at the far end of the chain of command leading back to Washington, a scapegoat hunt was also under way. McCook and Crittenden had already been relieved, ostensibly for flight in time of danger, yet it had not escaped notice that the winner in the headlong race for safety was the man who consented to their removal. Stanton, for one, observed caustically that the two corps commanders had “made pretty good time away from the fight, but Rosecrans beat them both.”
Moreover, the reverse had come in sudden and sharp contrast to expectations Old Rosy himself had aroused. “The army is in excellent condition and spirits,” he had telegraphed soon after darkness ended the first day’s fighting, “and by the blessing of Providence the defeat of the enemy will be total tomorrow.” Lincoln did not like the sound of this, finding it reminiscent of Joe Hooker, and when he learned next evening that the army had been routed, he claimed to have foreseen such a turn of events. “Well, Rosecrans has been whipped, as I feared,” he said. “I have feared it for several days. I believe I feel trouble in the air before it comes.” Nor was the general’s immediate reaction of a kind to encourage hope that he would make an early recovery from the setback. “We have met with a serious disaster,” he notified Halleck soon after he reached Chattanooga; “extent not yet ascertained. Enemy overwhelmed us, drove our right, pierced our center, and scattered troops there.” Despite his own gloom, which was heavy, Lincoln tried to lift the Ohioan’s. “Be of good cheer,” he wired him late that night. “We have unabated confidence in you and in your soldiers and officers.… We shall do our utmost to assist you. Send us your present posting.” But the general, in his reply the following morning, gave no indication that he would attempt to stay in the town he had fallen back on. In fact, he expressed some doubt that he could do so, even if he tried: “Our loss is heavy and our troops worn down.… We have no certainty of holding our position here.” Such irresolution was disturbing in a commander. What was more, when the President asked him next day to “relieve my anxiety as to the position and condition of your army,” Rosecrans replied in effect that his faith was not so much in himself or his army as it was in Providence. “We are about 30,000 brave and determined men,” he wired; “but our fate is in the hands of God, in whom I hope.”
Lincoln soon emerged from his gloom. The important thing, as he saw it, was not that Rosecrans had been whipped at Chickamauga, but that he still held Chattanooga. As long as he did so, he could keep the Confederates out of Tennessee and also deny them use of one of their most important railroads. “If he can only maintain this position, without [doing anything] more,” the President told Halleck, “the rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in its vitals.” By now, after three days’ rest and no pursuit, Rosecrans had recovered a measure of his resolution. “We hold this point, and cannot be dislodged except by very superior numbers,” he wired on September 23, although he made it clear that this depended on “having all reinforcements you can send hurried up.” Lincoln had been doing his best in this respect, instructing Halleck to order troops to Chattanooga from Vicksburg and Memphis, while he himself undertook to prod Burnside into marching fast from Knoxville. When Burnside replied that he was just then closing in on Jonesboro, which lay in the opposite direction, the President lost his temper. “Damn Jonesboro,” he said testily, and returned to his efforts to get the ruff-whiskered general to swing west. This proved so difficult, however, that he decided in the end to leave him where he was, covering Knoxville; Rosecrans would have to be reinforced from elsewhere. And that same night, September 23, Lincoln met with Stanton, Halleck, Chase, and Seward, togethe
r with several lesser War Department officials, in an attempt to determine just where such reinforcements could be found.
Stanton, having heard that evening from Dana that the Army of the Cumberland, outnumbered, dejected, and under fire from the heights inclosing Chattanooga on the south and east, could not hold out for more than a couple of weeks unless it was promptly and substantially reinforced, had called the midnight conference to suggest a solution to the problem. Since Burnside apparently could not be budged, and since the troops ordered from Vicksburg and Memphis would have to make a slow overland march for lack of any means of transportation, the Secretary proposed that Rosecrans be sent a sizable portion of the Army of the Potomac, which could make the trip by rail. Lincoln and Halleck objected that this would prevent Meade from taking the offensive, but Stanton replied: “There is no reason to expect General Meade will attack Lee, although greatly superior in force, and his great numbers where they are are useless. In five days 30,000 could be put with Rosecrans.” The President doubted this last, offering to bet that no such number of men could even be brought to Washington within that span of time. Still, it was clear that something had to be done, and when Seward and Chase sided with their fellow cabinet member Lincoln allowed himself to be persuaded. Unless Meade intended to launch an immediate offensive, two of his corps would be detached at once and sent to Chattanooga. These would be Howard’s and Slocum’s, and they would be commanded by Joe Hooker, who was conveniently at hand and unemployed. Aside from this reduction of the force proposed and this choice of a leader, which rather galled him, Stanton was given full charge of the transfer operation, with instructions to arrange it as he saw fit. He flew into action without delay. The meeting broke up at about 2 o’clock in the morning, and at 2.30 he got off a wire to Meade, directing him to have the two corps ready to load aboard northbound trains by nightfall, and another to Dana, informing him that the reinforcements would be sent. “[We] will have them in Nashville in five or six days from today,” he declared, “with orders to push on immediately wherever General Rosecrans wants them.”