The Civil War a Narrative Part 16

So it went; so it had gone all day. Despite his show of heartiness, what he mainly communicated was his confusion in attempting to follow a battle which, as he said, was "fought altogether in a thick forest, invisible to outsiders." In that sense, even the army commander was an outsider. Except for a rearward trickle of reports, most of them about as disconcerted as Dana's to Stanton, no one at headquarters could do much more than guess at what was happening in the smoky woods beyond the LaFayette Road. Rosecrans tried for a time, with the help of Mrs Glenn, to follow the progress of the fight by ear. She would make a guess, when a gun was heard, that it was "nigh out about Reed's Bridge" or "about a mile fornenst John Kelly's house," and he would try to match this information with the place names on the map. But it was a far from satisfactory procedure, for a variety of reasons. The map was a poor one in the first place, and after a while the roar was practically continuous all along the front. A reporter thought he had never witnessed "anything so ridiculous as this scene" between Old Rosy and the widow. Presently, when Stewart's men broke through the Federal center, she had to be removed to a place of greater safety, but Rosecrans, "fairly quivering with excitement," continued to pace back and forth, rubbing his palms rapidly together as the sound of firing swelled and quickened. "Ah! there goes Brannan!" he exclaimed with obvious satisfaction. He might have been right; besides, the noise was about all he had to go on; but it did not seem to the reporter that the general understood the situation any better than the departed countrywoman had done. Still, he kept pacing and exclaiming, perhaps in an attempt to ease the tension on his nerves and keep his spirits up. "Ah-there goes Brannan!" he would say; or, "That's Negley going in!"

Out on the line, when darkness finally put an end to the long day's fighting, the troops had a hard time of it. "How we suffered that night no one knows," a veteran was to recall. "Water could not be found; the rebels had possession of the Chickamauga, and we had to do without. Few of us had blankets and the night was very cold. All looked with anxiety for the coming of the dawn; for although we had given the enemy a rough handling, he had certainly used us very hard."

Under such conditions, despite much loss of sleep both nights before, work on the construction of breastworks was welcome as a means of keeping warm, as well as a diversion from thoughts of tomorrow. For Rosecrans, however, there could be no release from the latter; it was his job. He could take pride in the fact that his line, though obliged to yield an average mile of ground throughout its length today, was not only intact but was also considerably shorter than it had been when this morning's contest opened. Then too, word had come that Halleck at last was doing all he could to speed reinforcements to North Georgia; urgent appeals had gone from Was.h.i.+ngton to Burnside and Grant, at Knoxville and in Mississippi, directing them to send troops to Chattanooga in all haste, and similar messages had been dispatched to Hurlbut at Memphis, Schofield in Missouri, and John Pope in far-off Minnesota. It was a comfort to Rosecrans to know that in time there would be these supports to fall back on. Meanwhile, though, he had to fight with what he had on hand, and he was by no means sure that this would be enough, since prisoners had been taken from no less than a dozen regiments known to have arrived just yesterday from Virginia. How many others had come or were arriving tonight he did not know, for the captives were nearly as close-mouthed under interrogation as the Texas captain had been this afternoon, but intelligence officers had little trouble identifying these "Virginians" by their standard gray uniforms, which were in natty contrast to the "go-as-you-please" garments worn in the western armies. Occasionally, too, a sc.r.a.p of information could be extracted by goading the prisoners into anger. "How does Longstreet like the western Yankees?" one was asked in a mocking tone, and he replied with a growl: "You'll get enough of Longstreet before tomorrow night."

This might be nothing more than wishful rebel thinking. On the other hand it might be an informed and accurate prediction. At any rate, whichever it was, Rosecrans decided-as he had done under similar circ.u.mstances on New Year's Eve almost nine months ago-that he would do well to call a council of war for the triple purpose of briefing his princ.i.p.al subordinates on the over-all situation, of obtaining their recommendations as to a proper course of action, and of enabling him, at some later date, to s.h.i.+ft at least a share of the blame in event of a defeat. Besides, he had a natural fondness for conference discussions, especially late-at-night ones, whether the subject was strategy or religion. The council accordingly convened at headquarters at 11 o'clock that evening. Most of those present, including the three corps commanders, had attended the conference held at the close of the first day's fighting in the last great battle; the difference was in the staff. "Poor Garesche," as Rosecrans had referred to the previous chief of staff after his head was blown off by a cannonball, had been replaced in January by Brigadier General James A. Garfield, a thirty-two-year-old former Ohio schoolteacher, lawyer, lay preacher, and politician, whose warm handclasp seemed to one observer to convey the message, "Vote early. Vote right," and whose death, at the hands of an a.s.sa.s.sin who voted both early and right and then failed to get the appointment to which he believed this ent.i.tled him, would occur exactly eighteen years from today, partly as a direct result of what was going to happen here tomorrow. Big-headed, with pale eyes and a persuasive manner-like Hooker, he was a protege of Secretary Chase's, and up to now his most notable service in the war had been as a member of the court-martial that convicted Fitz-John Porter-Garfield opened the council by displaying for the a.s.sembled generals a map with the positions of all the Union divisions indicated, along with those of the Confederates so far as they were known; after which Rosecrans called for individual opinions as to what was to be done. McCook and Crittenden-the Ohioan, according to an obviously unfriendly fellow officer, had "a weak nose that would do no credit to a baby" and a grin that gave rise to "suspicion that he is either still very green or deficient in the upper story," while the Kentuckian was characterized more briefly as "a good drinker," one of those men, fairly common in the higher echelons of all armies, who "know how to blow their own horns exceedingly well"-had little to contribute in the way of advice, each perhaps being somewhat chagrined by the loss of one of his three divisions, detached that morning to reinforce the left, and somewhat subdued by the near-destruction of one of his remaining two in the course of the afternoon. Not so Thomas, who differed as much from them in outlook, or anyhow in the emphatic expression of his outlook, as he did in appearance. Ponderous and phlegmatic, he was described by another observer as "not scrimped anywhere, and square everywhere-square face, square shoulders, square step; blue eyes with depths in them, withdrawn beneath a pent-house of a brow, features with legible writing on them, and the whole giving the idea of ma.s.sive solidity, of the right kind of man to 'tie to.' " Though he slept through much of the conference-not only because it was his custom (he had done the same at Stones River) but also because he had spent the last two nights on the march and most of today under heavy attack-he repeated the same words whenever he was called on for a tactical opinion: "I would strengthen the left." But when Rosecrans replied, as he did each time, "Where are we going to take it from?" there was no answer; Thomas would be back asleep by then, propped upright in his chair.

At the council held nine months ago in the rain-lashed cabin beside the Nashville pike, the discussion had centered mainly on whether the army should retreat; but here tonight, in the small log house on the field of Chickamauga, the word was used only in connection with the rebels. The decision, committed to paper for distribution as soon as it was reached, was that the Federals would hold their ground. Unless Bragg withdrew under cover of darkness-there was some conjecture that he might, though it was based more on hope than on tangible evidence, of which there was not a shred that indicated a change in his clear intention to destroy them-they would offer him battle tomorrow, on the same terms as today. At this late hour, in point of fact, that seemed not only the bravest but also the safest thing to do, considering the risk a retreating army would run of being caught, trains and all, strung out on the roads leading back through Rossville and McFarland's gaps to Chattanooga, which was a good ten miles from the Widow Glenn's. There would be minor readjustments, though not of Granger's three-brigade reserve force, which was instructed to remain where it was, covering Rossville Gap and holding that escape hatch open in case of a collapse. To lessen the chances of this last, which would be most likely to occur as a result of a rebel breakthrough, Rosecrans directed that his ten-division line of battle along the LaFayette Road was to be strengthened by further contraction. Thomas would hold his five divisions in their present intrenched position on the left, and McCook would move his two northward to connect with Negley's division, on Thomas's right, while Crittenden withdrew his two for close-up support of the center or a rapid s.h.i.+ft in whichever direction they were needed, north or south. When all this had been discussed and agreed on, Garfield put it in writing and read it back, and when this in turn had been approved it was pa.s.sed to the headquarters clerks for copying. By now it was midnight. While the generals were waiting for the clerks to finish their task, Rosecrans provided coffee for a social interlude, the princ.i.p.al feature of which was a soulful rendition by "the genial, full-stomached McCook," as one reporter called him, of a plaintive ballad ent.i.tled "The Hebrew Maiden."

Possibly Thomas slept through this as well; possibly not. In any event, it was 2 o'clock in the morning before he returned to his position on the left, where he found a report awaiting him from Baird, who warned that his division, posted on the flank, could not be extended all the way to the Reed's Bridge road, as ordered, and still be strong enough to hold if it was struck again by anything like the twilight blow that had sent it reeling for more than a mile until darkness ended the fighting. Thomas made a quick inspection by moonlight and arrived at the same conclusion, then sent a message back to headquarters, explaining the trouble and requesting that Negley, who had been halted and thrown in to sh.o.r.e up the crumbling center while on his way to the left that afternoon, be ordered to resume his northward march and rejoin his proper corps, the critical outer flank of which was in danger of being crushed for lack of support or turned for lack of troops to extend it. Rosecrans promptly agreed by return messenger, as he had done to all such specific requests from his senior corps commander; Negley would march at dawn. Rea.s.sured, Thomas at last bedded down under a large oak, one of whose protruding roots afforded a pillow for his head, and there resumed the sleep that had been interrupted, if not by McCook's singing, then at any rate by the breakup of the council of war, some time after midnight.

He woke to Sunday's dawn, already impatient for Negley's arrival. The sun came up blood red through the morning haze and the smoke of yesterday's battle, which still hung about the field. "It is ominous," the chief of staff was saying, back at the Widow Glenn's, as he pointed dramatically at the rising sun. "This will indeed be a day of blood." Thomas needed no sign to tell him that, but he was growing increasingly anxious about his unsupported flank, which the army commander had a.s.sured him would be reinforced without delay. The sun rose higher. Presently it was a full hour above the land-line, and still Negley had not arrived. Rosecrans himself came riding northward about this time, however, and though his face was drawn and puffy from strain and lack of sleep, he spoke encouragingly as he drew rein from point to point along the line. "Fight today as well as you did yesterday," he told his troops, "and we shall whip them!" This had a somewhat mixed effect. "I did not like the way he looked," a soldier later recalled, "but of course felt cheered, and did not allow myself to think of any such thing as defeat."

5.

Bragg and his staff were up and mounted before daylight, waiting for the roar of guns that would signal Polk's compliance with his orders, received in person the night before, "to a.s.sail the enemy on our extreme right at day-dawn of the 20th." Perhaps by now, after the repeated frustrations of the past two weeks, the Confederate commander might have been expected to accept delay, if not downright disobedience, as more or less standard procedure on the part of his ranking subordinates-particularly Polk and Hill, the wing and corps commanders directly in charge of the troops who would open the attack-but such was not the case. Even if he had learned to expect it, he had by no means learned to take it calmly. Three months later, when he submitted his official account of the battle, his anger was still apparent. "With increasing anxiety and disappointment," he wrote then, "I waited until after sunrise without hearing a gun, and at length dispatched a staff officer to Lieutenant General Polk to ascertain the cause of the delay and urge him to a prompt and speedy movement."

By the time the aide located Polk, delivered the message, and returned, the sun was more than an hour high and Bragg's impatience had been mounting with it. Not a gun had yet been fired, and across the way the Yankees were hard at work improving by daylight the breastworks they had constructed in the darkness. The thought of this was enough to sour a far sweeter disposition than Bragg would ever be able to lay claim to. Moreover, what the staff officer had to report on his return brought his chief's wrath to what might be called full flower. He had found the bishop, he declared, "at a farm house three miles from the line of his troops, about one hour after sunrise, sitting on the gallery reading a newspaper and waiting, as he said, for his breakfast." Hearing this, Bragg did something rare for him. He cursed-"a terrible exclamation," the aide termed the outburst-then rode to Polk's headquarters, intending no doubt to rebuke the wing commander in person, but found that he had just left for the front, remarking as he did so: "Do tell General Bragg that my heart is overflowing with anxiety for the attack. Overflowing with anxiety, sir."

It was close to 8 o'clock by then, better than two hours past the hour scheduled for an advance on the far right, and Bragg learned from one of the bishop's aides, who had remained behind, something of what had caused the mix-up and delay. Hill had not only failed to find army headquarters last night; he had also failed to locate Polk, who in turn had been unable to find him. As a result, unlike Cheatham and Walker, who had reported to headquarters the evening before, Hill had neither received his orders to attack nor been led to suspect that Bragg or anyone else had any such plans in mind for the two divisions on the northern flank. Learning of this for the first time from the courier who returned that morning from an unsuccessful all-night search for Hill, Polk sent orders directly to Breckinridge and Cleburne, bypa.s.sing the fugitive corps commander, for them to "move and attack the enemy as soon as you are in position." Hill was with them when the message was delivered, and when they protested that their men were not only not "in position," but had not had time to eat their morning rations, he backed them up with a note in which he blandly informed the wing commander that it would be "an hour or so" before the two divisions would be ready to go forward. It was this reply, received at about 7.30, that had caused the bishop-whose overflowing heart by now outweighed his empty stomach-to interrupt his breakfast on the farmhouse gallery, or perhaps not even wait any longer for it to be served, and set out instead for the front and a conference with Hill.

Bragg got there first, however, apparently by taking a shorter route. Trailed by his staff, he rode up to where Hill had established headquarters between Breckinridge and Cleburne, whose troops had still not been placed in attack formation and were just now being fed. When Bragg inquired testily why he had not attacked at daylight in accordance with last night's order, Hill replied coolly and with obvious satisfaction, as he afterwards recalled, "that I was hearing then for the first time that such an order had been issued and had not known whether we were to be the a.s.sailants or the a.s.sailed." Bragg's anger and impatience had no discernible effect on him whatever. He would not be hurried. Miffed at having been cast in a role subordinate to that of the other two lieutenant generals, who had been made wing commanders while all he had under him was the corps he had brought onto the field, he was unmistakably determined, in the words of a later observer, "to a.s.sert to the limit what authority he retained." Soon Polk arrived, but neither he nor Bragg, scarcely on speaking terms by now with one another, was able to get their fellow North Carolinian to hurry things along; Hill's claim was that he could scarcely be held responsible for not obeying instructions that had not reached him. He took his time, and what was more he saw to it that his two division commanders took theirs as well. The troops were aligned punctiliously under cover of the woods, and all was reported ready, down to the final round in the final cartridge box, before Hill gave the nod that sent Breckinridge forward at 9.30, followed within fifteen minutes by Cleburne on his left, a full four hours past the time Bragg had set for the attack to open on the far right of the army.

Across the way, Rosecrans too had been having his troubles during the long delay, and though he began the day in a frame of mind that seemed cheerful enough for a man who had had but little sleep to ease the built-up tension on his nerves, he completely lost his temper before he returned to headquarters from his early morning ride along his still-contracting line of battle. Greeted by Thomas when he reached the left, he found him in high spirits over his successful resistance to yesterday's frantic rebel attempts to drive him from the field. "Whenever I touched their flanks they broke, General; they broke!" he exclaimed. In point of fact, as the long silence continued on through sunrise and beyond, it had become increasingly apparent that they had learned their lesson; they seemed to want no more of it today. Still, it was strange to see the phlegmatic Virginian display such exuberance, even though it lasted only until he spotted a newsman riding with the staff; whereupon he flushed and withdrew at once into the habitual reserve which he used as a s.h.i.+eld between himself and such people. He spoke instead of possible danger to his left. Scouts had reported that the Confederates, out beyond the screening woods and thickets, were continuing to s.h.i.+ft in that direction. "You must move up, too, as fast as they do," Rosecrans told him. Thomas agreed, but he also pointed out that this required more troops. There was the rub; Negley had not arrived. Rosecrans a.s.sured him that Negley was on the way by now, for he himself had seen to it in the course of his ride north along the line. Thomas was relieved to hear this, though he repeated that he would not consider his flank secure until reinforcements got there to extend and sh.o.r.e it up.

But when the Union commander rode back south, retracing his steps but not stopping now for speeches, he found to his chagrin that the reinforcements he had just a.s.sured Thomas were already on their way had not budged from their position in the center, where he had left them an hour ago with orders to march north. However, Negley had an excellent reason for his apparent insubordination. McCook still had not closed the gap created by Crittenden's withdrawal in compliance with last night's instructions, so that if Negley had pulled out in turn, as ordered, he would have left a mile-wide hole in the Federal center; which plainly, at a time when an all-out rebel a.s.sault was expected at any minute almost anywhere along the front, would not do. Nettled-as well he might be, for the sun was two hours high by now-Rosecrans hurried rearward and told Crittenden to return Wood's division to the line in place of Negley's, which then could be released to join Thomas, two miles away on the unsh.o.r.ed northern flank. Next he rode south in search of McCook, whose slowness was at the root of the present trouble. Finding him, he stressed the need for haste and an early end to the grumbling confusion into which his two divisions had been thrown by a renewal of their sidling movement toward the left. All this time, though only by the hardest, Old Rosy had managed to keep a grip on his temper. But when he returned to the center and found Negley still in position, with Wood nowhere in sight, he lost it entirely. Pausing only long enough to order Negley to send one of his three brigades to Thomas at once, even though no replacements had arrived, he galloped rearward and presently came upon Wood, who was conferring with his staff about the unexpected and still pending movement back into line. "What is the meaning of this, sir?" Rosecrans barked at him. "You have disobeyed my specific orders. By your d.a.m.nable negligence you are endangering the safety of the entire army, and by G.o.d I will not tolerate it! Move your division at once, as I have instructed, or the consequences will not be pleasant for yourself." Wood, a forty-year-old Kentuckian, flushed at being upbraided thus in the presence of his staff, but as a West Pointer, a regular army man, and a veteran of all the army's fights, from s.h.i.+loh on, he knew better than to protest. Choking back his resentment, he saluted and put his three brigades in motion.

The lead brigade was just coming into line, at about 9.45, when an uproarious clatter broke out on the far left, fulfilling Thomas's prediction that his would be the flank the rebels would a.s.sault. From the sound of it, as heard by Rosecrans at the Widow Glenn's, to which he had returned after venting his spleen in the encounter with Wood, they were putting in all they had.

They were indeed putting in all they had at that end of the line: not all at once, however, as the sudden eruption seemed to indicate by contrast with the silence which it shattered, but rather in a series of divisional attacks, as Bragg had ordered. Breckinridge struck first, on the far right. Though his left brigade came up against the north end of the mile-long curve of breastworks and was involved at once in an unequal fire fight, standing in the open to swap volleys with an adversary under cover, the other two found no such obstacle in their path. Thomas had prolonged his line by s.h.i.+fting one of Johnson's brigades from his center, and the brigade detached in haste from Negley had just arrived to extend the left still farther, but there had not been time enough for felling trees, much less for the heavy task of snaking and staking the trunks into position to fight behind. As a result, the two gray brigades advancing southward down the LaFayette Road met and fought the two blue ones on equal terms, first with a stand-up exchange of volleys, face to face, and then, as the defenders began to waver, with a charge that drove them rearward in a rush. However, Thomas had made good use of the time afforded him by the delaying action. Two more brigades were at hand by then, one from Brannan, which he brought over from his right, and one from Van Cleve, which Rosecrans had sent double-timing to the left when the attack first exploded in that direction. Together they stalled the advance of the jubilant graybacks, and then with the help of the other two brigades, which rallied when the pressure was relieved, drove them back northward, restoring the flank that had crumbled under a.s.sault. There was, of course, the danger that they might be reinforced to try again in greater strength; in which case Thomas would be hard put to find reinforcements of his own, for Cleburne's attack had been launched by now, due south of and adjoining Breckinridge, with such persistent savagery that not a man could be spared from the close-up defense of the long line of breastworks in order to meet a new threat to the left. All Thomas could do was continue what he had been doing ever since he reached the field; that is, call on Rosecrans for more troops from the right and center, which had been stripped to less than four divisions, as compared to the more than six already concentrated here.

Events would show that this was rather beside the point, however, for though the old one would continue with much of its original fury all morning, there was not going to be any new end-on threat to the Union left. Bragg had called for a definite series of attacks, beginning on his far right and continuing in sequence down the full length of his line, and neither Polk nor Hill (if, indeed, they were even aware of the Chancellorsville-like opportunity-which apparently they were not) was in any frame of mind to make suggestions, let alone appeals, to a commander who was already in a towering rage because his instructions had not been followed to the letter. Instead, they continued to hammer unrelentingly at the long southward curve of enemy breastworks, encouraged from time to time by reports such as one sent back by Brigadier General Lucius Polk, the bishop's thirty-year-old nephew, whose brigade of Cleburne's division smashed through the Federal outpost works, just in front of the center of the bulge, and drove the blue pickets back on their main line of resistance. Elated, he turned in mid-career to an officer on his staff. "Go back and tell the old general," he said, meaning his uncle, "that we have pa.s.sed two lines of breastworks; that we have got them on the jump, and I am sure of carrying the main line." By the time this reached the wing commander, who was conferring with Cheatham, the brigade had been repulsed. But that was no part of the report, and Polk was as elated by the message as his nephew had been when he gave it to the aide. "General," he told Cheatham, "move your division and attack at once." The Tennessean, who had ma.s.sed his five brigades in antic.i.p.ation of the order, was prompt to comply. "Forward, boys, and give them h.e.l.l!" he shouted, much as he had done nine months ago at Murfreesboro, and the bishop approved now, as he had then, of the spirit if not of the words his friend had chosen to express it. "Do as General Cheatham says, boys!" he called after the troops as they moved out.

But Cheatham had no greater success than Hill had had before him. His men went up to within easy range of the breastworks, which seemed to burst into flame at their approach, then recoiled, all in one quick involuntary movement like that of a hand testing the heat of a still-hot piece of metal. Walker's two divisions, held in reserve till then, had much the same reaction when they were committed at about 10.45, shortly after Cheatham had been repulsed. By now the entire right wing was engaged, including Forrest's dismounted hors.e.m.e.n, who went in with Breckinridge. "What infantry is that?" Hill asked in the course of a tour of inspection on the right. He had never seen troops like these in the East. "Forrest's cavalry," he was told. Presently, when Forrest himself came riding back to meet him, the North Carolinian removed his hat in salutation. "General Forrest," he said, "I wish to congratulate you and those brave men moving across that field like veteran infantry upon their magnificent behavior. In Virginia I made myself extremely unpopular with the cavalry because I said that so far I had not seen a dead man with spurs on. No one could speak disparagingly of such troops as yours." Whether the Tennessean blushed at this high praise could not be told, for in battle his face always took on the color of heated bronze. "Thank you, General," he replied, then wheeled his horse and with a wave of his hand galloped back into the thick of the fight that had excited Hill's admiration.

At no one point along the Confederate right had the issue been pressed to its extremity by the ma.s.s commitment of reserves to achieve a breakthrough. Rather, the pressure had been equally heavy on all points at once, as if what Bragg intended to accomplish was not so much a penetration as a cataclysm, a total collapse of the whole Union left, like that of a dam giving way to an unbearable weight of water. This was in fact what he was after, and at times it seemed to some among the defenders that he was about to get it. "The a.s.saults were repeated with an impetuosity that threatened to overwhelm us," according to John Palmer, whose division was on loan to Thomas from Crittenden. Except on the extended flank, however, where there had been no time to throw up breastworks, casualties had been comparatively light for the Federals, who were protected by the stout log barricade they had constructed overnight and improved during the four daylight hours which Hill's delay had afforded them this morning. It was not so for the attackers; their losses had been heavy everywhere. "The rebs charged in three distinct lines," an Ohio captain wrote, "but each time they charged they were driven back with fearfully decimated ranks." Some measure of the truth of this was shown in the loss of those who led the frantic charges. Breckinridge, Cleburne, and Gist each had a brigade commander killed or mortally wounded in the course of this one hour: Brigadier Generals Ben Hardin Helm, who had married Mary Lincoln's youngest sister and recently succeeded to command of the Orphan Brigade, and James Deshler, who had been exchanged, promoted, and transferred east after his discomfiture by Sherman at Arkansas Post, and Colonel Peyton Colquitt, who had taken over Gist's brigade when that general was put in charge of the division Walker brought from Mississippi. Moreover, another of Breckinridge's brigadiers, Daniel W. Adams, an accident-p.r.o.ne or perhaps merely unlucky Kentucky-born Louisianan who had lost an eye at s.h.i.+loh and been severely wounded again at Murfreesboro, was shot from his horse and captured when the attack that crumpled the Union flank was repulsed by reinforcements whose arrival was unmatched by any of his own. It had gone that way, with varying degrees of success, but nowhere with complete success, all along the front of the Confederate right wing. Still, with the evidence of the casualty lists before him, Bragg could scarcely complain of any lack of determination in the fighting, no matter how disappointed he was at the outcome so far of his attempt to smash Old Rosy's left as a prologue to rolling up his entire line and packing it southward into McLemore's Cove for destruction.

By 11 o'clock all five of Polk's divisions had been committed. Now Longstreet's turn had come. Bragg pa.s.sed the word for Stewart to go in, and in he went, driving hard for the enemy breastworks at the point where they curved back to the LaFayette Road immediately opposite his position on the right of the Confederate left wing.

There Reynolds was posted, with Brannan on his right, one east and the other west of the road, the latter having pulled his division back about a hundred yards in order to take advantage of the cover afforded by some heavy woods in rear of a cleared field which would have been much harder to defend. Stewart hit them both, attacking with all the fury of yesterday, when he had shattered the blue line half a mile to the south and penetrated to within sight of the Widow Glenn's before he was expelled. Today, though, there were breastworks all along the front, and he achieved nothing like his previous success. He was, in fact, flung back before he made contact, just as most of Polk's attackers had been, and had to be content, like them, with laying down a ma.s.s of fire that seemed to have little effect on the defenders beyond obliging them to keep their heads down between shots. There was, however, a good deal more to it than that, even though the result would not be evident for a while. What Stewart mainly accomplished was a further encouragement of Thomas's conviction that Bragg was throwing everything he had at the Union left, and this caused the Virginian to intensify his appeal for still more troops from the right and center, an appeal that had been communicated practically without letup, ever since the first attack exploded on his flank, by a steady procession of couriers who came to headquarters with messages warning that the left would surely be overwhelmed if it was not strengthened promptly.

Rosecrans still was quite as willing to do this as he had been earlier, when he said flatly that Thomas would be sustained in his present position "if he has to be reinforced by the entire army." In point of fact, that was what it was fast coming to by now. Shortly after 10 o'clock, with Van Cleve's remaining brigades already on their way north, McCook had been told to alert his troops for a rapid march to the left "at a moment's warning," and half an hour later the order came, directing him to send two of Sheridan's brigades at once and to follow with the third as soon as the corps front had been contracted enough for Davis to hold it alone. This would put eight divisions on the left, under Thomas, and leave only two on the right, one under Crittenden and one under McCook, but Rosecrans was preparing to send still more in that direction if they were needed. His calculations-"Where are we going to take it from?"-were interrupted at this point, however, by another of Thomas's couriers, a staff captain who, in addition to the accustomed plea for reinforcements, brought alarming news of something he had observed (or failed to observe) in the course of his ride from the left. Pa.s.sing in rear of Reynolds, he had not seen Brannan's troops in the woods to the south; consequently, he reported "Brannan out of line and Reynolds' right exposed." The same opinion, derived from the same mistake, was expressed in stronger terms by another Thomas aide, who arrived on the heels of the captain and declared excitedly that there was "a chasm in the center," between the divisions of Reynolds and Wood, who had replaced Negley in the position on Brannan's right. Apparently convinced by the independent testimony of two eyewitnesses, Rosecrans did not take time to check on a report which, if true, scarcely allowed time for anything but attempting to repair an extremely dangerous error before it was discovered and exploited by the rebels. Instead, he turned to a staff major-Garfield, he later explained, "was deeply engaged in another matter"-and told him to send an order to Wood at once, correcting the situation. The major did so, heading the message 10.45 a.m.

Brigadier General Wood, Commanding Division: The general commanding directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible, and support him. Respectfully, &c.

FRANK S. BOND, Major and Aide-de-Camp.

Wood received it at 10.55, barely more than an hour after the vigorous dressing-down Old Rosy had given him for slowness in obeying a previous order. This time he did not delay execution, although there was a degree of contradiction in the terms "close up on" and "support." Nor did he take time to find and confer with Crittenden, who had been bypa.s.sed as if in emphasis of the need for haste expressed in the phrase, "as fast as possible." McCook happened to be with him, though, when the message was delivered, and on receiving his a.s.surance that Davis would sidle northward to fill the gap that would be left, the Kentuckian promptly began the s.h.i.+ft the order seemed to require. There being no way to close on Reynolds without going around Brannan, who was in position on Reynolds' right, Wood did just that. He pulled his division straight back out of line and set out, across Brannan's rear, for the hookup with Reynolds. Riding ahead to scout the route, he encountered Thomas, told him of the order, and asked where his brigades should be posted in compliance. To his surprise, Thomas declared that Reynolds was in no need of support-he and Brannan had just repulsed Stewart without much trouble-but that Baird needed it badly, up at the far end of the line. Wood said that he was willing to go there if Thomas would take the responsibility for changing his instructions, and when the Virginian, duly thankful for a windfall that had plumped a full division of reinforcements into his empty lap, replied that he would gladly do so, Wood rode back to pa.s.s the word to his brigade commanders.

That was how it came about that in attempting to fill a gap that did not exist, Rosecrans created one; created, in fact, what Thomas's overexcited aide had referred to, half an hour ago, as "a chasm in the center." The aide had been mistaken then, but his words were now an accurate description of what lay in the path of Longstreet, who was preparing, under cover across the way, to launch an all-out a.s.sault directly upon the quarter-mile stretch of breastworks Wood's departure had left unmanned.

Old Peter had followed the progress of the fight with mounting dissatisfaction. Up to now, the piecemeal nature of the attacks had given the battle an all-too-familiar resemblance to Gettysburg, and he wanted no more of that than he could possibly avoid. At 11 o'clock, with Polk's wing unsuccessfully committed, he ventured a suggestion to the army commander, of whom he had seen nothing since the night before, "that my column of attack could probably break the enemy's line if he cared to have it go in." In referring thus to his entire wing as a "column of attack," he was recommending that the attack in echelon, which in alley-fight terms amounted to crowding and shoving and clawing and slapping, be abandoned in favor of a combined a.s.sault, which amounted in those same terms to delivering one hard punch with a clenched fist. Just then, however, Stewart moved out alone on direct orders from Bragg, who had thrown caution to the winds-and science, too-by sending word for all the division commanders to go forward on their own in a frantic, headlong, unco-ordinated effort to overrun the Federal defenses. This was altogether too much for Longstreet. Though his admiration for the naked valor of the Confederate infantry was as large as any man's, he had recently seen the South's greatest single bid for victory turned into its worst defeat by a similar act of desperation in Pennsylvania, and he was determined not to have the same thing happen here in his home state if he could help it. He rode to the front at once to restrain Hood, whom he knew to be impetuous, from committing his corps before all three of his divisions, Johnson's and Law's and Kershaw's, were ma.s.sed to strike as a unit, together with Hindman's on his left.

He got there just in time; Hood already had Johnson deployed, with Law in close support, and was about to take them forward. Longstreet had him wait for Kershaw, who formed a third line behind Law, and for Hindman, who dressed in a double line on Johnson, extending the front southward for a total width of half a mile. With Stewart engaged on Hood's right and Preston held in reserve on Hindman's left, Old Peter thus had four of his six divisions, eleven of his seventeen brigades, and some 16,000 of his 25,000 soldiers ma.s.sed for the delivery of his clenched-fist blow. This was roughly half again more than he had had for the "charge" on the third day at Gettysburg, and not only were the troops in better condition here in Georgia than the ones had been in Pennsylvania, where four of the nine brigades had been shot to pieces in earlier actions, but they also had less than half as far to go before making contact, as well as excellent concealment during most of their approach. Longstreet apparently had no doubt whatsoever that the attack would be successful. Earlier that morning, speaking with what Hood described as "that confidence which had so often contributed to his extraordinary success," he had a.s.sured the tawny-bearded young man "that we would of course whip and drive [the Yankees] from the field," and Hood said afterwards: "I could not but exclaim that I was rejoiced to hear him so express himself, as he was the first general I had met since my arrival who talked of victory." However, for all his confidence, Old Peter did not forget the dangers that lurk in military iotas. He saw to it, in person and with the help of his staff, that his preliminary instructions were followed to the letter. Then and only then, shortly before 11.15, he gave the order for the column to go forward, due west through the dense woods that had screened his preparations.

With barely a quarter mile to go before they reached it, Bushrod Johnson's lead brigades crossed the LaFayette Road within ten minutes of receiving Longstreet's nod. As they surged across the dusty road and the open field beyond-the field that Wood had recessed his line to avoid-they encountered galling fire from the left and right, where Hindman and Law were hotly engaged, but almost none from directly ahead. Welcome though this was, they thought it strange until they found out why. Entering the woods on the far side, they scrambled over the deserted breastworks and caught sight, dead ahead and still within easy reach, of the last of Wood's brigades in the act of carrying out the order to "close up on and support" Reynolds. Yelling, the Confederates struck the vulnerable blue column flank and rear, sitting-duck fas.h.i.+on, and, as Johnson described the brief action, "cast the shattered fragments to the right and left." Still on the run, the b.u.t.ternut attackers crashed on through the forest and soon emerged into another clearing, larger than the first, with Missionary Ridge looming westward beyond the tops of intervening trees. Here at last, after their half-mile run, they paused to recover their breath and alignment, and Johnson later communicated something of the elation he and those around him felt, not only at what they had accomplished so far, but also at what lay spread before them, stark against the backdrop of the green slopes of the ridge. "The scene now presented was unspeakably grand," he declared in his report. "The resolute and impetuous charge, the rush of our heavy columns sweeping out from the shadow and gloom of the forest into the open fields flooded with sunlight, the glitter of arms, the onward dash of artillery and mounted men, the retreat of the foe, the shouts of the hosts of our army, the dust, the smoke, the noise of firearms-of whistling b.a.l.l.s and grape-shot and of bursting sh.e.l.l-made up a battle scene of unsurpa.s.sed grandeur."

There was little time for admiring the view, however, since it included, in addition to the items mentioned, a number of hostile guns in furious action along a low ridge half a mile away, some firing southeast, some northeast, and some due east at him. Hood rode up amid the sh.e.l.lbursts, managing his horse with one hand because the other still hung useless in its sling. "Go ahead," he told Johnson, who was realigning his three brigades, "and keep ahead of everything." The Ohio-born Tennessean did just that. His men had taken a six-gun Federal battery soon after they crossed the road, but this had only sharpened their appet.i.te for more. Resuming the advance, they quickly overran a position from which nine guns were firing, then plunged ahead to seize four more whose crews did not limber them in time for a getaway, as several others managed to do along that ripple of high ground overlooking a scene of moiling confusion in the enemy rear. Here Johnson called a halt at last, having accomplished a mile-deep penetration of the Union center, the destruction or dispersal of a whole brigade of bluecoats, and the capture of nineteen pieces of artillery, all between 11.15 and noon. Bracing his troops for a possible shock, he threw out skirmishers and sent word back to Longstreet of his need for reinforcements in case the enemy launched a counterattack at his isolated division, which had lost about one fourth of its strength in the course of its long advance. Such an attack did not seem likely, though, if he could judge by what he saw from where he stood. The blue army seemed to have come apart at the seams under the impact of that one savage blow, and its fugitives were streaming in disorder up the Dry Valley Road, which curved north and west across their rear, toward Missionary Ridge and the solitary notch that indicated McFarland's Gap and possible deliverance from the terror that had suddenly come on them, less than an hour ago, after a morning of taking it easy while the battle raged at the far end of the line.

Hindman had had much to do with the creation of the blue confusion. Though he encountered a far greater number of Federals in the course of his advance on Johnson's left, and thus was limited to a shallower penetration, this gave him the chance to inflict a far greater number of casualties, and that was what he did. Johnson had struck and shattered a single brigade, but Hindman served two whole divisions in that manner within the same brief span of time, converting McCook's supposed defense of the Union right into the headlong race for safety which Johnson observed with such elation when he called a halt soon afterward on the ridge overlooking the Dry Valley Road, a mile beyond the point where he had pierced the enemy center. Much as the unmanned breastworks in his front had facilitated the Tennessean's breakthrough, so did the Arkansan have the good fortune to find both Sheridan and Davis in motion when he hit them. The former, in compliance with his orders to reinforce the left, was marching north across the latter's rear, and the latter was sidling in the same direction, under instructions to close the gap created by Wood's abrupt departure, when they were a.s.sailed by Hindman's yelling graybacks, who came swarming out of the woods before the pickets along the LaFayette Road had time to do more than get off a few wild shots by way of sounding the alarm. Davis's men scattered rearward in a panic that soon infected Sheridan's two lead brigades, whose ranks were overrun by the fugitives as a prelude to being struck by their pursuers, with the result that the two divisions were mingled in flight. "McCook's corps was wiped off the field without any attempt at real resistance," an Illinois colonel later testified, adding that he had seen artillerists cut the traces and abandon their guns in order to make a faster getaway, while others on foot, including some who might otherwise have been willing to stand their ground, were swept along by the mob, "like flecks of foam upon a river." McCook himself was one of those flecks, and Sheridan and Davis were two more; but Brigadier General William H. Lytle was not. Commanding Sheridan's third brigade, which had been left behind as a covering force southeast of the Widow Glenn's, he ordered a countercharge in an attempt to stem the rout, but fell at the first rebel volley and died soon after his men ran off and left him, the only Union general, out of thirty of that rank on the field, to be killed or captured or even touched by metal in this bloodiest of all the western battles.

One check there was, and a b.l.o.o.d.y one at that, though not from McCook or either of his two division commanders. Detached from Reynolds, the Lightning Brigade was still posted in support of the Union right, and when Hindman routed the foot soldiers there, capturing guns and colors on the run, Wilder brought his mounted troops in hard on the rebel flank and opened fire with his repeaters. That tore it. The southernmost gray brigade lost its momentum, then collapsed in a rush as frantic as any on the other side, falling back all the way to the LaFayette Road and beyond. On the alert for some such reverse, however, Longstreet promptly threw in a brigade from Preston's reserve division, restored the line with the help of the rallied brigade, and forced the mounted bluecoats westward in the wake of their companions, who had not paused to take advantage of this respite, but had used it rather to increase their lead in the race for McFarland's Gap. Struck by an exploding sh.e.l.l, the Glenn house was afire by now, burning briskly under the noonday sun, with no sign of Rosecrans or his staff. Hindman called a halt, put his cannoneers to work sh.e.l.ling the throng of fugitives to the north and west on the Dry Valley Road, and began to reckon the fruits of his triumph, which were rich. He had taken 17 guns, ten of them abandoned, 1100 prisoners, including three full colonels, 1400 small arms, together with 165,000 rounds of ammunition, and five stands of colors, all within less than an hour and against a force considerably larger than his own.

Law and Kershaw had made similar gains, along with the infliction of a similar disruption, against much stiffer resistance by the defenders of the Union center. Watching Johnson's cheering soldiers hurdle the unmanned breastworks in their front, Law saw that they were taking cruel punishment from the bluecoats on their northern flank as they poured through the gap; so with soldierly instinct he obliqued his three brigades to the right, intending to accomplish a double purpose, first of relieving the pressure on Johnson, by drawing at least a part of the fire, and then of widening the gap by dislodging Brannan, whose own flank had been exposed by Wood's departure. Both of these objectives were attained in rapid order. Turning from the breakthrough on their right to meet this sudden menace to their front, the Federals divided their fire and wavered in the face of what seemed to them a limited choice of falling back or being ground between two rebel millstones. They chose the former course, and chose it with an individual urgency in direct ratio to each regiment's proximity to the threatened flank. Brannan's line swung gatelike, hinged on its left at the juncture with Reynolds, who held firm despite a renewal of Stewart's attack. Now it was Law's troops who were hurdling unmanned breastworks. Moreover, just as Johnson had found one of Wood's brigades defenseless in his path, so now did Law find one of Van Cleve's in that predicament as a result of having been delayed in setting off on its march to reinforce Thomas. It too was struck and shattered, quite as abruptly as the other had been: except that this time there was retribution. Hearing the uproar in its rear, which signified the destruction of its companion brigade, Wood's middle brigade was halted by its commander, Colonel Charles G. Harker, New Jersey-born, only five years out of West Point, and at twenty-five a veteran of all the western battles from s.h.i.+loh on. He faced his men about and launched a savage counterattack, not at Johnson, who had pressed on westward out of reach, but at Law, who had just knocked Brannan's gate ajar and shattered Van Cleve's sitting-duck brigade. Boldness paid off for the youthful colonel. Not only was Law stopped in his tracks by Harker's unexpected lunge, but the Texas brigade on the open flank was driven rearward in what for a time had the makings of a large-scale repulse.

Returning from his hurried conference with Johnson, midway of that general's exuberant advance, Hood arrived to find his old brigade in full retreat. This was a rare sight at any time, despite the reverse that had ended its brief penetration of the enemy line the day before, but it was particularly unwelcome in this apparent hour of victory. Blond and gigantic, though his useless arm prevented him from gesturing with his sword by way of emphasis, he rode among the fleeing Texans, exhorting them to stand their ground. They stopped in time to catch him as he toppled from the saddle, shot through the upper thigh by a rifle bullet that shattered the bone and necessitated a field amputation that would leave him barely enough of a stump to accommodate an artificial leg. As he fell he muttered incongruously, repeating in shock what he had said a few minutes ago to Johnson: "Go ahead, and keep ahead of everything." These were thought at the time to be his dying words, a fitting valedictory to battle-such wounds were all too often fatal-but that was not to be the case, and besides he had the satisfaction, as he was being taken away on a stretcher, of knowing that the line had been restored by Kershaw. Bringing up his two brigades at the critical moment of the corps commander's fall, the South Carolinian not only stemmed the incipient rout; he also resumed the advance, driving the resurgent bluecoats west and north with the help of the rallied Texans, who were eager now to get revenge for what had been done to them and their beloved Hood.

At this point, some time after noon, Longstreet rode up from the south, where he had repaired a similar reverse by sending in one of Preston's brigades to sh.o.r.e up Hindman's collapsed flank, and expressed great satisfaction at finding that all three elements of his clenched-fist blow-Hindman on the left, Johnson in the center, and Law and Kershaw on the right-had succeeded admirably, so far, in fulfilling his prediction that "we would of course whip and drive [the Yankees] from the field." Up to now, this only applied to about one third of the blue army, including two complete divisions and portions of three others, but Old Peter believed he had solved the problem of how best to press the issue to its desired conclusion: "As our right wing had failed of the progress antic.i.p.ated, and had become fixed by the firm holding of the enemy's left, we could find no practicable field for our work except by a change of the order of battle from [a] wheel to the left, to a swing to the right." Instead of pivoting on Preston, as originally intended, he proposed to pivot on Stewart, in the opposite direction. In other words, Bragg's plan was not only to be abandoned; it was to be reversed. Pursuit of the remnant of the Union right, in flight for McFarland's Gap across the way, could be left to Wheeler, whose troopers, after exchanging shots all morning with enemy vedettes across the creek below Lee & Gordon's, had just forced a crossing at Gla.s.s's Mill and driven the Federal hors.e.m.e.n southward, away from the battle which was then approaching its climax three miles north. Couriers were sent at once to have him take up the chase of the fugitives on the Dry Valley Road, which pa.s.sed through nearby Crawfish Springs, while the gray infantry turned sharp right to complete-with the aid of Polk's wing, which would have little to do but keep up the pressure it had been applying for better than three hours now, although without conspicuous success-the destruction of the remaining two thirds of the blue army. Law and Kershaw had faced in that direction already, drawn by the retirement of Brannan's right, but instructions had to be sent to Johnson and Hindman, as well as to Preston, who was still holding the abandoned pivot, to form their three divisions on the left of Law and Kershaw, along a new east-west line from which Longstreet intended to launch one last clenched-fist blow that would result in a knockout victory over an adversary who presumably was groggy from the effects of the punch just landed in his midriff.

However desirable it might have been, there was no question of an immediate jump-off. Preparations involving a right-angle variation in the direction of attack for an entire wing of the army, as well as changes in the posting of practically all of the elements that composed it, would of course take time, since they would require not only a great deal of s.h.i.+fting of units, large and small, over considerable distances-Preston, the extreme example, had nearly three miles to go before his troops would be in position-but also a prerequisite restoration of control within the five divisions themselves, most of which had been severely disorganized by the mingling of regiments and brigades in the course of their furious breakthrough and their long advance over difficult terrain. Besides, Old Peter had never been one to begrudge time spent in preparation for the delivery of an a.s.sault, particularly in a situation such as the one that now obtained, with a good six hours of daylight still remaining and a single, well-co-ordinated effort being counted on to accomplish the objective. Orders had to be drawn up and distributed before they could be obeyed, and limber chests and cartridge boxes had to be refilled. Nor did he believe in neglecting the inner man; stomachs needed refilling, too, and that included his own. Before leaving on a tour of inspection, he directed that a lunch be spread for him to eat on his return. Dodging snipers, he reconnoitered the new defensive line the Federals had established, perpendicular to their old one along the LaFayette Road, along the irregular slopes of an eastern spur of Missionary Ridge; Snodgra.s.s Hill was its name, according to Bushrod Johnson, whom he encountered in the course of his ride along the front. The Tennessean pointed out what he believed was "the key of the battle," a point where the bluecoats cl.u.s.tered thickly on the wooded slope ahead. Longstreet looked at it carefully. "It was a key, but a rough one," he said later. For the present, he instructed Buckner to establish a twelve-gun battery at the junction of the two wings, explaining that this would give him the advantage of enfilade fire down both segments of the Union line: the old one extending north, which had resisted Polk's attacks all day, and the new one extending west, which he himself was about to test for the first time. Now as before, he seemed to have little doubt as to the outcome. "They have fought their last man, and he is running," he said jovially, despite the evidence he had just seen to the contrary, when he returned to headquarters and sat down to his lunch of Na.s.sau bacon and Georgia sweet potatoes. The former was an all-too-familiar item on the diet of all Confederates, East and West; "nausea bacon," it was sometimes called; but not the latter-anyhow not in the theater in which Old Peter had done all his fighting up to now. "We were not accustomed to potatoes of any kind in Virginia," he would remark more than thirty years later, still remembering the meal, "and thought we had a luxury."

There were two interruptions, both of them drastic though only the first was violent. It came in the form of a sh.e.l.l that burst in the woods nearby, one of whose jagged splinters ripped through a book a mounted courier was reading and struck a staff colonel, knocking him from his place at the table and to the ground, where he lay gasping as if in the throes of death. Startled, his fellow staffers leaped up to staunch the expected flow of blood, but they could not find the wound. Reacting with his usual calm, Longstreet saw that the gasping was caused by a large bite of sweet potato, which had become lodged in the colonel's windpipe when the iron fragment grazed him, and "suggested that it would be well to first relieve him of the potato and give him a chance to breathe. This done, he revived," the general recalled; "his breath came freer, and he was soon on his feet." That was the first interruption. The second came soon after the other officers rejoined their chief at the table, and if it was less violent it was also a good deal more alarming in the end. It came in the form of a message from Bragg, from whom the commander of the left wing had heard nothing since the night before, requesting his attendance at a conference a short distance in rear of the new mile-long line that was being formed in the woods to the west of the LaFayette Road. Longstreet promptly rode to meet him amid the wreckage of what had been the Union right, and after giving him a brief description of the rout that had resulted in the capture of some forty guns, together with thousands of small arms and prisoners and no less than two square miles of ground, explained his decision to wheel right instead of left, as originally instructed, in order to complete the destruction of what remained of the blue army.

Bragg did not seem to share his lieutenant's enthusiasm, and when the latter went on to suggest that the left wing be reinforced from the right, which would have little more to do than hold its ground once the attack was resumed on the south, the North Carolinian broke in testily: "There is not a man in the right wing who has any fight in him." Taken aback, Longstreet at last saw what the trouble was. Bragg was miffed because his design for herding the bluecoats into McLemore's Cove had gone astray; or as the Georgian later put it, "He was disturbed by the failure of his plan and the severe repulse of his right wing, and was little prepared to hear suggestions from subordinates for other moves or progressive work." In other words, if he could not win in just the way he wanted, he did not care about winning at all, or anyhow he wanted no personal share in such a victory. So at any rate it seemed. This fairly incredible impression was strengthened, moreover, by the manner in which Bragg brought the conference to a close. "If anything happens, communicate with me at Reed's Bridge," he said curtly, and he turned his horse and rode in that direction, which would place him well in rear of the stalled right, as far as possible from the scene of the critical attack about to be launched by Longstreet on the left.

Old Peter scarcely knew what to make of his chief's reaction. "From accounts of his former operations, I was prepared for halting work," he afterwards wrote, understating the case in an attempt to bring in a touch of humor that was altogether lacking at the time, "but this, when the battle was at its tide and in partial success, was a little surprising." However, as he returned to his new-drawn line to give the signal that would launch the a.s.sault designed to complete his half-won triumph, he soon recovered his aplomb, if not his accustomed heartiness. "There was nothing for the left wing to do but work along as best it could," he said.

Thus Bragg, in effect, removed himself from management of the battle, but only after his opponent had removed himself, in fact and person, not only from the battle but also from the field on which it was being fought. Whether out of petulance or panic, each of the two leaders reacted in accordance with his nature and his lights, for while the southern commander appeared to doubt that the contest was half won, Rosecrans had not seemed to question the evidence that it was considerably more than half lost. Not that he was a coward: Rich Mountain, Iuka, Corinth, and above all Stones River were sufficient refutation of the charge, and moreover his gloomy a.s.sessment was shared by those around him. With the exception of Lytle, whose sudden death was taken as confirmation of the majority opinion, no one with stars on his shoulders and a close-up look at the proportions of the rebel breakthrough failed to share the abrupt and general conviction that all was lost. Not only the army commander, but also his chief of staff, two of his three corps commanders, and four of his ten division commanders-in short, every man in charge of anything larger than a brigade on that quarter of the field-agreed that in the present instance, with the choice narrowed to flight or death or capture, discretion was the better part of valor. Practically of one accord, they all turned tail and ran and their troops ran with them, flecks of foam on the blue stream rus.h.i.+ng northward up the Dry Valley Road and westward through McFarland's Gap, eager to put the bulletproof ma.s.s of Missionary Ridge between themselves and their screaming gray pursuers.

Soon after getting off the order to Wood, Rosecrans had ridden to the right, accompanied by Dana and Garfield and several other members of his staff, intending to hurry the sidling movement that would thicken the thinned center. He was sitting his horse directly in rear of Davis, whose division was in motion, when Longstreet's attack exploded dead ahead and to the immediate left front. Dana, who was badly in need of sleep, had dismounted for a nap in the gra.s.s; the first he knew of the impending br