PERSONAL NARRATIVE--CHICKAMAUGA
On the last day of June, 1863, Rosecrans began to advance on Bragg. That
was the signal for our leaving Shelbyville. On the 3rd of July the Union
army entered Tullahoma.
On the morning of the 2nd, as I left the headquarters of General Bragg,
I met my friend Governor Isham G. Harris. He looked very bright and
cheerful and said to me: "To-morrow morning you will be roused up by the
thunder of our artillery." But instead of being thus aroused I found
myself in full retreat toward Winchester. Thence I rode to Cowan, where
I found General Bragg and his staff, and General Polk with his staff. I
rode up to them and said to General Bragg: "My dear General, I am afraid
you are thoroughly outdone."
"Yes," he said, "I am utterly broken down." And then leaning over his
saddle he spoke of the loss of Middle Tennessee and whispered: "This is
a great disaster."
I said to him: "General, don't be disheartened, our turn will come
next."
I found Colonel Walters, his Adjutant-General, lying in the corner of a
rail fence, with his hands under his head, looking the very picture of
despair. I said to him; "My dear Colonel, what is the matter with you?"
His reply was: "How can you ask such a question, when you know as well
as I do what has happened?"
Our troops were at this time moving rapidly across the Sewanee Mountain,
over country which subsequently became very familiar to me in times of
peace. I said to him; "My dear Colonel, I am afraid you've not read the
Psalms for the day." "No," he answered. "What do they say?"
I replied in the words of the first verse of the Eleventh Psalm: "In the
Lord put I my trust; how say ye then to my soul, that she should flee as
a bird unto the hill?"
I gave my horse to one of "the boys," and at the request of General
Bragg, I accompanied him by rail to Chattanooga. On the 21st of August,
a day appointed by the President of the Confederate States for fasting,
humiliation and prayer, while I was preaching in a church, the Union
army appeared opposite Chattanooga and began shelling the town. I think
my sermon on that occasion was not long. Early in September, General
McCook and General Thomas moved in such a way as to completely flank the
Confederate position. General Bragg immediately began his retreat
southward, and having been joined by General Longstreet and his forces,
attacked General Thomas at Lee and Gordon's Mills, twelve miles south of
Chattanooga, on the 19th of September. It was a bitter fight, but the
day closed without any decisive results to either side.
After this the great battle of Chickamauga was fought. Undoubtedly
General Thomas saved the Union army from utter ruin, but Longstreet, by
his prompt action in seizing an opportunity, won the victory for the
Confederate army.
The troops led by Brigadier-General Archibald Gracie fired the last gun
and stormed the last strong position held by the enemy at the battle of
Chickamauga, and so memorable was his conduct on that day, that the
people in that vicinity have given the hill the name of Gracie Hill. It
was a great privilege to know General Gracie as I did. He was a
character that old Froissart would have delighted to paint. Chivalrous
as a Bayard, he had all the tenderness of a woman. A warrior by nature
as well as a soldier by education, (he graduated at West Point in 1852,)
and profession, he had a horror of shedding blood and would almost shed
tears in the hour of victory over the thin ranks of his brigade. A few
months before his death he became a communicant of the Church.
One great personal loss I sustained in the battle of Chickamauga was
that of my dear friend, Colonel W. B. Richmond, a member of General
Polk's staff. He was a true friend, a thoroughly well rounded character
and a most gallant soldier. He was the Treasurer of the Diocese of
Tennessee, before the war.
Brigadier-General Helm of Kentucky was killed at Chickamauga, as was
also Brigadier-General Preston Smith. Among the dead was my cousin,
Captain Thomas E. King, of Roswell, Georgia, who had sufficiently
recovered from his fearful wounds at the first battle of Manassas, to
act as honorary aide-de-camp to General Smith. Here also General Hood
lost a leg.
The day after the battle I was sent to the field with one hundred and
fifty ambulances to gather up the wounded. It was a sad duty. I saw many
distressing sights. I was directed to convey the Federal wounded to the
Field Hospitals fitted up by the Federal surgeons that had been captured
to the number of not less than fifty, I think. I labored all the day and
at nightfall I came upon a wretched hut into which a half dozen wounded
men had dragged themselves. I found there among them, a young fellow
about seventeen years of age. He had a severe wound in his leg and a
small bone had been torn away. I chatted with him pleasantly for a while
and promised to take him to the hospital early the next morning.
Early the next day when I went to fulfill my promise, I saw a surgeon's
amputating knife on the head of a barrel by the door of the hut, and
found that my young friend had been weeping bitterly. When I asked him
what was the matter, he replied: "The surgeon has been examining my
wound and says that my leg must be amputated. I would not care for
myself, but my poor mother--" and then he burst into an agony of tears.
"Nonsense!" I said to him. "They shall not take off your leg." And
lifting him up bodily, I placed him in an ambulance and took him to the
Hospital, where the next day I found him bright and cheerful. I learned
subsequently that the "surgeon" who was about to amputate his leg
unnecessarily, was a doctor who had come up from Georgia to get a little
practice in that line. The boy subsequently became a railway conductor
and used to say many years later, "You know I belong to Bishop Quintard.
He saved my leg and perhaps my life at Chickamauga. The leg young
Saw-bones was going to amputate is now as good as the other."
Another warm friend of mine, John Marsh, was horribly wounded at the
battle of Chickamauga; so sorely wounded that he could not be removed
from the field. A tent was erected over him and I nursed him until he
was in a condition to be taken to the hospital. On the 1st of October, I
obtained leave of absence from my duties as Chaplain of Polk's corps,
volunteered my services as an Assistant Surgeon, was assigned to duty as
such at Marietta, Georgia, and reported as promptly as possible to
Surgeon D. D. Saunders, who was in charge of the hospitals at that post.
I took Marsh with me and there he slowly recovered his health. I
prepared him for baptism and it was my great pleasure to baptize him and
present him to Bishop Elliott for confirmation. When he was to be
baptized, knowing that it would be painful for him to kneel because of
his recent and scarcely healed wounds, I told him that he might sit in
his chair. "No," he said. "Let me kneel; let me kneel." And so he knelt,
as I placed upon his brow the sign of the cross.
Our victory was complete at Chickamauga and Rosecrans' army threw down
their arms and retreated pell-mell in the direction of Chattanooga. The
Confederates followed on the 21st of September and took possession of
Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. For two months the two armies
confronted each other at Chattanooga.
Matters remained quiet in both armies until November, when the
Confederate lines extended around Chattanooga from the mouth of
Chattanooga Creek above, to Moccasin Point below the town. To my great
regret, General Polk was relieved of his command on the 29th of
September, in consequence of a misunderstanding with General Bragg, the
Commanding General. His application for a Court of Inquiry was dismissed
and a month later he was assigned to a new field of duty, alike
important and difficult--the best evidence that President Davis could
offer of his appreciation of the Bishop-General's past services and of
his expectations of his future career.
It was while we were in Chattanooga, before the battle of Chickamauga,
that the "Order of the Southern Cross" was organized. There came to
General Polk's headquarters, (on whose staff I was serving,) several
officers, who stated that they had been considering the propriety if not
the necessity of instituting an organization within the army, both
social and charitable in its character, whose aim would be as a military
brotherhood, to foster patriotic sentiment, to strengthen the ties of
army fellowship and at the same time to provide a fund, not only for the
mutual benefit of its members, but for the relief of disabled soldiers
and the widows and orphans of such as might perish in the Confederate
service.
They requested Bishop Polk to attend a meeting that evening to consider
the subject further, and he finding it inconvenient to attend, asked me
to go as his representative. So I went. Some six or eight of us met at
Tyne's Station, about nine miles northwest of Chattanooga. After
sufficient discussion and explanation to bring us to a common
understanding of the purposes of the proposed order, General Pat
Cleburne, General John C. Brown, General Liddell and myself were
appointed a committee to draft a constitution and plan of organization.
We met every day, I think, for a week or ten days, and the outcome of
our labors was a little pamphlet, in appearance similar to the
catechisms of our Sunday School days. It was in fact three by five
inches in size, contained twenty-five pages and was from the press of
Burke, Boykin & Co., Macon, Georgia. It was entitled "Constitution of
the Comrades of the Southern Cross, adopted August 28, 1863."
Several "companies" were at once organized and but for the unfavorable
course of events, I do not doubt that the order would have rapidly
extended throughout the armies of the Confederacy. But active military
operations were very soon afterward begun, and the army was kept
constantly on the move until the "bottom dropped out," and the "Order of
the Southern Cross"--like the Southern Confederacy--went to pieces. The
Confederate Veterans' Organization subsequently embodied some of the
features which it was intended that the Comrades of the Southern Cross
should possess.