CHICKAMAUGA
“It is said to be easy to defend a mountainous country,” said General
Braxton Bragg, commanding the Army of Tennessee, “but mountains hide
your foe from you, while they are full of gaps through which he can
pounce upon you at any time. A mountain is like the wall of a house
full of rat-holes. Who can tell what lies hidden behind that wall?”
The wall was the Cumberland Range. The several general officers,
riding with General Bragg, uttered a murmur, whether of agreement or
disagreement was not apparent.
General D.H. Hill, lately sent from Virginia to the support of the
forces in Tennessee, made a sound too gruff for agreement. He fell
back a pace or two and drew up beside General Cleburne. “You _can_
know mountainous country, you know,” he said. “It’s a matter of
learning, like everything else.”
“True enough,” agreed the other. “But there’s precious few of mankind
with any talent for learning!”
The group sitting their horses in the scrub oak, in the September
sunshine, gazed in a momentary silence upon Pigeon Mountain and
Missionary Ridge and the towering Lookout Mountain. Bragg, brave, able
in his own way, but melancholy, depressed, ill in body and mind, at
war with himself and all his subordinates, sat staring. Below him lay
the slender valley of the Chickamauga. Clear, sinuous, the little
stream ran between overbending shrubs and trees. A vague purple mist
hung over the valley and the tree-clad slopes beyond. The knot of
horsemen fell silent, there in the oak scrub, looking at the folds of
the Cumberland Range. Past them on the Lafayette road marched
endlessly the Army of Tennessee. Tanned and gaunt, ragged and
cheerful, moving out from Chattanooga, but moving out, there was
assurance, to give fight, by went the grey, patient, hardy legions,
corps of Hill, Polk, Buckner, and Walker, divisions of Cheatham,
Cleburne, Breckinridge, Liddell, Hindman, Bushrod Johnson, Preston,
and Stewart. Colours, mounted officers, grey foot soldiers and grey
foot soldiers and grey foot soldiers, the rumbling guns, old,
courageous battalions, on they went, endlessly. The dust rose and
clothed them; the purple mountains made a dreamy background. The
party, sitting their horses on the scrub-covered low hill, looked
again westward.
Bragg spoke to one of his corps commanders, Leonidas Polk, bishop and
general. “Chickamauga! This was Cherokee country, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, General. Cherokee Georgia. Chief Ross had his house near here.
‘Chickamauga’ means _River of Death_. For ages they must have gone up
and down, over these ridges and through these vales, hunting and
warring, camping and breaking camp—”
“Killing and being killed. We’ve only changed the colour, not the
actuality. McLemore’s Cove! The scouts think that Rosecrans is going
to push a column across Missionary Ridge and occupy McLemore’s Cove. I
think they are mistaken. They are often mistaken.”
“General Forrest—”
“He is near Ringgold, I suppose. General Forrest does not keep me
properly informed as to where he is—”
Cleburne came in with his rich Irish voice. “Well, that would make
quite a shower of notes, wouldn’t it, sir?”
“I have never had the pleasure of meeting General Forrest,” said D.H.
Hill. “He must be a remarkable man.”
“He is a military genius of the first order,” said Cleburne.
Bragg continued to gaze upon the Chickamauga. “The three gaps in
Pigeon Mountain are Bluebird and Dug and Catlett’s. We will of course
hold these, and if Crittenden or Thomas is really in McLemore’s Cove,
I will dispatch a force against them. General Longstreet’s arrival
cannot now be long delayed.”
Longstreet, travelling from Louisa Court-House in Virginia by
Petersburg, Wilmington, Augusta, and Atlanta, because Burnside held
the shorter Knoxville route, had in all nine hundred miles to
traverse, and to serve him and his corps but one single-track,
war-worn grey railroad of dejected behaviour. Lone and lorn as was the
railroad, it rose to the emergency and deserved the cheers with which,
after long days of companionship, Longstreet’s troops finally quitted
the rails. On the sixteenth the regiments of Hood began to arrive at
Dalton. On this day also Rosecrans, a tenacious, able general,
completed the drawing of his lines—eleven miles, northeast to
southwest—from Lee and Gordon’s Mills on the east bank of Chickamauga
to Stevens’s Gap in Lookout Mountain.
On the eighteenth, General Bragg, at Lafayette, issued the following
order:—
“1. Bushrod Johnson’s column, on crossing at or near Reed’s Bridge
will turn to the left by the most practical route, and sweep up the
Chickamauga toward Lee and Gordon’s Mills.
“2. Walker, crossing at Alexander’s Bridge, will unite in this move,
and push vigorously on the enemy’s flank and rear in the same
direction.
“3. Buckner, crossing at Tedford’s Ford, will join in the movement to
the left, and press the enemy up the stream from Polk’s front at Lee
and Gordon’s.
“4. Polk will press his forces to the front of Lee and Gordon’s Mills,
and if met by too much resistance to cross, will bear to the right and
cross at Dalton’s Ford or at Tedford’s, as may be necessary, and join
the attack wherever the enemy may be.
“5. Hill will cover our left flank from an advance of the enemy from
the cove, and by pressing the cavalry on his front, ascertain if the
enemy is reinforcing at Lee and Gordon’s Mills, in which event he will
attack them in flank.
“6. Wheeler’s cavalry will hold the gaps in Pigeon Mountain, and cover
our rear and left and bring up stragglers.
“7. All teams, etc., not with the troops should go toward Ringgold and
Dalton beyond Taylor’s Ridge. All cooking should be done at the
trains. Rations when cooked will be forwarded to the troops.
“8. The above movements will be executed with the utmost promptness,
vigour, and persistence.”
“That’s an excellent order,” said D.H. Hill. “The only fault to be
found with it is that it’s excellent-too-late. Some days ago was the
proper date. Then we could have dealt with them piecemeal; now they’re
fifty thousand men behind breastworks.”
The aide wagged his head. “Even so, we can beat them, General.” D.H.
Hill looked at him a little sardonically. “Of course, of course, we
can beat them! But have you noticed how many men we lose in beating
them? And have you any idea how we are to continue to get men? It
takes time to grow oaks and men. What the South needs is some Cadmus
to break the teeth out of skulls, sow them, and raise overnight a crop
of armed men! There are plenty of skulls, God knows! We are seeing in
our day a curious phenomenon. Armies are growing younger. We are
galloping toward the cradle. The V. M.I. Cadets will be out presently,
and then the nine- and ten-year-olds. Of course the women might come
on afterwards, though, to tell the truth,” said Hill, “they’ve been in
the field from the first.”
“Here’s General Forrest.”
Forrest rode up. “General Hill, ain’t it? Good morning, sir. I am
going to fight my men dismounted. This is going to be an infantry
battle.”
“I have heard, General,” said Hill, “that you have never lost a fight.
How do you manage it?”
“I git there first with the most men.”
“You don’t hold then with throwing in troops piecemeal?”
“No,” said Forrest, with a kind of violence. “You kin play the banjo
all right with one finger after another, but in war I clutch with the
whole hand!”
He rode on, a strange figure, an uneducated countryman, behind him no
military training or influence, no West Point; a man of violences and
magnanimities, a big, smoky personality, here dark, here clearly,
broadly lighted. “He was born a soldier as men are born poets.”
“Forrest!” said General Joseph E. Johnston long afterwards. “Had
Forrest had the advantage of a military education and training, he
would have been the great central figure of the war!”
The sun of the eighteenth of September sank behind the mountains. A
cool night wind sprang up, sighing through the bronzing wood and
rippling the surface of the Chickamauga. Three brigades of Hood’s
division, marching rapidly from Dalton, had come upon the field; with
them Hood himself, with his splendid personal reputation, his blue
eyes and yellow hair and headlong courage. He had now his three
brigades and three of Bushrod Johnson’s. That churchman militant,
Leonidas Polk, held the centre at Lee and Gordon’s Mills, and D.H.
Hill the left. Joseph Wheeler and his cavalry watched the left flank,
Forrest and his cavalry the right.
The country was rough, the roads few and poor, the fords of the
Chickamauga in the same category. Dusk of the eighteenth found Hood
and Walker across the stream, but other divisions with the fords yet
to make. At dawn of the nineteenth, the Army of the Cumberland began
to put itself into position. In the faint light the outposts of the
blue caught sight of Buckner’s division fording the Chickamauga at
Tedford’s. In the mist and dimness they thought they saw only a small
detached grey force. Three brigades of Brannan’s division were at once
put forward. In the first pink light Buckner’s advanced brigade
clashed with Croxton’s. With a burst of sound like an explosion in the
dim wood began the battle of Chickamauga—one of the worst in history,
twice bloodier than Wagram, than Marengo, than Austerlitz, higher in
its two days’ fallen than Sharpsburg, a terrible, piteous fight.
Forrest, on the right, was immediately engaged. “We’ve stirred up a
yaller-jacket’s nest,” he said, and sent to General Polk a request for
Armstrong’s division of his own corps. The centre needing cavalry,
too, there was returned only Dibbrell’s brigade. Dibbrell’s men were
dismounted, and together with John Pegram’s division—also, in this
battle, acting foot soldiers—began a bloody, continued struggle. The
point of the blue wedge had been four infantry brigades and one of
cavalry, but now the thickness was disclosed, and it fairly proved to
be Rosecrans in position. While the grey had moved up the Chickamauga,
that able blue strategist, under the cover of night, had moved down
the opposite bank. The grey crossed—and found their right enveloped!
The Fourteenth Army Corps, George H. Thomas commanding, was here, and
later there were reinforcements from the Twenty-first, Crittenden’s
corps. The storm, beginning with no great fury, promptly swelled until
it attained the terrific. Forrest sent again for infantry support.
None came, the centre having its own anxieties. “If you want to git a
thing done, do it yourself,” quoth Forrest, and rode up to John
Pegram. “We’ve got to have more fighters and I’m going to fetch them.
Hold your ground, General Pegram, I don’t care what happens!”
“All right, sir. Neither do I,” said Pegram, and held it, with the
loss of one fourth of his command. The pall of smoke settled, heavily,
heavily! The dismounted troops fought here in the open, here behind
piled brushwood and fallen logs, while the few grey batteries spoke
from every little point of vantage. From the woods in front leaped the
volleys of the blue, came whistling the horrible shells. The brushwood
was set afire, the cavalrymen moving from place to place. They fought
like Forrest’s men. Rifle barrels grew too hot to touch; all lips were
blackened with cartridge powder. There was a certain calmness in the
face of storm, _sotto voce_ remarks, now and then a chuckling laugh.
The finger of Death was forever pointing, but by now the men were used
to Death’s attitudinizing. They took no great account of the habitual
gesture. When he came to sweep with his whole arm, then of course you
had to get out of his way! The hot day mounted and the clangour of the
right mounted. Back came Forrest, riding hard, at his heels the
infantry brigades of Wilson and Walthall. A line of battle was formed;
Wilson and Walthall, Dibbrell and Pegram and Nathan Bedford Forrest
advancing with a yell, coming to close range, pouring volley after
volley into the dense, blue ranks. The dense, blue ranks answered;
Death howled through the vale of Chickamauga. Wilson’s men took a
battery, hard fought to the last. The grey brigade of Ector came up
and formed on Wilson’s right. Fiercely attacked, Ector sent an aide to
Forrest. “General Forrest, General Ector is hard pressed and is uneasy
as to his right flank.” Forrest nodded his head, his eyes on a Federal
battery spouting flame. “Tell General Ector not to bother about his
right flank! I’ll take care of it.” The aide went back, to find
Wilson’s brigade, on Ector’s left, in extremity. Ector sent him again,
and he found Forrest now in action, directing, urging his men forward
with a voice like a bull of Bashan’s and with a great, warlike
appearance. “General Forrest, General Ector says that his left flank
is now in danger!” Forrest turned, stamped his foot, and shouted,
“Tell General Ector that, by God! I am here, and I will take care of
his left flank and of his right flank!”
On went the grey charge, infantry and dismounted cavalry. _Yaaaaih!
Yaaaaihhh! Yaaaaiiihhhh!_ it yelled and tossed its colours. Back it
pressed the blue, back, back! The first line went back, the second
line went back ... and then was seen through rifts in the smoke the
great third line, breastworks in front.
George Thomas was a fighter, too, and he flung forward Brannan and
Baird and Reynolds, with Palmer and Van Cleve of Crittenden’s corps.
Out of the smoky wood the blue burst with thunder, flanking Wilson and
opening a furious enfilading fire. It grew terrible, a withering blast
before which none could stand. Wilson was forced back, the whole grey
line was forced back. Forrest’s guns were always clean to the front.
They must be gotten back—but so many of the horses were dead or dying,
and so many of the artillerymen. Those left put strength to the
pieces, got them off, got them back through the brush in ways that
could afterwards hardly be remembered. There was a piece entirely
endangered—all the horses down and most of the men. Forrest shouted to
four of his mounted escort. Cavalry dropped into the places of battery
horses and drivers. In a twinkling they were harnessed—off went
cavalry with the gun through the echoing wood, the smoke wreaths, and
the shouting. The grey went back not far: the blue but regained their
first position. It was high noon. Then entered the fight the divisions
of Liddell and Cheatham.
Liddell had two thousand men. Bursting through the undergrowth they
came into hot touch with Baird’s re-forming lines. They broke the
brigades of King and Scribner; they took two batteries; yelling, they
pursued their victory. The smoke lifted. The two thousand were in the
concave of a blue sickle, their line overlapped, right and
left—Brannan’s men now and R.W. Johnson, of McCook’s corps. Liddell,
wheeling to the right, beat from that deadly hollow a justifiable
retreat.
Cheatham came over a low hill with five brigades. It was a veteran
division, predestined to grim fighting. Down on the Alexander Bridge
road he formed his line, then, as Walker’s commands were pressed back,
as the hurrahing blue columns swept forward, he entered the battle
with the precision of a stone from David’s sling. The blue wavered,
broke! In rushed Cheatham’s thousands, driving the foe, fiercely
driving him. The foe withdrew behind his breastworks, and from that
shelter turned against the grey a concentrated fire of musketry and
artillery. The grey stood and answered with fury. The ground was all
covered with felled trees, piles of brush-wood, timber shaken down
like jackstraws. No alignment could be kept; the men fired in groups
or as single marksmen. As such they strove to advance, as such they
were mowed down. The blue began to hurrah. Palmer of Crittenden’s
corps came swinging in with a flanking movement.
But Palmer’s hurrahing lines were checked, as had been Brannan’s and
Johnson’s. In through the woods, now all afire, came A. P. Stewart’s
division of Buckner’s corps. Alabama and Tennessee, three thousand
muskets, it struck Palmer’s line and forced it aside. Van Cleve came
to help, but Van Cleve gave way, too, pressed by the grey across the
vast, smoke-filled stage to the ridge crowned by earthworks that like
a drop-scene closed the back. The roar of battle filled all space;
officers could not be heard, nor, in the universal smoke, could waved
sword or hat be seen. Off to the right, Forrest’s bugles were ringing.
Now and then drums were beaten, but this noise seemed no louder than
woodpeckers tapping, lost in the crash of the volleys. Alabama and
Tennessee pressed on. It was half past two o’clock.
Hood had three brigades of his own division and three of Bushrod
Johnson’s, and now, from the Lee and Gordon’s Mills road, Hood,
unleashed at last, entered the battle. Into it, yelling and firing,
double-quicked his tall grey lines. He came with the force of a
catapult. _Yaaaih! Yaaaiiiihhh!_ yelled Tennessee, North Carolina,
Arkansas, and Texas. They struck the Chattanooga road and drove the
blue along it, toward the westering sun. Up at a double swung the
fresh blue troops of Negley and Wood, Davis and Sheridan. In the
descending day they pushed the grey again to the eastward of the
contested road.
At sunset in came Patrick Cleburne, general beloved, marching with his
division over wildly obstructed roads from Hill on the extreme right.
But it was late and the dark and smoky day was closing down. Night
came, filled with the smell and taste of burned powder and of the wood
smoke from all the forest afire. The firing became desultory, died
away, save for now and then a sound of skirmishers. The two armies,
Army of Tennessee, Army of Cumberland, rested.
They rested from strife, but not from preparation for strife. The two
giants, the blue and the grey, were weary enough, but between
Chickamauga and the slopes of Missionary Ridge they did small sleeping
that Saturday night, the nineteenth of September, 1863. All night rang
the axes. “Log-works,” said the grey giant. “At dawn, I am going to
storm log-works.” Fifty-seven thousand strong was the blue giant and
the grey about the same. “To-morrow’s fight,” said both, “is going to
lay over to-day’s.” “Where,” said, in addition, the grey—“where is
General Longstreet?”
The soldiers who might sleep, slept on their arms, under a sulphurous
canopy. All the forest hereabouts was thick with brushwood and
summer-parched. It burned in a hundred places. The details, gathering
the wounded, carried torches. It was lurid enough, all the far-flung
field. There were very many wounded, many dead. Blue and grey alike
heard the groaning of their fallen. _Ahh! ahhh!_ groaned the forest.
And the word that was always heard, as soon as the guns were silent,
was heard now, steady as cicadas in a grove. _Water! Water! Water!
Water! Water!_ There was a moon, but not plainly seen because of the
gauze that was over the earth. A chill and restless night it was,
filled with comings and goings, and movements of large bodies of
troops.
Just before midnight Longstreet appeared in person. The weary grey
railroad had brought him, in the afternoon, to Catoosa platform, near
Ringgold. With two aides he took horse at once and pushed out toward
the field of action. But the woods were thick and the roads an
unmarked tangle. He came at last upon the field and met General Bragg
at midnight. Behind him, yet upon the road, were three brigades of
Hood’s division and Kershaw’s and Humphrey’s, of McLaws’s.
There was a council of war. It was understood, it was in the air, that
the past day had been but a prelude. Now Bragg announced to his
officers a change of plan. The Army of Tennessee was divided into two
wings. The right was composed of Walker’s and Hill’s corps, Cheatham’s
division, and the cavalry of Forrest. Leonidas Polk commanded here.
The left was formed by Hood’s and Buckner’s corps, the division of
Hindman, and Joe Wheeler’s cavalry, and Longstreet commanded this
wing.
“And the plan of attack?”
“As it was to-day. Successive pushes from right to left. The attack to
begin at daylight.”
But daylight was not far away, and the movements to be made were many.
The sun was above the tree-tops when Breckinridge advanced upon the
Chattanooga road and opened the battle of the twentieth. “Sunday,”
said the men. “Going to church—going to church—going to a little
mountain church! Going to be singing—Minie singing. Going to be
preaching—big gun preaching. We’ve got what the General calls a
_ponshon_ for Sunday service.... Lot of dead people in this wood.
Haven’t you ever noticed how much worse a half-burned cabin looks than
one burned right down? That one over there—it looks as if home was
still a-lingering around. Go ’way! it does! You boys haven’t got no
imagination.—No imagination—no imagination—No shoes and pretty nearly
no breakfast.... I wish this here dust was imagination—
“The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home;
’T is summer, the darkies are gay,
The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day.”
“Birds all fly away from battle-fields”—“Not when there are nestlings!
Saw a tree set on fire by hot shot from Yankee gunboat on the
Tennessee. Marched by it when it was jest a pillar of flame, and, by
gum! there was a mocking-bird dead on her nest, with her wings spread
out over the little birds. All of them dead.... It made you wonder.
And, by gum! the captain, when he saw it—the captain saluted!”
“The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright;
By ’n’ by hard times comes a-knocking at the door,
Then, my old Kentucky home, good night!”
“Whew! That’s a pretty line of breastworks over there before Helm’s
brigade! Reckon that’s what Billy Yank was building all night
long!—Helm’s going forward—” _Kentuckians! Charge bayonets!
Double-quick!_
Helm was killed, heroically leading his brigade. The colonel of the
Second Kentucky was killed, the colonel of the Ninth badly wounded.
The Ninth lost a third of its number. “I went into the fight,” says
the colonel of the Second, “with thirty officers and two hundred and
seventy-two men, and came out with ten officers and one hundred and
forty-six men. Both officers and men behaved gallantly.” The colonel
of the Fourth was badly wounded; the Sixth had its losses; the
Forty-first Alabama went in with something over three hundred men, and
lost in killed twenty-seven, in wounded, one hundred and twenty. Three
captains of the Second were killed at the foot of the works, and the
colour-sergeant, Robert Anderson, having planted the flag a-top, died
with his hands about the staff. Adams’s Louisiana brigade came to the
help of Helm. Adams, severely wounded, was taken prisoner. The combat
raged, bitter and bloody. There was a long, long line of well-erected
breastworks, with a shorter line at right angles. The divisions of
Thomas fought grimly, heroically; the brigades of Breckinridge went to
the assault as heroically. Nowadays no Confederate brigade, no
Confederate regiment, had full complement of muskets. They were
skeleton organizations, gaunt as their units, but declining to merge
because each would keep its old, heroic name. Spare as they were, they
threw themselves, yelling, against the log-works. Breckinridge was
tall and straight and filled with fiery courage. Vice-President, on a
time, of the United States, now grey general on the chessboard, he
showed here, as there, a brilliant, commanding personality. His men,
proud of him, fought with his own high ardour. The withering blast
came against them; they shouted and tossed it back. Now there came
also against the breastworks the division of Cleburne.
Patrick Romayne Cleburne,—thirty-six years old, but with greying hair
above his steel-grey eyes, Irishman of the county of Cork, one time
soldier in the English army, then lawyer in the city of Helena and the
State of Arkansas, then private in the Confederate army, then captain,
then colonel, then brigadier, and now major-general,—Patrick Cleburne
commanded a division that, also, had its personality. The division’s
heart and his heart beat in unison. “He was not only a commander, but
a comrade fighting with his men.” Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama,
Mississippi, and the Irish regiment adored Cleburne, and Cleburne
returned their love. “To my noble division,” he wrote to a lady, “and
not to myself, belong the praises for the deeds of gallantry you
mention.” Cleburne’s division had its own flags, and on each was
worked a device of “crossed cannon inverted,” and the name of the
battle-fields over which it had been carried. “Prior to the battle of
Shiloh,” says General Hardee, “a blue battle-flag had been adopted by
me for this division, and when the Confederate battle-flag became the
national colours, Cleburne’s division, at its urgent request, was
allowed to retain its own bullet-ridden battle-flags.... Friends and
foes soon learned to watch the course of the blue flag that marked
where Cleburne was in the battle. Where this division defended, no
odds broke its lines where it attacked, no numbers resisted its
onslaught—save only once—and there is the grave of Cleburne and his
heroic division.” Now at Chickamauga, Cleburne and forty-four hundred
bayonets swung into battle to the support of Breckinridge. Before
Cleburne, also, at short range, were breastworks, and now from these
there burst a tempest of grape and canister, with an undersong of
musketry. It was a fire that mowed like a scythe. Wood’s brigade had
to cross an old field bordering the Chattanooga road, an old field
marked by a burning house. Crossing, there burst against it, from
hidden batteries to right and left, a blast as from a furnace seven
times heated. Five hundred men fell here, killed and wounded. On the
left Lucius Polk’s brigade came against breastworks cresting a hill
covered with scrub oak. Blue and grey engaged with fury. Down poured
the blast from the ridge, canister and grape and musketry. Lucius
Polk’s men lay down behind the crest of a lower ridge, and kept up the
fight, losing in no great time three hundred and fifty officers and
men. Deshler’s brigade moved forward. A shell came shrieking, struck
Deshler in the breast, and killed him. Cleburne shook his head. “Too
much loss of good life!”—and withdrawing the division four hundred
yards, took up a strong defensive position.
Breckinridge and Cleburne, there was loss of life enough. What was
gained was this: Thomas called for reinforcements, and Rosecrans, to
strengthen his left, began to weaken his right. To the aid of Baird
and Johnson, Palmer and Reynolds behind the breastworks, came first a
brigade of Negley’s division, then regiments from Palmer’s reserve,
and then from the left troops of McCook and Sheridan.
The divisions of Gist and Liddell, Walker’s corps, moved to the aid of
Breckinridge, Gist throwing himself with fury against the works before
which Helm had fallen. It was eleven o’clock. Bragg ordered in
Stewart’s division. The three brigades—Clayton, Brown, and
Bate—charged under a deadly fire, “the most terrible fire it has ever
been my fortune to witness.” Brown’s men, exposed to an enfilade,
broke, but Clayton and Bate rushed on past the clearing, past the
burning house, past the Chattanooga road. They drove the blue within
entrenchments, they took a battery and many prisoners. Thomas sent
again to Rosecrans, and Rosecrans further weakened his right. His
adjutant forwarded an order to McCook. The left must be supported at
all hazards, “even if the right is drawn wholly to the present left.”
After Van Cleve had been sent, and Sheridan and Negley, there came yet
another message that the left was heavily pressed. The aide bringing
it stated that Brannan was out of line and Reynolds’s right exposed.
Rosecrans sent an order to Wood, commanding a division—
“_The general commanding directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast
as possible and support him_.”
It was the fatal, the pivotal order. Wood moved—and left a great
opening in the blue line of battle. Toward the filling of this gap
there moved with precision two brigades of Sheridan’s. But some one
else moved first, with a masterful change of plan, made with the
swiftness of that glint of Opportunity’s eye.
Longstreet had made a column of attack, three lines, eight brigades.
Long, grey, magnificent, these moved forward, steady as steel, eyes
just narrowed in the face of the hurricane of shot and shell. “Old
Pete,” “the old war horse,“ rode with them, massively directing. The
smoke was drifting, drifting over the field of Chickamauga, over the
River of Death and the slopes of Missionary Ridge. Underfoot was dust
and charred herbage and the dead and the wounded. On the right the
roar of the fight never ceased—Forrest, Breckinridge, Cleburne,
Walker, Stewart, and George Thomas behind his breastworks.
Longstreet with his eight brigades, swinging toward the right, saw,
through a rift in the smoke, the movement of Wood and the gap which
now, suddenly, was made between the Federal right and left. A kind of
slow light came into Longstreet’s face. ”_By the right flank,
wheel!—Double-quick!—Forward! Charge!_”
Hood was leading. His line struck like a thunderbolt the foe in
reverse, struck McCook’s unprepared brigades. There sprang and swelled
an uproar that overcrowed all the din to the right. McCook broke, the
grey drove on. They yelled. _Yaaaih! Yaaaihhh! Yaaaaihh!_ yelled the
grey. Hood rose in his stirrups and shouted an order to Bushrod
Johnson. “Go ahead, and keep ahead of everything!” A minie ball
shattered his thigh. He sank from his horse; Law took command; on
swept the great charge. Brigades of Manigault and Deas, McNair, Gregg,
Johnson, Law, Humphrey, Benning, with Patton Anderson, of Hindman’s
division, they burst from the forest into open fields running through
smoky sunshine backward and upward to ridges crowned by Federal
batteries. All these broke into thunder, loud and fast, but the blue
infantry, surprised, broken, streamed across the fields in disorder.
Behind them came the vehement charge, long, triumphant, furious, with
blare and dust and smoke and thunder, with slanted colours, with
neighing chargers, with burning eyes and lifted voices. All the élan
of the South was here. Brigade by brigade, Longstreet burst from the
forest. Yelling, this charge drove the blue from their breastworks,
took the house that was their headquarters, took twenty-seven pieces
of artillery, and more than a thousand prisoners, laid hand upon
hospitals and ordnance trains, slew and wounded and bore the blue
back, back! McCook suffered heavily, oh, heavily! “I have never,” says
D.H. Hill,—“I have never seen the Federal dead lie so thickly on the
ground save in front of the sunken wall at Fredericksburg.”
There was a line of heights behind the Vidito house, beyond the
Crawfish Spring road. Thomas seized these, and here the blue rallied
and turned for a yet more desperate struggle. It came. Hindman and
Bushrod Johnson proposed to take those heights by assault. They took
them, but at a cost, at a cost, at a cost! When they won to the Vidito
house, the women of the family left whatever hiding-place from the
shells they had contrived, and ran, careless of the whistling death in
the air, out before the house. They laughed, they wept, they welcomed.
“God bless you! God bless you! It’s going to be a victory! It’s going
to be a victory! God bless you!” The grey, storming on, waved hat and
cheered. “It’s going to be a victory! It’s going to be a victory! God
bless you!”
Up on the sides of the ridge it came to hand-to-hand fighting, a
dreadful, prolonged struggle, men clubbing men with muskets, men
piercing men’s breasts with bayonets, men’s faces scorched, so near
were they to the iron, flaming muzzles! Over all roared the guns,
settled the smoke; underfoot the earth grew blood-soaked. Inch by inch
the grey fought their way; inch by inch the blue gave back, driven up
the long slope to the very crest of the ridge. The sun was low in the
heavens.
On Horseshoe Ridge the fight grew fell. And now came to the aid of the
right wing, came in long, resistless combers, the brigades of Hill.
They came through the woods afire, over the clearings sown with dead
and wounded, up the slope of Horseshoe. Once more the summit flamed
and thundered—then the blue summit turned grey. Over the crest, down
the northern slope of the ridge swept the united wings, right wing and
left wing. They made a thresher’s fan; before it the blue fell away,
passed from the slope into deep hollows of the approaching night.
Right wing and left wing shouted; they shouted until Lookout Mountain,
dark against the sunset sky, might have heard their shouting.
On the field of Chickamauga, by the River of Death, thirty thousand
men lay dead or wounded, or were prisoners or missing. If there were
Indian spirits in these woods they might have said in council that
September night: “How fierce and fell and bloody-minded is this white
man who wars where once we warred! Look at the long files of his
ghost, rising like mist from Chickamauga, passing like thin smoke
across the moon!”