Rarely does the camera afford such a perfectly contemporaneous record of
the march of events so momentous. This photograph shows the hotel at
Stevenson, Alabama, during the Union advance that ended in Chickamauga.
Sentinels are parading the street in front of the hotel, several horses
are tied to the hotel posts, and the officers evidently have gone into the
hotel headquarters. General Alexander McDowell McCook, commanding the old
Twentieth Army Corps, took possession of the hotel as temporary
headquarters on the movement of the Army of the Cumberland from Tullahoma.
On August 29, 1863, between Stevenson and Caperton's Ferry, on the
Tennessee River, McCook gathered his boats and pontoons, hidden under the
dense foliage of overhanging trees, and when ready for his crossing
suddenly launched them into and across the river. Thence the troops
marched over Sand Mountain and at length into Lookout Valley. During the
movements the army was in extreme peril, for McCook was at one time three
days' march from Thomas, so that Bragg might have annihilated the
divisions in detail. Finally the scattered corps were concentrated along
Chickamauga Creek, where the bloody struggle of September 19th and 20th
was so bravely fought.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO CHICKAMAUGA