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To retire
a regiment for any cause, has a bad effect on
others. I commend the Fortieth
Illinois and Thirteenth Missouri
for thus holding their ground under heavy fire, although their
cartridge-boxes were empty. About
noon I got a message from drawn up in line of battle, on half-way between Kingston and indicated a willingness and He
reported that the enemy steadily and in superb
I
could not
then imagine why he had declined battle, and did not learn the
real reason till after the war was over, and then from General Johnston himself.
He was
unwilling to engage in so superior to his own in numbers, commanders dissatisfied with the ground Skirmishing
was kept up all night, but when day broke
the next morning, May 20th, the enemy was gone, and our cavalry was sent in pursuit.
These reported
him beyond the Etowah River.
We were then well in advance of our railroad-trains, on which we
depended for supplies; so I determined to pause a few days to repair
the railroad, which had been damaged but little, except at the
bridge at Resaca, and then to go on.
It
is now impossible to in any one separate almost daily, among trees could rarely see a hundred yards
The
fighting continued all round us for three or four hours, when we
observed signs of drawing off, which I attributed to the rightful
cause, the rapid approach of Corse's division, which arrived
about dark, having marched the whole distance from Memphis, twenty-six
miles, on the double-quick.
Seven
days before, of the Tennessee with two clothing--stripped for the coat per man, from myself to Of
course, we then had no provisions save what we gathered by the road,
and were ill supplied for such a march. But
we learned that twelve
thousand of our fellow-soldiers were beleaguered in the mountain
town of Knoxville, eighty-four miles distant; that they needed
relief, and must have it in three days. This
was enough-- and
it had to be done.
For
long periods, without regular rations or supplies of any kind, they
have marched through mud and over rocks, sometimes barefooted, without
a murmur. Without a moment's rest
after a march of over four
hundred miles, without sleep for three successive nights, we crossed
the Tennessee, fought our part of the battle of Chattanooga,
pursued the enemy out of Tennessee, and then turned more
than a hundred and twenty miles north and compelled Longstreet to
raise the siege of Knoxville
*** All
along Missionary Ridge were the tents of the rebel beleaguering
force; the lines of trench from Lookout up toward the Chickamauga
were plainly visible; and rebel sentinels, in a continuous
chain, were walking their posts in plain view, not a thousand
yards off. "Why," said I,
"General Grant, you are besieged;" and he said, "It is too true."
Up
to that moment I had The
rebel lines actually extended to the river above, and the Army of held to the town and its immediate
General Grant pointed out to me a house on Missionary Ridge,
where General Bragg's headquarters were known to be. He also
explained the situation of affairs generally; that the mules and
horses of Thomas's army were so starved that they could not haul
his guns; that forage, corn, and provisions, were so scarce that
the men in hunger stole the few grains of corn that were given to
favorite horses; that the men of Thomas's army had been so demoralized
by the battle of Chickamauga that he feared they could not be got out of their trenches to assume the offensive; ***
I have many a time crept forward to the skirmish-line to avail myself of the cover of the pickets "little fort," to observe more closely some expected result; and always talked familiarly with the men, and was astonished to see how well they comprehended the general object, and how accurately they were informed of the sate of facts existing miles away from their particular corps. Soldiers are very quick to catch the general drift and purpose of a campaign, and are always sensible when they are well commanded or well cared for. Once impressed with this fact, and that they are making progress, they bear cheerfully any amount of labor and privation.
The
rebels had struck our railroad a heavy blow, burning every tie, bending
the rails for eight miles, from Big Shanty to above Acworth,
so that the estimate for repairs called for thirty-five thousand
new ties, and six miles of iron. Ten
thousand men were distributed
along the break to replace the ties, and to prepare the road-bed,
while the regular repair-party, under Colonel W. W. Wright,
came down from Chattanooga with iron, spikes, etc., and in about
seven days the road was all right again. It
was by such acts of
extraordinary energy that we discouraged our adversaries, for the
rebel soldiers felt that it was a waste of labor for them to march
hurriedly, on wide circuits, day and night, to burn a bridge and
tear up a mile or so of track, when they knew that we could lay it
back so quickly. They supposed that
we had men and money without
limit, and that we always kept on hand, distributed along the
road, duplicates of every bridge and culvert of any importance.
A
good story is told of one who was on Kenesaw Mountain during our advance
in the previous June or July. A
group of rebels lay in the shade
of a tree, one hot day, overlooking our camps about Big Shanty.
One soldier remarked to his fellows: "Well,
the Yanks will have to git up and git now, for I heard General
Johnston himself say that General Wheeler had blown up the tunnel
near Dalton, and that the Yanks would have to retreat, because
they could get no more rations." "Oh,
hell!" said a listener, "don't you know that old Sherman carries
a duplicate tunnel along?"
After
the war was over, General Johnston inquired of me who was our chief
railroad-engineer. When I told him
that it was Colonel W. W. Wright,
a civilian, he was much surprised, said that our feats of bridge-building
and repairs of roads had excited his admiration; and
he instanced the occasion at Kenesaw in June, when an officer from
Wheeler's cavalry had reported to him in person that he had come
from General Wheeler, who had made a bad break in our road about
Triton Station, which he said would take at least a fortnight to
repair; and, while they were talking, a train was seen coming down
the road which had passed that very break, and had reached me at
Big Shanty as soon as the fleet horseman had reached him (General
Johnston) at Marietta I
doubt whether the history of war can furnish more examples of skill
and bravery than attended the defense of the railroad from Nashville
to Atlanta during the year 1864.
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