Part 3

Gen. Burnside's condition was very critical and Gen. Grant deemed his relief of more importance than the pursuit of Bragg. He therefore directed Gen. Sherman to give his troops a rest of one day before starting to raise the siege of Knoxville. In addition to his own three divisions Gen. Grant gave him Howard's and Granger's corps and Davis' division of the 14th corps. Gen. Hooker was ordered to remain at Ringgold until Nov. 30, to cover Gen. Sherman's movement towards Knoxville and keep up the semblance of pursuit.

It is probable that Gen. Grant had 60,000 men in action in the battle of Chattanooga, and Gen. Bragg 40,000. The former had thirteen divisions including two detached brigades, and the latter had eight divisions. Gen. Bragg's loss in killed and wounded was between 2500 and 3000 men. He lost by capture 6142 men, forty-two guns, sixty-nine gun carriages, and 7000 stand of small arms. His loss in material was immense, part of which he destroyed in his flight, but a large portion which was uninjured fell to the Union army. The aggregate losses of the armies of the Cumberland and Tennessee were 753 killed, 4722 wounded, and 349 missing, making a total of 5824. These losses were small compared with those of other battles of similar proportions, and very small in view of the fact that the enemy generally fought behind intrenchments.

Chattanooga was a very important position for defense or aggression. Fortified on its outer lines by ranges of mountains, after the battle of Chickamauga it had been made strong by intrenchments, forts and redoubts, and heavy guns. Situated at the confluence of several streams and diverging valleys, and especially as the gateway of Georgia, it was the natural base for an invasion of the Gulf states from the north. This position had been the objective point of the army of the Cumberland for a long time, and as a result of a battle compassing all the elements of the most brilliant warfare, it fell into its possession when the troops reached the crest of Missionary Ridge. The issue of the battle produced a startling surprise throughout the South. Gen. Bragg had said that the Ridge ought to have been held by a skirmish line against an assaulting column, but no skirmish line could have held Missionary Ridge against even a portion of the brave men who dashed up its steep acclivity. The moral forces were with the assaulting columns. The battle had been opened by the splendid charge of Wood's division capturing Orchard Knob, and Lookout Mountain had been wrested from the enemy by Gen. Hooker in such a way as to change the martial tone of each army. Those assaulting Missionary Ridge had Chickamauga to avenge and Lookout Mountain to surpass, and the firm and resolute sweep of the charging column for more than a mile expressed in advance the resistless character of the attack. When fifty battle flags forming the foremost line approached the crest, the Confederate soldiers knew that they would wave over their defenses or those who bore them, and many of the 20,000 men who followed would fall. The men who fled had proved themselves brave on other fields and were perhaps less to blame than their impassive general, who had failed to perceive the ruling conditions of the battle. The loss of more than 20 per cent in the two central divisions in a contest of less than an hour shows that the enemy did not yield his position without a struggle. There was a panic, but its cause was not mere fear but the overwhelming impression that resistance was useless.

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The battle of Chickamauga was fought on Sept. 19 and 20, 1863. After the battle of Chattanooga it was found that many of the Union dead were left unburied on the field of Chickamauga, and on Nov. 27 the brigade of Col. Wm. Grose of the 4th corps was detailed to proceed to that field and bury the dead. Col. Grose found that on the left of the line the dead had not been sufficiently covered, that toward the center and right few of our dead were covered at all, and that west of the road from Lee and Gordon's mills to Rossville but few burials had been made of either party. All good clothing had been stripped from the bodies. He buried 400 which had been the prey of animals for more than two months. He had not time to examine the entire field.

The first permanent National Cemetery for soldiers established by military order was the one founded by Gen. Geo. H. Thomas near Chattanooga. During the battle a reserve force, in line over a hill near the field position of Gen. Thomas, revealed its beautiful contour and suggested its use as a National Cemetery. This hill is located equidistant from Cameron Hill, which rises abruptly from the Tennessee river where it turns towards Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in the east, and is central between Gen. Hooker's point of attack on the mountain and Gen. Sherman's on the northern summit of Missionary Ridge. During the war it was known as Bushey Knob.

On Dec. 25, 1863, Gen. Thomas issued a general order of which the following is an extract:--

(GENERAL ORDERS NO. 296)

"It is ordered that a National Cemetery be founded at this place, in commemoration of the battle of Chattanooga fought Nov. 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27, and to provide a proper resting place for the remains of the brave men who fell upon the fields fought over upon those days, and for the remains of such as may hereafter give up their lives in this region in defending their country against treason and rebellion."

The ground selected for the cemetery is the hill lying beyond the Western and Atlantic railroad, in a southeasterly direction from the town. The reservation consists of 128 acres. The cemetery proper comprises the entire hill with an area of seventy-five and one-half acres surrounded by a stone wall. The summit of the hill is eighty-three feet above the level of the base. Since the war forest trees two feet and over in diameter cover the ground. The number of soldiers interred here up to April, 1903, was 13,364, and of this number 8394 are known and 4970 unknown. The dead of Chickamauga, some 2000, were removed to this cemetery soon after the Union army gained possession of the field. Of these 154 were identified and the balance unknown. Each grave has a headstone which gives when known the name, rank and state, but when unknown the number of the grave only. Quite a number of private headstones have been erected but the only large monuments are the Ohio monument to the Andrews Raiders and that of the Fourth Army Corps. The Andrews monument consists of several blocks of granite surmounted by a bronze locomotive, a peculiar emblem of peace amid so many signs of war, but this monument commemorates the names of a few brave men who lost their lives for taking part in a very daring though unsuccessful raid within the enemy's lines.

The entrance to the cemetery has a handsome arch erected by the Government. The grounds have been adorned and made beautiful with trees, shrubs and flowers, and are carefully kept by the superintendent. Few cities add to such wealth of scenic and historic attractions such a site in the midst of the highways of trade as Chattanooga, such store of coal, iron and timber, such busy industry. The first charter of the town was given Dec. 20, 1839. By the second charter passed in November, 1851, the town became officially the city of Chattanooga. In the spring of 1862 the city was occupied by the Confederates. On the 21st of August, 1863, a few shells from Wilder's guns on Stringer's Ridge on the north side of the Tennessee came into the city, and on the 19th of September the last troopers in gray rode out and the men in blue came in, and the stars and stripes went up on the Crutchfield House. By the census of 1860 Chattanooga had a population of 2545. At the close of the Civil War there was less than that number, which soon grew by the return of refugees and by the addition of new citizens. The geographical situation attracted new railroads, among them the Alabama Great Southern; Central Georgia; Chattanooga Southern; Cincinnati Southern; Southern Railway, Memphis, Knoxville and Atlanta Divisions; Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis; and Western and Atlantic. The Tennessee river is navigable from Knoxville to its junction with the Ohio at Paducah in Western Kentucky. The population in 1905 including suburbs was estimated from 64,000 to 70,000. The city has six libraries, the Public Library being a Carnegie building. It contains two hospitals and five homes for the needy. It has 111 church organizations, seven banking institutions, and 258 factories, employing in 1904, 10,487 hands.

In the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park many grand and beautiful monuments have been erected by several of the states of the North and South in honor of their fallen soldiers. The Park contains 6965 acres, mostly at Chickamauga, but also at Orchard Knob, at different points on Missionary Ridge, at the battlefield on the slope of Lookout Mountain, at the Point Park on the summit, in Lookout valley and at Ringgold, Georgia. It contains one of the finest cavalry posts in the United States: Fort Oglethorpe. The improved roads in the Park are eighty miles in extent. On the Chickamauga battlefield are 170 monuments erected by different states and 323 markers, and in the National Park outside of this battlefield 51 monuments and 113 markers, among these seven monuments by the state of New York. Besides these there are many shell and marble monuments erected by military organizations and private individuals. In addition fifty-five Union batteries with 135 guns, and sixty Confederate batteries with 141 guns have been mounted, some of them outside the Park. All the Confederate batteries which were faced in storming Missionary Ridge are again in position.

Point Park on the summit of Lookout Mountain includes eleven and eight-tenths acres and here are placed cannon of the Confederate artillery of the war time. In this Park the state of New York is erecting a monument which will be the largest and most costly of any in the National Park. It is to be of granite and bronze, rising to the height of about 100 feet, the lower part in the form of a Grecian temple. On its tablets will be information about both armies. On a clear day seven states are within the range of vision from Point Rock; Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee are close at hand, to the east are the mountains of North and South Carolina, and to the north the mountains about Cumberland Gap in Kentucky and Virginia. The fine monument erected on Orchard Knob by the state of Maryland is dedicated to the memory of her sons of the Blue and the Gray. The beautiful monument in Chickamauga Park near the La Fayette road, erected by the state of Kentucky in memory of her sons of both armies who fell on that field, bears these patriotic words: "As we are united in life and they united in death, let one monument perpetuate their deeds, and one people forgetful of all asperities forever hold in grateful remembrance all the glories of that terrible conflict which made all men free and retained every star in the Nation's flag."

The neighing steed, the Bashing blade, The trumpet's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din and shout are past; No war's wild note, nor glory's peal. Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that nevermore shall feel The rapture of the fight.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone In deathless songs shall tell, When many a vanished age hath flown, The story how ye fell; Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight. Nor Time's remorseless doom, Shall dim one ray of holy light That gilds your glorious tomb.

Many brave and gallant generals of the Civil War took part in the battle of Chattanooga. On the side of the Union we might mention the names of Generals Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Hooker, Granger, Palmer, Howard, Slocum, Geary, J. J. Remolds, W. F. Smith. Butterfield, Cruft, T. J. Wood, Sheridan, Davis, Baird, Johnson, M. L. Smith, J. E. Smith, Osterhaus, Brannan, Corse, C. R. Woods, Loomis, Beatty, Harker, Hazen, Wagner, Willich, Von Steinwehr, Ruger, Turchin, D. McCook and Rosseau; and among the Confederate Generals, Bragg, Hardee, Breckenridge, Cleburne, Hindman, Buckner, Stewart, Cheatham, Walker, Stevenson. Armstrong, Jackson, Anderson, Walthall, Wright, Moore, Polk, Gist, Vaughan, Reynolds, Adams, Bate, Cumming, Clayton, Brown, Pettus, Strahl, Lewis, Wade, Grigsby, Lidell, Stowell, M. Smith, Manigault and Tyler.

To Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, to whom all plans were submitted, upon whom rested the greatest responsibility, and who gave the final and decisive orders, should be given the greatest credit for the victory; but I should like to say a few words in honor of another great general who took a prominent part in this battle and whose presence gave promise of success. I refer to Maj.-Gen. George H. Thomas. Gen. Thomas was of Welsh and English descent on his father's side, and French Huguenot on his mother's. His ancestors settled in southeastern Virginia in the early days of that colony. He was born in Southampton county on the 31st of July, 1816, in a happy country home. He entered West Point in 1836 and graduated in 1840, the 12th in a class of forty-two. He was assigned to the 3d Artillery. He served in the Florida War 1840-42, the Mexican War 1846-48 and the Seminole War 1849-50; was instructor of artillery and cavalry at West Point 1851-1854 and on frontier duty in Texas and California in 1860. He was brevetted several times for gallant and meritorious conduct and in 1855 was made a major in the 2d Cavalry, which he commanded for three years. He was wounded in a fight with the Indians at the head waters of the Brazos river in August, 1860, and on the following November was east on leave of absence. Three-fourths of the officers of his regiment were from the slave States. Albert Sidney Johnston was its colonel, Robert E. Lee lieut.-colonel, and W. J. Hardee the senior major. Among the captains and lieutenants were Van Dorn, Kirby Smith, Jenifers, Hood and Fitzhugh Lee. More than one-third of its officers became Confederate generals. Social and family influences bound Gen. Thomas to his native state, but his wife was a patriotic Northern lady. Gen. Thomas never wavered in his loyalty to the government, and when the first gun was fired on Fort Sumter he relinquished the remainder of his leave of absence and reported for duty at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., on the 14th of April, 1861. With but two exceptions all the officers of the 2d Cavalry from the seceded states joined the rebellion. Thomas was one of the two. His family, friends, and State summoned him to join the South. He answered by leaving Carlisle Barracks on May 27 and leading a brigade from Chambersburg across Maryland to Williamsport, and on June 16 rode across the Potomac to invade Virginia and fight his old commanders. A few days later he led the right wing of Gen. Patterson's army in the battle of Falling Waters, where the rebels under Stonewall Jackson were defeated. The fame of Gen. Thomas as a soldier is linked forever with the history of the army of the Cumberland. In 1861 he organized and mustered in its first brigade, and in 1865 at Nashville, the scene of his greatest victory, he passed in farewell review and mustered out of the service more than 130,000 of its war-worn veterans.

During the Civil War the army of the Cumberland held the center of the line, which was in many respects the most difficult of all. From the 30th of November, 1861, to 30th of September, 1862, Gen. Thomas commanded a division of Gen. Buell's army. He won the battle of Mill Springs on Jan. 19, 1862, which was the most important military success that had yet been achieved west of Virginia. On the 30th of September, 1862, he was appointed second in command of the army of the Ohio, and served as such until after the battle of Perryville. Gen. Rosecrans, who succeeded Gen. Buell, reorganized the army then known as the 14th Corps into three distinct commands, right, left, and center, and assigned Gen. Thomas to the center, which consisted of five divisions. He held this command in the battle of Stone River, and until Jan. 9, 1863, when by order of the War Department three divisions of the army were made army corps. One of them, the 14th, Gen. Thomas commanded during the campaigns of Middle Tennessee and Chickamauga, which resulted in driving the Confederates beyond the Tennessee and gaining possession of Chattanooga. On the 19th of October, 1863, in obedience to orders from the War Department, he relieved Gen. Rosecrans and assumed command of the Army of the Cumberland. Soon afterward two other armies, Sherman's and Hooker's, were brought to Chattanooga, the three forming a grand army under Gen. Grant. The army of the Cumberland, consisting of four corps, formed the center and right of the grand army. In this position Gen. Thomas commanded it at the storming of Missionary Ridge.

On Sept. 27, 1864, Gen. Thomas was ordered to Tennessee to protect the department against the invasion of Hood. While in this command he conducted the operations which resulted in the combats along the Duck river, the battle of Franklin Nov. 30, and the battle of Nashville and destruction of Hood's army on Dec. 15 and 16, 1864, and finally the capture of Jefferson Davis in May, 1865. From June, 1865 to May, 1869 he commanded most of the territory which had been the theatre of his service during the war. On the 15th of May, 1869, he started for San Francisco, where he remained in command of the Military Division of the Pacific until the date of his death March 28, 1870. He was appointed-brigadier general of volunteers Aug. 17, 1861, major-general of volunteers April 25, 1862; Brigadier General in the Regular Army Oct, 27. 1863, and Major General Dec. 15, 1864. His career was not only great and complete, but, what is more significant, was in an eminent degree the work of his own hands. It was not the result of accident or chance. Every step was marked by the most loyal and unhesitating obedience to law--to the laws of his government and the commands of his superiors. His influence over his troops grew steadily and constantly. He gradually filled them with his own spirit, until their confidence in him knew no bounds. It was reserved for the last day of Chickamauga to exhibit in one supreme example the vast sources of his great strength. After a day of heavy fighting and a night of anxious preparation, Gen. Rosecrans had established his lines for the purpose of holding the road to Chattanooga. If our army failed to hold it, not only was the campaign a failure but the army was in danger of destruction. Gen. Thomas commanded the left and center of our army. From early morning he withstood the furious and repeated attacks of the enemy, who constantly reinforced his assaults on our left. About noon the whole right wing was broken and driven from the field. Gen. Rosecrans was himself swept away in the tide of retreat. The forces of Longstreet, which had broken our right, now forming in heavy columns assaulted the right flank of Thomas with fury. Seeing the approaching danger he threw back his exposed flank and met the new peril. With but 25,000 men formed in a semi-circle, of which he himself was the center and soul, he successfully resisted for more than five hours the repeated assaults of an army of 65,000 men flushed with victory and bent on his annihilation. On a portion of his line the last assault was repelled by the bayonet and several hundred of the enemy were captured. When night had closed over the combatants the last sound of battle was the booming of Gen. Thomas' guns. He held the road to Chattanooga and the army of the Cumberland was saved from destruction.

Gen. Thomas resembled Washington in the gravity and dignity of his character, in the solidity of his judgment, in the careful accuracy of all his transactions, in his incorruptible integrity, and his extreme but unaffected modesty. Large and powerful, his movements were easy and quiet. He was resolute, unyielding, with a fortitude incapable of intimidation or dismay, and yet without pretension, boasting or self-assertion. He was altogether free from affectation or envy. He was never coarse or vulgar. He was genial and frank in communication, yet reticent and self-contained as to all that related to himself, neither inviting nor volunteering confidence. He was a model soldier. Arms was his profession. He recognized but one path to glory--the path of duty. His reason told him where his duty lay, his conscience bade him follow it. His plans of battle were carefully prepared, and then when all things were ready he launched the dread thunder-bolt of power, and with one stroke dealt the destruction he had devised. Mill Spring and Nashville--his first and last battles in the West--are capital illustrations of his military character. In reference to the battle of Nashville, the impatience of his superiors at a distance too great to appreciate the difficulties of the situation provoked from him no complaint. He telegraphed to the lieutenant-general: "I can only say that I have done all in my power to prepare, and if you should deem it necessary to relieve me, I shall submit without a murmur." When the time arrived for the delivery of the meditated blow, and its complete and thorough success was known, he received ample compensation for the temporary distrust in hearty and ungrudging congratulations from the president, secretary of war, and lieutenant-general as creditable to them as they were gratifying and just to him confirmed as they were by the thanks of Congress for the skill and dauntless courage by which the rebel army under Gen. Hood was signally defeated and driven from the State of Tennessee. A generation in Virginia will yet arise who will learn and confess the truth, that George H. Thomas, when he lifted his sword to bar the pathway of her secession, loved her as well as those who joined the cause of the South, and he served her better.