Charles A. Dana

Preparing to defend Chattanooga—Effect on the army of the day of disaster and glory—Mr. Dana suggests Grant or Thomas as Rosecrans's successor—Portrait of Thomas—The dignity and loyalty of his character illustrated—The army reorganized—It is threatened with starvation—An estimate of Rosecrans—He is relieved of the command of the Army of the Cumberland.

All the news we could get the next day of the enemy's movements seemed to show that the Confederate forces were concentrating on Chattanooga. Accordingly, Rosecrans gave orders for all our troops to gather in the town at once and prepare for the attack which would probably take place within a day or two. By midnight the army was in Chattanooga. The troops were in wonderful spirits, considering their excessive fatigues and heavy losses, and the next morning went to work with energy on the fortifications. All the morning of the 22d the enemy were approaching, resisted by our advance parties, and by the middle of the afternoon the artillery firing was so near that it seemed certain that the battle would be fought before dark. No attack was made that day, however, nor the next, and by the morning of the 24th the Herculean labors of the army had so fortified the place that it was certain that it could be taken only by a regular siege or by a turning movement. The strength of our forces was about forty-five thousand effective men, and we had ten days' full rations on hand. Chattanooga could hold out, but it was apparent that no offensive operations were possible until re-enforcements came. These we knew had been hurried toward us as soon as the news of the disaster of the 20th reached Washington. Burnside was coming from Knoxville, we supposed, Hooker had been ordered from Washington by rail, Sherman from Vicksburg by steamer, and some of Hurlbut's troops from Memphis.

The enemy by the 24th were massed in Chattanooga Valley, and held Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. The summit of Lookout Mountain, almost the key to Chattanooga, was not given up by Rosecrans until the morning of the 24th; then he ordered the withdrawal of the brigade which held the heights, and the destruction of the wagon road which winds along its side at about one third of its height and connects the valleys of Chattanooga and Lookout. Both Granger and Garfield earnestly protested against this order, contending that the mountain and the road could be held by not more than seven regiments against the whole power of the enemy. They were obviously right, but Rosecrans was sometimes as obstinate and inaccessible to reason as at others he was irresolute, vacillating, and inconclusive, and he pettishly rejected all their arguments. The mountain was given up.

As soon as we felt reasonably sure that Chattanooga could hold out until re-enforcements came, the disaster of the 20th of September became the absorbing topic of conversation in the Army of the Cumberland. At headquarters, in camp, in the street, on the fortifications, officers and soldiers and citizens wrangled over the reasons for the loss of the day. By the end of the first week after the disaster a serious fermentation reigned in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Army Corps, and, indeed, throughout the whole army, growing out of events connected with the battle.

There was at once a manifest disposition to hold McCook and Crittenden, the commanders of the two corps, responsible, because they had left the field of battle amid the rout of the right wing and made their way to Chattanooga.[D] It was not generally understood or appreciated at that time that, because of Thomas's repeated calls for aid and Rosecrans's consequent alarm for his left, Crittenden had been stripped of all his troops and had no infantry whatever left to command, and that McCook's lines also had been reduced to a fragment by similar orders from Rosecrans and by fighting. A strong opposition to both sprang up, which my telegrams to Mr. Stanton immediately after the battle fully reflect. The generals of division and of brigade felt the situation deeply, and said that they could no longer serve under such superiors, and that, if this was required of them, they must resign. This feeling was universal among them, including men like Major-Generals Palmer and Sheridan and Brigadier-Generals Wood, Johnson, and Hazen.

The feeling of these officers did not seem in the least to partake of a mutinous or disorderly character; it was rather conscientious unwillingness to risk their men and the country's cause in hands which they thought to be unsafe. No formal representation of this unwillingness was made to Rosecrans, but he was made aware of the state of things by private conversations with several of the parties. The defects of his character complicated the difficulty. He abounded in friendliness and approbativeness, and was greatly lacking in firmness and steadiness of will. In short, he was a temporizing man; he dreaded so heavy an alternative as was now presented, and hated to break with McCook and Crittenden.

Besides, there was a more serious obstacle to Rosecrans's acting decisively in the fact that if Crittenden and McCook had gone to Chattanooga, with the sound of artillery in their ears, from that glorious field where Thomas and Granger were saving their army and their country's honor, he had gone to Chattanooga also. It might be said in his excuse that, under the circumstances of the sudden rout, it was perfectly proper for the commanding general to go to the rear to prepare the next line of defense. Still, Rosecrans felt that that excuse could not entirely clear him either in his own eyes or in those of the army. In fact, it was perfectly plain that, while the subordinate commanders would not resign if he was retained in the chief command, as I believe they certainly would have done if McCook and Crittenden had not been relieved, their respect for Rosecrans as a general had received an irreparable blow.

The dissatisfaction with Rosecrans seemed to me to put the army into a very dangerous condition, and, in writing to Mr. Stanton on September 27th, I said that if it was decided to change the chief commander I would suggest that some Western commander of high rank and great prestige, like Grant, would be preferable as Rosecrans's successor to one who had hitherto commanded in the East alone.

The army, however, had its own candidate for Rosecrans's post. General Thomas had risen to the highest point in their esteem, as he had in that of every one who witnessed his conduct on that unfortunate and glorious day, and I saw that, should there be a change in the chief command, there was no other man whose appointment would be so welcome. I earnestly recommended Mr. Stanton that in event of a change in the chief command Thomas's merits be considered. He was certainly an officer of the very highest qualities, soldierly and personally. He was a man of the greatest dignity of character. He had more the character of George Washington than any other man I ever knew. At the same time he was a delightful man to be with; there was no artificial dignity about Thomas. He was a West Point graduate, and very well educated. He was very set in his opinions, yet he was not impatient with anybody—a noble character.

In reply to my recommendation of Thomas, I received a telegram from the Secretary of War, saying: "I wish you to go directly to see General Thomas, and say to him that his services, his abilities, his character, his unselfishness, have always been most cordially appreciated by me, and that it is not my fault that he has not long since had command of an independent army."

Accordingly, I went at once over to General Thomas's headquarters. I remember that I got there just after they had finished dinner; the table was not cleared off, but there was nobody in the dining room. When General Thomas came in, I read to him the telegram from the Secretary. He was too much affected by it to reply immediately. After a moment he said:

"Mr. Dana, I wish you would say to the Secretary of War that I am greatly affected by this expression of his confidence; that I should have long since liked to have had an independent command, but what I should have desired would have been the command of an army that I could myself have organized, disciplined, distributed, and combined. I wish you would add also that I would not like to take the command of an army where I should be exposed to the imputation of having intrigued or of having exercised any effort to supplant my previous commander."

This was on October 4th. Four days later General Thomas sent a confidential friend to me, saying rumors had come to him that he was to be put in Rosecrans's place; that, while he would gladly accept any other command to which Mr. Stanton should see fit to assign him, he could not consent to become the successor of General Rosecrans. He would not do anything to give countenance to the suspicion that he had intrigued against his commander's interest. He declared that he had perfect confidence in the fidelity and capacity of General Rosecrans.

The first change in the Army of the Cumberland was an order from Washington consolidating the Twentieth and Twenty-first Corps. The news reached Chattanooga on October 5th in a Nashville newspaper, and, not having been previously promulgated, it caused a sensation. Crittenden was much excited, and said that, as the Government no longer required his services, he would resign; at any rate, he would not hibernate like others, drawing pay and doing no work. McCook took it easily. The consolidation of the two corps was generally well received, and, as it was to be followed by a general reorganization of the army, it seemed as if the most happy consequences would be produced. The only serious difficulty which followed the change was that the men in the consolidated corps were troubled by letters from home, showing that their friends regarded a consolidation as a token of disgrace and punishment.

Although the reorganization of the army was going on, there was no real change in our situation, and by the middle of October it began to look as if we were in a helpless and precarious position. No re-enforcements had yet reached us, the enemy was growing stronger every day, and, worse still, we were threatened with starvation. Rosecrans's error in abandoning Lookout Mountain to the enemy on September 24th was now apparent. Our supplies came by rail from Nashville to Bridgeport; but the enemy controlled the south shore of the Tennessee between us and Bridgeport, and thus prevented our rebuilding the railroad from Bridgeport to Chattanooga; with their shore batteries they stopped the use of our steamboats. They even made the road on the north shore impassable, the sharpshooters on the south bank being able to pick off our men on the north. The forage and supplies which we had drawn from the country within our reach were now exhausted, and we were dependent upon what could be got to us over the roads north of the river. These were not only disturbed by the enemy, but were so bad in places that the mud was up to the horses' bellies. The animals themselves had become too weak to haul the empty train up the mountain, while many had died of starvation. On October 15th the troops were on half rations, and officers as they went about where the men were working on the fortifications frequently heard the cry of "Crackers!"

In the midst of these difficulties General Rosecrans seemed to be insensible to the impending danger; he dawdled with trifles in a manner which scarcely can be imagined. With plenty of zealous and energetic officers ready to do whatever needed to be done, precious time was lost because our dazed and mazy commander could not perceive the catastrophe that was close upon us, nor fix his mind upon the means of preventing it. I never saw anything which seemed so lamentable and hopeless. Our animals were starving, the men had starvation before them, and the enemy was bound soon to make desperate efforts to dislodge us. Yet the commanding general devoted that part of the time which was not employed in pleasant gossip to the composition of a long report to prove that the Government was to blame for his failure on the 20th.

While few persons exhibited more estimable social qualities, I have never seen a public man possessing talent with less administrative power, less clearness and steadiness in difficulty, and greater practical incapacity than General Rosecrans. He had inventive fertility and knowledge, but he had no strength of will and no concentration of purpose. His mind scattered; there was no system in the use of his busy days and restless nights, no courage against individuals in his composition, and, with great love of command, he was a feeble commander. He was conscientious and honest, just as he was imperious and disputatious; always with a stray vein of caprice and an overweening passion for the approbation of his personal friends and the public outside.

Although the army had been reorganized as a result of the consolidation of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Corps, it was still inefficient and its discipline defective. The former condition proceeded from the fact that General Rosecrans insisted on directing personally every department, and kept every one waiting and uncertain till he himself could directly supervise every operation. The latter proceeded from his utter lack of firmness, his passion for universal applause, and his incapacity to hurt any man's feelings by just severity.

My opinion of Rosecrans and my fears that the army would soon be driven from Chattanooga by starvation, if not by the Confederates, I had reiterated in my letters to Mr. Stanton. On the morning of October 19th I received a dispatch from Mr. Stanton, sent from Washington on October 16th, asking me to meet him that day at the Gait House in Louisville. I wired him that, unless he ordered to the contrary, Rosecrans would retreat at once from Chattanooga, and then I started for Louisville. It was a hard trip by horseback over Walden's Ridge and through Jasper to Bridgeport, and the roads were not altogether safe. Ten days before this, in riding along the edge of a bank near the river shore, the earth had given way under my horse's hind feet, and he and I had been tumbled together down a bank, about fourteen feet high; we rolled over each other in the sand at the bottom. I got off with no worse injury than a bruise of my left shoulder and a slight crack on the back of my head from the horse's hind foot, which made the blood run a little. The roads over Walden Ridge and along the river were even worse now than when I got my tumble, and, besides, they were filled with wagons trying to get supplies to Chattanooga. It took at that time ten days for wagon teams to go from Stevenson, where we had a depot, to Chattanooga. Though subsistence stores were so nearly exhausted, the wagons were compelled to throw overboard portions of their precious cargo in order to get through. The returning trains were blockaded. On the 17th of October five hundred teams were halted between the mountain and the river without forage for the animals, and unable to move in any direction; the whole road was strewn with dead animals.

The railway from Bridgeport to Nashville was not much more comfortable or safer than the road. Early in the month I had gone to Nashville on business, and had come back in a tremendous storm in a train of eighteen cars crowded with soldiers, and was twenty-six hours on the road instead of ten. On the present trip, however, I got along very well until within about eight miles from Nashville, when our train narrowly escaped destruction. A tie had been inserted in a cattle guard to throw the train down an embankment, but it had been calculated for a train going south, so that ours simply broke it off. From what we learned afterward, we thought it was intended for a train on which it was supposed General Grant was going to Bridgeport.

My train was bound through to Louisville. Indeed, I think there was no one with me except the train hands and the engineer. We reached Nashville about ten o'clock on the night of October 20th, and there were halted. Directly there came in an officer—I think it was Lieutenant-Colonel Bowers, of General Grant's staff—who said:

"General Grant wants to see you."

This was the first that I knew Grant was in Tennessee. I got out of my train and went over to his. I hadn't seen him since we parted at Vicksburg.

"I am going to interfere with your journey, Mr. Dana," he said as soon as I came in. "I have got the Secretary's permission to take you back with me to Chattanooga. I want you to dismiss your train and get in mine; we will give you comfortable quarters."

"General," I said, "did you ask the Secretary to let me go back with you?"

"I did," he said; "I wanted to have you."

So, of course, I went. On the way down he told me that he had been appointed to the command of the "Military Division of the Mississippi," with permission to leave Rosecrans in command of the Department of the Cumberland or to assign Thomas in his place. He had done the latter, he said, and had telegraphed Thomas to take charge of the army the night after Stanton, at Louisville, had received my dispatch of the 19th saying Rosecrans would retreat from Chattanooga unless ordered to remain. Rosecrans was assigned to the Department of the Missouri, with headquarters at St. Louis.