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All the contemporary accounts go to show that Rosecrans, while personally brave enough, was himself more or less confused and excited by the great disaster which had overtaken his army at Chickamauga. He had been cut off and greatly shaken by the overthrow of his right wing, and consequently retired with it to Chattanooga.
Rosecrans, whom I now met in the open ground west of the railroad, behind Palmer, directed that my command should relieve Wood's division, which was required to fall back and take up the new line that had been marked out while I was holding on in the cedars.
I frequently wrote General Halleck suggesting that Rosecrans should move against Bragg. By so doing he would either detain the latter's troops where they were or lay Chattanooga open to capture.
Rosecrans, who had succeeded Buell, moved suddenly to the banks of Stone River, within four miles of the gay town, and prepared to attack. Bragg, like Wellington from Brussels on the morning of Waterloo, hurried forth to meet him. At dawn, December 31st, the gray-colored columns emerged from the fog that overhung the river, and spiritedly beat up the Union right. Two divisions were swept back.
Two of these dispatches cover all essential points: WASHINGTON CITY, September 15, 1863 5 p.m. Major-General S. A. HURLBUT, Memphis: All the troops that can possibly be spared in West Tennessee and on the Mississippi River should be sent without delay to assist General Rosecrans on the Tennessee River. Urge Sherman to act with all possible promptness.
They came awful near catching me several times, but I was too smart for them, unt could outwit them whenever I got a pointer as to what they were up to. Once they watched me go to a hollow sycamore tree, which I used as a postoffice for Jim Jones to get the things I wanted to send to General Rosecrans.
Indeed, the situation was not promising, and General Rosecrans himself, in communicating with the President the day succeeding the battle of Chickamauga, expressed doubts of his ability to hold the gateway of the Cumberland Mountains. The position taken up by my troops inside the lines of Chattanooga was near the old iron-works, under the shadow of Lookout Mountain.
Following up this initial success, McClellan threw additional forces across the Ohio, and about a month later had the good fortune, on July 11, by a flank movement under Rosecrans, to drive a regiment of the enemy out of strong intrenchments on Rich Mountain, force the surrender of the retreating garrison on the following day, July 12, and to win a third success on the thirteenth over another flying detachment at Carrick's Ford, one of the crossings of the Cheat River, where the Confederate General Garnett was killed in a skirmish-fire between sharp-shooters.
When I fell back to the edge of the clump of timber, where when first coming on the ground I had formed to help Wood, I was ordered by Rosecrans to prepare to make a charge should the enemy again assault us. In anticipation of this work I massed my troops in close column.
Indeed, there was no question in that army, or at that time, in regard to the matter. Rosecrans was never mentioned in connection with it, while Smith's praise was in everybody's mouth till the close of the campaign, not only for the Brown's Ferry movement, but, what was still more important, for the plan of operations against Bragg's position on Missionary Ridge.
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