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All the details of the battle of Chattanooga, so far as I was a witness, are so fully given in my official report herewith, that I need add nothing to it. It was a magnificent battle in its conception, in its execution, and in its glorious results; hastened somewhat by the supposed danger of Burnside, at Knoxville, yet so completely successful, that nothing is left for cavil or fault-finding.
Now and then Benito met a man named Adolph Sutro. They called him "The Man With a Dream." Stocky, under average height, intensely businesslike, he was a German Burgomeister type, with Burnside whiskers and a purpose. He proposed to drive a tunnel four miles long from Carson valley, and strike the Comstock levels 1800 feet below the surface. An English syndicate was backing him.
General Dodge had the work assigned him finished within forty days after receiving his orders. The number of bridges to rebuild was one hundred and eighty-two, many of them over deep and wide chasms; the length of road repaired was one hundred and two miles. The enemy's troops, which it was thought were either moving against Burnside or were going to Nashville, went no farther than Cleveland.
Meade moved his headquarters on to Old Wilderness Tavern, four miles south of the river, as soon as it was light enough to see the road. I remained to hasten Burnside's crossing and to put him in position. Burnside at this time was not under Meade's command, and was his senior in rank.
All day long, working and tugging with the mud above their knees; here a hundred men pulling at a pontoon boat, there a party prying a cannon out of the mire with long levers, and still other parties laying strips of corduroy road. The Vermonters passed a disagreeable day. General Burnside was not idle all this while.
It was resolved at this meeting "that the accommodation of the Medical Faculty be limited to two rooms for class rooms, these to form part of the general building unless separate accommodation in detached buildings could be obtained for them within the limits of the £5,000 allotted for the whole edifice, and without interfering with or embarrassing the general plan; and that if the Medical Faculty required other or larger accommodation than was consistent with these conditions they must be left to their own resources to obtain it, the Board, however, being willing to allow them to build on some part of the grounds of Burnside if they found funds for doing so."
A change in command was evident, however, and the substitution of the whole-hearted, dashing Hooker for the equally earnest but more steady Burnside, that took place in the latter part of January, occasioned no surprise in the army. The new Commander went much farther, than old attachments had probably permitted his predecessor in going, in removing McClellanism.
The judgment of the hour which I gave in my report was merely my impression from passing events, for I hastened at once to my own duties without thinking to look at my watch; whilst the cumulative evidence seems to prove, conclusively, that the time stated by Burnside, and by McClellan himself in his original report, is correct.
Breathless, I told him what I had seen and that we were all friends of Woodward's. Burnside thought a moment, and quickly made up his mind. "Come quick jump up here with me," he called. Then to the other men, "I'll be back soon. Wait here. Let her go!" I had jumped up and they spun the propeller.
Yet, it was not until the 17th of September that the Battle of Antietam was fought, and Lee defeated and then only to be allowed to slip back, across the Potomac, on the 18th McClellan leisurely following him, across that river, on the 2nd of November! On the 5th, McClellan was relieved, Burnside taking the command, and Union men breathed more freely again.
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