United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We therefore quietly followed him down the Chattooga Valley to the neighborhood of Gadsden, but halted the main armies near the Coosa River, at the mouth of the Chattooga, drawing our supplies of corn and meat from the farms of that comparatively rich valley and of the neighborhood.
His energy was great, but without food he could not, as he desired, dash at once into the enemy's country. He moved southward when he had food, halted when it gave out, and finally reached the Coosa. From his camp there, which he named Fort Strother, he dispatched Coffee to strike a first blow against the Creek town of Tallusahatchee.
But a day or two later, when rumors of threatened violence began to trickle in over the telephone wires, a Tribune man called, in passing, at the general offices in the Coosa Building, and was promptly put to sleep by the astute Dyckman, who, for reasons of his own, was quite willing to conceal the true state of affairs.
My march down the Coosa had put me in the rear on the movement north from Rome. But communication with Sherman was interrupted, and Hood had better knowledge of the full situation. Learning that Chattanooga was held strongly, Hood marched from Buzzard Roost by way of Villanow over Taylor's Ridge into the Chattooga valley, up which he had just come.
The town of Coosa, which consisted of five hundred houses, was situated on the east bank of the river of the same name, between two creeks now known as Talladega and Tallasehatchee. During a residence of twelve days in this delightful retreat, some slight disturbance arose between some of the natives and some of the Spanish soldiers.
"And me, too," chimed in Billy Bunker and Jake Elliott. "Well, come here, all of you," replied Sam, "and I'll show you. We started there, at camp Jackson, you see, don't you, where the Coosa and the Tallapoosa rivers come together and we are going down there," pointing to a spot on the map, "to the sea, or rather to the Bay near Pensacola." "Are we! Good!
The horses found but little food, and began to give out. About fifty miles farther up the Coosa River there was another military station, in the lonely wilds, called Fort William. Still starving, and with tottering horses, they toiled on. Parched corn, and but a scanty supply of that, was now almost their only subsistence. They reached the fort.
We crossed the Coosa, following the road to Jacksonville for five miles, and then turned east on the so-called river road.
He was not aware at the time that Howard, by moving through Parker's Gap toward Red Clay, had already turned it. So I rode forward to Ringgold in person, and found the enemy had already fallen back to Tunnel Hill. He was already out of the valley of the Chickamauga, and on ground whence the waters flow to the Coosa. He was out of Tennessee.
They soon came upon another detachment of the army, and uniting, marched to Ten Islands, on the Coosa River, where they established a fort, which they called Fort Strother, as a depot for provisions and ammunition. They were here not far from the centre of the country inhabited by the hostile Indians. This fort stood on the left bank of the river, in what is now St. Clair County, Alabama.
Word Of The Day