Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One morning Cheatham's corps marched out and through the city, we knew not whither, but we soon learned that we were going to make a flank movement. After marching four or five miles, we "about faced" and marched back again to within two hundred yards of the place from whence we started. It was a "flank movement," you see, and had to be counted that way anyhow.
These reports disclosed that a part of Schofield's army was at Spring Hill and a part at Duck river, but they conflicted as to which position was held by his main body. In the uncertainty thus arising Hood decided, as his dispositions clearly show, that his first move must be to plant Cheatham's corps on the pike between those two parts. Developments would then determine his next move.
The fact was that Stewart's Corps was guarding that front, but General Schofield urged Sherman to allow him to throw his Army upon Cheatham's flank, in an endeavor to roll up the Confederate line and so interpose between Atlanta and Cheatham's Corps, which was so persistently attacking the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps from the Atlanta front.
Our army was a long time crossing the railroad bridge across Chickamauga river. Maney's brigade, of Cheatham's division, and General L. E. Polk's brigade, of Cleburne's division, formed a sort of line of battle, and had to wait until the stragglers had all passed. I remember looking at them, and as they passed I could read the character of every soldier.
As before described, General Hood had three full corps of infantry S. D. Lee's, A. P. Stewart's, and Cheatham's, at Florence, Alabama with Forrest's corps of cavalry, numbering in the aggregate about forty-five thousand men. General Thomas was in Nashville, Tennessee, quietly engaged in reorganizing his army out of the somewhat broken forces at his disposal.
Clark's brigades were commanded by Colonel Russell and Brigadier-General A.P. Stewart; Cheatham's brigades were commanded by Brigadier-General B.R. Johnson and Colonel Stephens. Each brigade was made up of four regiments of infantry and a battery. Brigadier-General John C. Breckenridge's reserve comprised three brigades, commanded by Colonel Trabue, Brigadier-General Bowen, and Colonel Statham.
Cheatham's corps of Hood's army pursued the wagon train and went into camp at Spring Hill, for the night of the 29th. Schofield retreating from Columbia on the 29th, passed Spring Hill, where Cheatham was bivouacked, during the night without molestation, though within half a mile of where the Confederates were encamped. On the morning of the 30th he had arrived at Franklin.
At this juncture the enemy's turning-column began advancing again in concert with Cheatham's division, and as the extreme left of the Confederates was directed on Griscom's house, and their right on the Blanton house, my new position was in danger of envelopment.
I then over-estimated his force at thirty-seven thousand infantry, supposed to be made up of S. D. Lee's corps, four thousand; Cheatham's, five thousand; Hoke's, eight thousand; Hardee's, ten thousand; and other detachments, ten thousand; with Hampton's, Wheeler's, and Butler's cavalry, about eight thousand.
The right wing stood as follows: General Pat Cleburn's Division on right of Stewart, with Breckenridge's on the extreme right of the infantry, under the command of Lieutenant General D.H. Hill, with Cheatham's Division of Folk's Corps to the left and rear of Cleburn as support, with General Walker's Corps acting as reserve.
Word Of The Day