James D. Porter, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, Tennessee
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

“ [112] increased by breastworks made of stone and fallen timber, but the enemy, now demoralized by a succession of disasters, made but a feeble resistance, and fled in great haste.”

Chickamauga was a great victory for the Confederate army, and yet a great disappointment to Tennesseeans. When the barren victory at Murfreesboro was won, and the State was abandoned, temporarily as it was believed, the criticism of the tactics of the commanding general was guarded and respectful; but when Cheatham's division was halted on the crest of Missionary Ridge, hope ceased to be ‘an anchor of the soul.’

No Tennesseean complained of the burthens put upon his people by a state of war, but official robbery and oppression, insults to the old men and to their mothers, their wives and daughters, taxed the endurance of brave men to the utmost. The rule of the Federal authorities in Tennessee was worse than an iron one. Mr. Dana, under date of September 8, 1863, in a dispatch to E. M. Stanton, secretary of war, said Andrew Johnson, military governor of the State, ‘complains of the tardiness of Rosecrans, and these long months of precious time wasted. He has fallen under bad influence, and especially under that of his chief of detectives, a man named Truesdall. This man is deep in all kinds of plunder, and has kept the army inactive to enable his accomplices and himself to become rich by jobs and contracts,’ and he could have added, by the wholesale robbery of the people.

The expulsion of non-combatants from their homes; the appropriation of private property not needed by the army; the indignities offered to people of both sexes; the grasping, domineering, oppressive temper and practices of a class of which Truesdall was a representative, have no parallel in modern history. But in spite of the surrender of the State, and of the unnamed acts of violence and cruelty, the soldiers of Tennessee were steadfast to their colors to the end.