John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[257] ready to give battle. The first clash of arms was at Stevens's Gap, but through misunderstanding or mismanagement on the part of the Confederates their attack was not pushed home. The Confederate forces were not yet sufficiently in hand. Longstreet, unknown to the Union commander, was expected from the eastward by the railroad from Atlanta. The two armies, separated by streams, high ridges, and dense forests, and yet grappling at each other as opportunity offered, drifted gradually towards the northeast. The Army of the Cumberland kept in the valley of the Chickamauga, with its left and rear buttressed against the slopes of Missionary Ridge, and each hour more fully covering Chattanooga, while Bragg swept around to the eastward, covering his own communications with Atlanta and yet more seriously menacing Chattanooga in case victory should crown his efforts. Bragg, of course, knew that Longstreet was near at hand, but Rosecrans was apparently unconscious of this momentous fact, although a despatch from Dana to Stanton, Crawfish Springs, September 16th, shows that a possibility of such reinforcements, by the way of Ringgold or Dalton, had been considered, but that no part of Longstreet's corps had yet been received at Lafayette, which on that day was the seat of Bragg's headquarters. There is no sign yet that Rosecrans had thought of changing from the offensive to the defensive, or that he suspected Bragg of an intention to fight an aggressive battle.

From noon of September 16th till the end of the campaign Dana sent many despatches daily. They refer to every important matter connected with the movements or supply of the army, and must have been of infinite value to the government. One of the earliest of these pointed out that the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, on which the army depended for its supplies, was not only charging the government higher rates than those charged by other roads, but was persistently giving the preference to private freights