John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[264] than I ever heard before, but I do not think our lines would have been broken but for a gap in them caused by taking Wood's division from the centre to reinforce the left, and not entirely filling up the space thus vacated. Through that gap the rebels came in, and then Davis's division broke and ran in helpless panic. I never saw anything so crushing to the mind as that scene. I was swept away with part of Rosecrans's staff, and lost in the rabble. Some of these officers, and especially Brouillard and Porter, drew their swords and worked like good fellows trying to rally and reorganize the fugitives; but as often as they got a squad together a shell crashing through the tree-tops (for the battle was fought mainly in a forest), or a few canister-shots dropping on the dry leaves, would send the cowards packing again.

I rode twelve miles to Chattanooga, galloping my horse all the way, to send despatches to Washington, and found the road filled all the distance with baggage-wagons, artillery, ambulances, negroes on horseback, field and company officers, wounded men limping along, Union refugees from the country around leading their wives and children, mules running along loose, squads of cavalry — in short, every element that could confuse the rout of a great army, not excepting a major-general commanding an army corps, . . . while part of the corps . . . remained to cover themselves with glory and save everything by fighting on the left under the lead of that magnificent old hero, General Thomas, and of Gordon Granger, the Marshal Ney of the war. It was a great fight which these twenty-five thousand men waged there against eighty thousand (Bragg had sixty-seven thousand veterans and fifteen thousand militia) till darkness covered the field, and it saved everything for us. In this fight the men who most distinguished themselves were Generals Thomas, Granger, Steedman, Brannan, Palmer, Hazen, Turchin, and Colonel Harker. The last — named commanded a brigade which got out of ammunition, and at the end three times repulsed the columns of Longstreet with the bayonet. But they were all heroes, and we owe them a debt of gratitude we can never sufficiently pay. They punished the enemy so awfully that