John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[268] battle. Not the least important report sent by him to Washington, September 21st, was the rumor that Ewell's corps from Virginia had also joined Bragg, too late to take part in the battle, that it was said to be now moving to the Tennessee River about Chattanooga. He evidently doubted this report, for in the same despatch he added, with a perfect insight into the probabilities of the case, “but if Ewell be really there, Rosecrans will have to retreat beyond the Tennessee.” Only that morning he had reported for the first time that Longstreet was certainly there. Two hours and a half later, on the testimony of “an intelligent deserter,” he added that all of Johnston's Mississippi army was with Bragg, that Mobile had been stripped of soldiers, and that the entire Confederacy seemed to be concentrated in front of Chattanooga. While it turned out later that these reports were not literally correct, that Ewell had not yet arrived, and that the Confederacy had not concentrated all of its forces under Bragg, Dana's vigorous despatches had the immediate effect of so arousing the government that it at once put forth its best efforts to reinforce the army now gathered at Chattanooga by troops from every quarter that could spare them. Burnside was again ordered down from east Tennessee. On September 23d two army corps under Hooker were ordered out from Virginia, while two under Sherman had been already ordered up from Mississippi. But what was still more important as a direct consequence of the situation at and about Chattanooga, and of Dana's voluminous representations in regard to it, were the orders which finally transferred Grant himself to that theatre of operations, consolidated the departments of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio into the Military Division of the Mississippi, and gave its commander complete authority over all the military forces within its widely extended limits. That Dana's letters and despatches contained the first suggestions on which these