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7.
the destruction of Rosecrans' great wagon train
The Confederate cavalry was an important factor in
Bragg's defeat of
Rosecrans' army at
Chickamauga.
Forrest was in full command on the right, while
Wheeler, six miles away, covered the
Confederate left wing.
Bragg had placed them thus wide apart for the reason that
Forrest had flatly refused to serve under his chief of cavalry.
After
Wheeler's disastrous assault on
Fort Donelson, February 3, 1863, where
Forrest had two horses shot under him, and his command lost heavily, he bluntly told his superior in rank he would never serve under him again, and he never did.
The records of these two days of slaughter at
Chickamauga — for twenty-six per cent. of all engaged were either killed or wounded — show how these great soldiers acquitted themselves.
Forrest's guns fired the first and last shots on this bloody field.
It was
Wheeler's vigilance and courage which checked every move and defeated every advance on the
Federal right, and finally in his last great charge on Sunday, pursued the scattered legions of
McCook and
Crittenden through the cedar brakes and blackjack thickets in their wild flight toward
Chattanooga.
And it was this alert soldier who on Monday, September 21st, in the
Chattanooga valley, five miles from the field of battle, made an additional capture of a train of ninety wagons and some four hundred prisoners. The success of his operations at
Chickamauga may be judged from his official report:
