Chapter 6:
- Chattanooga and Chickamauga -- injustice to Rosecrans, Thomas, and the Army of the Cumberland.
In a previous chapter it has been seen how coldly, unjustly, and almost contemptuously General Sherman's book treats of Buell and his army at Shiloh—a general and an army that, beyond all room for question, brought salvation to Grant's forces, to which sore disaster had come through a disgraceful surprise, for which Sherman was in person largely responsible. Following him in his book through his excuses for bloody failure at Chickasaw Bayou, his protest against Grant's plan for capturing Vicksburg from the rear, and his assertion that it might have been taken six months earlier by another route, we find him again misrepresenting and sneering at the Army of the Ohio, under its successive commanders, Rosecrans and Thomas, then operating about Chattanooga under its new title, the Army of the Cumberland. With the records of the war at his control, and at his very elbow, this is the version of Rosecrans' movement on, and capture of. Chattanooga, which General Sherman puts forth:
While we were thus lying idle in camp on the Big Black, the Army of the Cumberland, under General Rosecrans, was moving against Bragg at Chattanooga; and the Army of the Ohio, General Burnside, was marching toward East Tennessee.
General Rosecrans was so confident of success that he somewhat scattered his command, seemingly to surround and capture Bragg in Chattanooga; but the latter, reenforced from Virginia, drew out of Chattanooga, concentrated his army at Lafayette, and at Chickamauga fell on Rosecrans, defeated him and drove him into Chattanooga.
