William Boynton, Sherman's Historical Raid

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The whole country seemed paralyzed by this unhappy event; and the authorities in Washington were thoroughly stampeded. From the East the Eleventh Corps (Slocum) and the Twelfth Corps (Howard) were sent by rail to Nashville, and forward under command of General Hooker. Orders were also sent to General Grant by Halleck to send what reenforcements he could spare immediately toward Chattanooga.

Bragg had completely driven Rosecrans' army into Chattanooga. The latter was in actual danger of starvation, and the railroad in his rear seemed inadequate to his supply. The first intimation which I got of this disaster was on the 22d of September, by an order from General Grant to dispatch one of my divisions immediately into Vicksburg to go toward Chattanooga, and I designated the First, General Osterhaus'—Steele, meantime, having been appointed to the command of the Department of Arkansas, and had gone to Little Rock. General Osterhaus marched the same day, and on the 23d I was summoned to Vicksburg in person, where General Grant showed me the alarming dispatches from General Halleck, which had been sent from Memphis by General Hurlbut, and said, on further thought, that he would send me and my whole corps. But, inasmuch as one division of McPherson's corps (John E. Smith's) had already started, he instructed me to leave one of my divisions on the Big Black, and to get the other two ready to follow at once. I designated the Second, then commanded by Brigadier-General Giles A. Smith, and the Fourth, commanded by Brigadier-General Corse.

—Page 346, Vol. I.

Before considering General Sherman's story further, a statement of General Rosecrans' operations, which is sustained by the record, may properly be considered:

General Rosecrans, with his magnificent army, had, by his brilliant strategy, driven Bragg without serious battle out of Murfreesboro, out of Tullahoma, out of Wartrace, and finally across the Tennessee, here a deep and wide river, where he took post in the fortified city of Chattanooga.

The ojective point of Rosecrans' next campaign was the latter city. Two plans were open to him. He could cross the river above, in the face of Bragg's army, and assault the place. Had he done this, and at the cost of never so bloody a battle wrested that stronghold from Bragg, the whole nation would have applauded, and the movement been so plain that even General Sherman might have been compelled to write it correctly, notwithstanding his prejudices against the Army of the Cumberland.