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one's country.
His devoted wife received his shattered form, but the shock to his system was too great for the skill of the surgeon, and he died on the morning of the 4th.
Another wife, Mrs. Breckinridge, had shared the anxiety of this Spartan woman, and with heroic fortitude cheered her with her sympathy.
She had for two days listened to the thunder of artillery, while her husband and two sons were exposed to its fire, and was not only sustained through this ordeal and in her ministrations to her less fortunate friend, but, when the army retreated, she left at midnight in an ambulance, having in charge Maj. Rice E. Graves, chief of artillery on General Breckinridge's staff, who had been severely wounded, bore him safely to Chattanooga, a distance of nearly a hundred miles over the mountains, and then nursed him until he was able to return to duty.
Such were the trials which the women of the South had to meet, and they did it with the same heroism shown by their husbands, sons and brothers in the field.
Saturday which followed the battle was a cold, drizzly day, marked by no military operations on either side.
The Confederate troops, having been for a week in the front line of battle, crippled by its casualties and outnumbered by the enemy, were evidently unfit for further aggression or resistance.
It was accordingly decided by a council of war to fall back, and at nightfall the retreat began in the order named in General Bragg's memoranda before the battle of the first day, General Polk's corps moving to Shelbyville and General Hardee's to Manchester.
The movement was in perfect order and apparently without the knowledge of the enemy, from whom there was no molestation.
General Bragg established his headquarters at Tullahoma, and the army remained in that vicinity, not more than forty miles from Murfreesboro, and in possession of the country to within ten or twelve miles of it, for more than five months.
About ten days before the battle of Murfreesboro Gen. John H. Morgan started on one of his celebrated raids
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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