Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

---

[63] or reconnoitring-parties to be of any service to Bragg's army; Roddey was still farther, at Tuscumbia, where he was watching the Corinth road. Wheeler, with a view to rest his troopers, had led them into the peaceful valley of the Coosa. His two divisions, under Wharton and Martin, were near Rome in Georgia and at Alexandria near Jacksonborough in Alabama —the one seventy-four miles and the other one hundred and five from Bridgeport. The first had detached a regiment to guard the entire bank of the Tennessee River from Bridgeport to Guntersville. Another regiment, sent by Martin, kept open his communications with Roddey's outposts near Decatur. The front of the Confederate army was therefore effectually covered only by a brigade of infantry and a regiment of cavalry. This army, as we have said, was much weakened; it had not yet received any of the promised reinforcements. Bragg, seeing himself separated from Rosecrans by an obstacle which he deemed to be insurmountable, had proposed, on the 17th of July, to Johnston to transport all his forces into the State of Mississippi and to combine them with Johnston's to crush Grant. Johnston, who had just evacuated Jackson, had answered him, with good reason, that it was too late: a part of his small army had been brought back to Mobile. This important port, which would have furnished for a campaign in Georgia a base of operations as good as Chattanooga, appeared to be greatly threatened by the fleet. If a landing was effected to attack the place, General Dabney Maury would be able to oppose only two thousand men to the besiegers. But the completion of the most important works of defence, the arrival of a certain number of recruits, and the news that the Federal expedition had been abandoned allowed Johnston to remove troops from Mobile. He was preparing to return to Bragg most of the troops which the latter had sent him at the end of May: these troops were, on the one hand, Liddell's, Ector's, and Gist's brigades, besides Walthall's, all placed under the orders of General Walker, and on the other hand Breckinridge's division. Walker started for Chattanooga in pursuance of a despatch from Bragg, received on the 22d of August, announcing the shelling of that city. Walker's arrival a few days thereafter brought, according to the reckoning of the general-in-chief, the number of effective