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BEFORE coming to the engagement between the
Federals and the
Confederates it is necessary to add some topographical details to the sketch already given of the field on which the hostile forces are going to meet.
The reader will have readily understood the importance attaching to the highroad from
Chattanooga to
La Fayette via Rossville and Gordon's Mills.
This road offers to the
Federals the only sure and easy way of communication with their true base of operations, which they have so imprudently exposed.
The price of the battle to be fought is the possession of this road.
Its tactical importance is not less than its strategical value.
At the time of the settlement of the country it was the principal artery of colonization, and the earliest farms were established along its winding track through the wilderness.
The cultivated fields now bordering on the road form an almost unbroken succession of openings, some wide, others narrow, which offer easy passage to troops; while the edge of the woods presents defensible positions, with a choice for the east or the west side according to the grade and trend of the road and the density of the woods covering these positions.
Between Gordon's Mills and Kelly's house, a mile and a quarter from the road, one meets at first the fields belonging to the
Vineyard farm, which, supplied with water by two brooks, extends on both sides of the road, in one section to the eastward and in another to the northward as far as a small farm-house.
Then appear on a knoll the neighboring houses of
McManus and
Brotherton.
One hundred rods from the latter may be seen
Poe's, situate to the eastward of the road, almost in the middle of an opening nearly half a mile long and only a quarter of a mile distant from
Kelly's farm.
Between Poe's house and
Brotherton's
