From Chattanooga.
[from our Own Correspondent.]Army of Tennessee.
Missionary Ridge, Nov. 19th.
Nothing has occurred here since the date of my last communication deserving of notice.
It is not considered improbable, however, in official circles, that the enemy will make a movement of some kind in the next few days.
There can he no doubt that Sherman will have arrived with his entire force at Stevenson or Bridgeport by the end of the week, and it is not to be supposed that Gen. Grant, if he intends to resume offensive operations, will full to put his army in motion at as early a day as possible after allowing his reinforcements time to rest and prepare for the work before them.
What that work is — whether an attack upon Lookout, or a movement upon our left in the direction of Rome — we shall probably know by the end of the month — possibly by the end of the week.
If neither the one nor the other, then the only alternative left him will be to go into winter quarters.
In my letters of the 9th and 11th inst. attention was called to the condition of the horses in this army, the limited supply of animals, the consequent necessity of taking proper care of those employed in the public service, and the propriety of exempting brood mares from impressment.
It was stated also that the matter of the supply of horses was then engaging the attention of Gen. Bragg.
I have since learned that he has issued a most excellent order upon the subject, the object of which is to correct some of the abuses now existing in the army in regard to horses and forage.
The order announces that officers and soldiers with be allowed to keep the number of horses for which they are allowed forage, and no more; and no person not allowed forage, will be permitted to keep a horse or a mule, without a special order from army headquarters.
The following is the allowance of mounted men to different headquarters and staff officers:
Corps headquarters, one company of cavalry.
Division headquarters, one company of cavalry.
Brigade headquarters, three couriers, to be furnished from the company at division headquarters.
Corps and division quartermasters and commissaries, two mounted messengers each; brigade quartermasters and commissaries, one messenger each; and regimental headquarters, one mounted orderly.
No others are allowed, and all public horses and mules now in possession of forage masters, and all, whether public or private, in possession of quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance sergeants, and clerks and other persons not allowed by the order, are to be turned into the Quartermasters Department, under penalty of impressment of the animal and charges against the offender.
There are many officers in the army who keep more horses than the regulations allow, and many persons who keep horses at the public expense who are not entitled to have any. Indeed, the necessity of the order will be apparent upon the statement of a single fact within my own knowledge, viz: That a detailed man in one of the departments mentioned above keeps three horses, and yet is not entitled to keep one.
If the order had gone further, and cut down the allowance of mounted men at division headquarters to half a dozen couriers, it would have been all the better.
Since the subject has been alluded to in the public prints there can be no impropriety in stating that Major-Generals Cheatham and Buckner, and Brigadier-General Forrest, have been relieved of their commands in this army at their own request.
It is said that Gen. Bragg had recommended an extension of the command of Gen. Buckner at a time when the latter was promoting a movement to have him removed from the command of this army.
It is not improbable that Gen. Buckner will reconsider his application and return to his former command.
In the meantime Brigadier-Generals Wharton and Martin, who were content to remain at their posts and discharge their duty in the positions in which the President and Commander-in-Chief thought they could be most useful, have been promoted and made Major Generals of cavalry.
Gen. D. H. Hill, I understand, was ordered to report at Richmond at the Instance of the President.
These are all meritorious officers; and yet I must be permitted to express the hope, without reference to particular individuals, however, that all our officers will yet discover that they will best subserve their own interest, and the good of the country, the less they think about themselves and the more faithfully they labor, in whatsoever position they may be placed, to carry forward the great cause which engages all our efforts and affections.
It may not be improper to add here, in correction of a prevalent error, that only two Major-Generals out of eleven in this army united in the written application for a change in the command of the Army of Tennessee, and that one of these, upon fuller information, expressed his regret that he had done so. The application was never presented to the President, but was suppressed as soon as it was discovered that only a few officers regarded it with favor.
I had not thought it necessary to contradict the official and newspaper reports in the United States of the capture of a forage train in Lookout Valley belonging to Longstreet's corps; but, lest some of our own people be deceived by the constant reiteration of the reports, I would now state that the whole thing is a willful fabrication.
If any forage wagons were captured they were only one or two that had been disabled and left behind.
The following important order in regard to the exchange of prisoners has just been promulgated by Gen. Bragg.
While he does not propose to resort to extreme measures, it will be seen that he places the question fairly before the minds of the officers and men of his command, whether it is wise on the one hand to incumber ourselves with prisoners who will ear up our substance and require large detachments to guard them; and on the other, whether it were not better for the Confederate soldier to perish on the field of battle in defence of all that is dear to man, than to languish in Federal dungeons until the end of the war, and perhaps die of cruel treatment at last.
This last question the soldier must decide for himself, the commanding General having done his duty in placing it before him. Sallust.
