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| Bragg's Headquarters at Murfreesboroa.1 |
Nov. 5, 1862. |
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When General Bragg perceived that the pursuit by the Nationals was relinquished after his army had crossed the Cumberland River, he halted his. forces, and finally concentrated them, about forty thousand in number, at Murfreesboroa, on the Nashville and Chattanooga railway, a little more than thirty miles southeast from Nashville, where he lay several weeks threatening the capital of Tennessee, but apparently without any fear or expectation of an attack from his opponent.
He professed to be there to aid the Tennesseeans in “throwing off the yoke of the Lincoln despotism.”
Another object was to cover and defend the great cotton-producing regions of the Confederacy, and to hold the great lines of railway from those regions into the food-producing States of Tennessee and Kentucky.
While lying at Murfreesboroa with a feeling of absolute security, Bragg was visited by Jefferson Davis, who was his guest at his private residence
in the fine mansion of Major Manning, within the suburbs of the town.
That visit was made the occasion of festivities.
Balls, parties, and lesser social gatherings at the houses of the secessionists in Murfreesboroa, made the Confederate officers very happy.
During that period Morgan, the guerrilla chief; was married to the daughter of Charles Ready, who was a member of the National Congress in 1853.
Davis and the principal army officers were at the wedding.
General (Bishop) Polk, assuming the cassock of the priest for the occasion,2 performed the ceremony; and the party had the pleasure of dancing upon a floor carpeted with the flags of their country, which they took delight in thus dishonoring.
But this season of joy and fancied security was short.
Buell was no longer at the head of a tardily moved army.
A loyal, earnest, and energetic soldier was its leader,, and he soon disturbed the repose of his enemy.
Rosecrans perceived the peril that threatened Nashville, and took immediate steps to avert it. General McCook, with his grand division, moved in that direction on the morning of the 4th of November.
His advance was not a moment too soon.
On the next day
the Confederates made a demonstration against the city.
Forrest, with about three thousand cavalry and some artillery, attacked the National picket line south of the town, between the Franklin and Lebanon Pikes, and
1 this was the house of Mrs. Elliott, not far from the public square in Murfreesboroa. it was also the, Headquarters of General Thomas when the National Army occupied Murfreesboroa, early in 1863.
2 Lieutenant-Colonel Freemantle, of the British Coldstream Guards, in giving an account of General Polk,. says (Three Months in the Southern States, page 144) the latter explained to him the reasons “which had induced him temporarily to forsake the cassock.” He did so with reluctance, he said, and intended, so soon as the war should cease, to resume his Episcopal functions, “in the same way as a man, finding his house on fire, would use every means id his power to extinguish the flames, and would then resume his ordinary pursuits.” Colonel Freemantle said:--“He is very rich, and I am told he owns seven hundred negroes. The apprehended danger of these having their natural rights restored to them, in accordance with his Master's golden rule, was clearly the Bishop's incentive to take up arms against the rights of man. Those seven hundred negroes,” burning with a desire for freedom, was the Bishop's “house on fire.”
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