Nov. 27, 1863. |
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[170]
reached Ringgold, the rear of the pursued had just left it. A little beyond is a narrow gap in Taylor's Ridge, sufficiently wide for the passage of the ]east Chickamauga River and the railway, with margins rising several hundred feet. There General Cleburne (called, as we have observed, the “Stonewall Jackson of the West” ), covering Bragg's retreat, had made a stand, with guns well posted, determined to impede the pursuers as long as possible.
Hooker's guns, detained at the crossing of the Chickamauga, were not yet up. His troops, flushed with success, could not be easily restrained, and they were allowed to attack with small-arms only.
The Thirteenth Illinois made a desperate attempt to dislodge the foe, but failed, with heavy loss.
Yet the struggle went on, and finally, in the afternoon, when some of Hooker's guns were brought into position and the post was flanked by his infantry, Cleburne retreated, having inflicted a loss on the Nationals of four hundred and thirty-two men, of whom sixty-five were killed, Cleburne left one hundred and thirty killed and wounded on the field.
So ended the battle of Ringgold.
General J. C. Davis's division, which had been attached to Sherman's command, reached Ringgold just after Cleburne fled, ready to press on in pursuit; but there it ended.
Grant would gladly have continued it, and would doubtless have captured or destroyed Bragg's army; but he was compelled to refrain, because Burnside needed immediate relief, so as to save East Tennessee from the grasp of Longstreet.
He had informed Grant that his supplies would not last longer than the 3d of December, a week later.
This statement was a powerful appeal.
Grant was in a condition to respond with vigor, for his foe was utterly demoralized by defeat and almost mutinous discontent among his troops,1 and Sherman's forces were interposed between him and Longstreet, so as to prevent any possibility of their forming a junction.
The victorious troops fell back toward Chattanooga,2 and the campaign against Bragg ended.3 The Confederate retreat was continued to Dalton, where the army established a fortified camp.
1 Bragg, at this time, as at the battle of Chickamauga, tried to cover up his own incompetence under censures of others. He attributed his failure to gain a victory in the former case to the tardiness of Polk and Hindman; now he attributed his defeat to what he was pleased to call “the shameful conduct of the troops on the left,” commanded by Breckinridge. And Jefferson Davis, in order to shield from censure this, his creature and favorite, disparaged his troops, who fought as gallantly and successfully as the bad management of their commander would allow. “It is believed,” Davis said, “that if the troops who yielded to the assault [Hooker's] had fought with the valor which they had-displayed on previous occasions, and which was manifested in this battle in the other parts of the line, the enemy would have been repulsed with very great slaughter, and our country would have escaped the misfortune, and the army the mortification, of the first defeat that has resulted from misconduct by the troops.” --Pollard's Third Year of the War, 159.
2 Gross's brigade visited the battle-field of Chickamauga for the purpose of burying the Union dead, whom Bragg had inhumanly left to decay on the surface. The name of each soldier thus buried, whenever it could be ascertained, was placed upon a board at the head of his grave, with the number of his regiment.
3 “Considering the strength of the rebel position and the difficulty of storming his intrenchments,” said Halleck, “the Battle of Chattanooga must be regarded as the most remarkable in history. Not only did the officers and men exhibit great skill and daring in their operations in the field, but the highest praise is also due to the commanding general for his admirable dispositions for dislodging the enemy from a position apparently Impregnable.”
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.