The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (169 page)

As was his custom when confronted with delays, long or short—including the four-month delay above Vicksburg, early this year—Grant used the three days, spent waiting for Sherman to get into position, to polish up the plan he had designed for Bragg’s discomfort, improvising variations which he believed would make it at once more certain and complete. Such strain as there was, and admittedly there was much, was not so much on his own account as on Burnside’s, and perhaps less on Burnside’s account than on the reaction of the Washington authorities to the news that Knoxville was besieged, cut off from telegraphic communication with the outside world. “The President, the Secretary of War, and General Halleck were in an agony of suspense,” Grant afterward recalled. “My own suspense was also great, but more endurable,” he added, “because I was where I could do something to relieve the situation.”

What he specifically had in mind to do, as he had told Burnside the week before, was to “place a force between Longstreet and Bragg” by throwing the latter into retreat and cutting the rail supply line in his rear, thus obliging Old Peter to raise his siege and “take to the mountain passes by every road” in search of food. At that time he had intended to leave the real work to Sherman and his Army of the Tennessee, with the Cumberland and Potomac troops more or less standing by to lend such help as might be needed. Thomas, for instance, was to menace but not attack the enemy center, while Hooker—reduced to a single division by the subtraction of Howard’s two, which crossed at Brown’s Ferry to be available as a reserve for the forces north and east of Chattanooga—stood guard at the foot of Lookout Valley, below Wauhatchie, to prevent a rebel counterstroke from there. But now, as he waited for Sherman to come up, Grant perceived that if Fighting Joe were strengthened a bit he might take the offensive on the right, against Lookout itself, and thus discourage Bragg from reinforcing his assailed right from his otherwise unmolested left. Accordingly, Thomas was ordered to send Cruft’s division from Granger’s corps to Hooker, and when Sherman’s rear division, under Osterhaus, was kept from crossing by a breakdown of the pontoon bridge at Brown’s Ferry, it too was sent to Hooker and replaced by another from Thomas, under Davis, who was detached from Palmer’s corps. Thomas thus was reduced from six to four divisions, while Sherman still had four, Hooker three, and Howard two. Such a distribution seemed ideal, considering the assignments of the three
commanders and the fact that the last was available as a reinforcement for the first.

These thirteen blue divisions, containing in all about 75,000 effectives, were to be employed by Grant in the following manner against the 43,000 effectives in Bragg’s seven divisions. Sherman’s effort on the left was still to be the main one, his orders being “to secure the heights on the northern extremity [of Missionary Ridge] to about the railroad tunnel before the enemy can concentrate against him,” then drive southward down the crest, dislodging graybacks as he went. To assist in this, Thomas would menace the rebel center, fixing the defenders in position, and Howard would hold his corps “in readiness to act either with [Thomas] or with Sherman.” Hooker meanwhile would deliver a secondary attack on the far right, and if successful—although this seemed unlikely, considering the difficulties of terrain on that quarter of the field—was to cross Lookout Mountain and Chattanooga Valley for a descent on Rossville, where he would turn sharp left and, matching Sherman’s effort from the opposite direction, sweep northward up Missionary Ridge; at which point in the proceedings, with the rebel army clamped firmly between the two attackers north and south, Thomas’s feint against the center might be converted into a true assault that would mean the end of Bragg.

One possible source of difficulty was a growing bitterness between the Federal armies, especially those of the East and West. “The
Potomac men and ours never meet without some very hard talk,” one of Sherman’s veterans wrote home. Westerners jeered at Easterners as paper-collar soldiers. “Bull Run!” they hooted, as if they themselves had never been whipped in battle. Resentful of the fact that the “Virginians,” as they sometimes referred to these transfers from the eastern theater, had always had first call on new equipment and such luxuries as the quartermaster afforded, they would remark as they slogged past Hooker’s bivouacs: “Fall back on your straw and fresh butter,” and they would add, looking rearward over their shoulders: “What elegant corpses they’ll make in those fine clothes!” After this would come the ultimate insult, delivered
sotto voce
from the roadside as the Easterners minced by: “All quiet on the Potomac.” The latter in turn were disdainful, looking down their noses at the western soldiers, who preferred Confederate-style blanket rolls to knapsacks, walked with the long, loose-jointed stride of plowmen, and paid their officers little deference. “Except for the color of their uniforms, they looked exactly like the rebels,” a New Yorker observed with unconcealed distaste. Individual confrontations were likely to produce at least a verbal skirmish. One of Blair’s men, for example, wandering over for a look at Slocum’s camps, was surprised to see the corps insignia—a five-pointed star—sewn or glued or stenciled onto practically everything in sight, from the flat crowns of forage caps to the tailgates of wagons. “Are you all brigadier generals?” he inquired, in real or feigned amazement. An Easterner explained that this was their corps badge, and asked: “What’s yours?” The Westerner bristled. No such device had been known out here before, but he was unwilling to be outdone. “Badge, is it?” he snorted. For emphasis, he slapped the leather ammunition pouch he wore on his belt, just over his liver. “There, by Jesus! Forty rounds in the cartridge box and twenty in the pocket.” In time, that would become his own XV Corps insignia—a cartridge box inscribed “Forty Rounds”—but tempers were not sweetened by such exchanges, in which neither antagonist took any care to disguise his low opinion of the other as a dude or a backwoodsman.

Nor were matters improved when the men of the three armies learned of their respective assignments in Grant’s plan for lifting the siege of Chattanooga. This applied in particular to members of the Army of the Cumberland, whose role it was to stand on the defensive, merely bristling, while the other two armies “rescued” them by attacking on the left and right. Perhaps, too, they had heard by now of Grant’s expressed concern that “they could not be got out of their trenches to assume the offensive.” On top of all this, Thomas himself was hopping mad: not at Grant, though doubtless he masked some resentment he must have felt in that direction, but at Bragg, whose headquarters were plainly visible on the crest of the ridge across the way. A letter had arrived from the North for a Confederate officer, and Thomas, having determined
that it was harmless from the security point of view, sent it through the lines with a note attached, requesting his one-time battery commander to pass it along. The letter came back promptly, with a curt indorsement on the note: “Respectfully returned to General Thomas. General Bragg declines to have any intercourse with a man who has betrayed his State.” Thomas was incensed. “Damn him,” he fumed; “I’ll be even with him yet.” Sherman, who was present, observed that the Virginian’s poise, reputed to be impervious to shock, was shakable after all, at least when he was touched where he was tender. “He was not so imperturbable as the world supposes,” the Ohioan testified years later, recalling Old Pap’s reaction to the snub from his former superior and friend.

Hooker felt considerably better after Grant’s revision of the attack plan, which changed his role from defensive to offensive, but the only change for Thomas was the loss of one third of his command, detached left and right to where the battle would be fought while he and his remaining four divisions stood by as spectators. Presently there was a further change, however, whereby they were given at least the chance for a ringside seat, a closer view of the action they were more or less barred from. On November 22 a rebel deserter reported that Bragg was about to evacuate his present lines. Though Grant mistrusted evidence so obtained, knowing how often those who imparted it were “loaded,” this was altogether too serious to be ignored; Bragg might have plans for an all-out move against Burnside, availing himself of the railroad for a sudden descent on Knoxville, in which case Grant would be left holding the bag at Chattanooga. Moreover, the report gained credence when Buckner’s division pulled out that afternoon, followed next morning by Cleburne’s. Accordingly, Grant instructed Thomas to make a pretense of attacking Missionary Ridge by advancing his army, or what was left of it, about half the distance across the intervening plain. If he could do this, he would not only test the extent of the Confederate withdrawal, which might be greater than had been observed, and perhaps frighten Bragg into recalling the troops already detached; he would also secure a better location from which to demonstrate against the enemy center next day, November 24, when Sherman and Hooker—the former at last was moving into his jump-off position opposite the mouth of Chickamauga Creek—were scheduled to open their attacks against the flanks.

Thomas received his orders at 11 o’clock in the morning, and by 12.30—so anxious were he and they for a share in the work—he had begun to maneuver his 25,000 veterans into positions from which to advance. In full view of their rivals from the Virginia and Mississippi theaters, as well as of the rebels out on the plain ahead and the tall ridge beyond, these soldiers of the Cumberland army made the most of this opportunity to refute the taunts that they had been permanently cowed by their defeat nine weeks ago. Granger’s corps, with Wood in the lead
and Sheridan in support, was the first to move out into the open. “It was an inspiring sight,” a staff observer would recall. “Flags were flying; the quick, earnest steps of thousands beat equal time. The sharp commands of hundreds of company officers, the sound of drums, the ringing notes of the bugles, companies wheeling and countermarching and regiments getting into line, the bright sun lighting up ten thousand polished bayonets till they glistened and flashed like a flying shower of electric sparks, all looked like preparations for a peacetime pageant, rather than for the bloody work of death.” Across the way, the Confederates thought so, too. They emerged from their trenches and stood on the parapets, calling to one another to come watch the Yankees pass in review. Palmer’s corps followed Granger’s; Johnson and Baird went through similar convolutions to get into line on the right. For the better part of an hour this continued. Then at about 1.30 the drums and bugles stepped up their tempo and changed their tone, beating and blaring the charge. That was the first the butternut watchers knew of the attack that was in midcareer before they got back into their trenches to resist it. Orchard Knob and Bushy Knob, fortified rebel outposts about in the center of the plain, were taken in a rush as the blue wave—flecked with shellbursts now, as if with foam—swept over them, engulfing those defenders who had not broken rearward in time for a getaway to the safety of the main line, back on Missionary Ridge. Promptly, or at any rate as soon as their officers could persuade them to leave off cheering and tossing their caps, the victors got to work with picks and shovels, turning the just-won intrenchments to face the other way, and there they settled down for the night, having taken their ringside seats for the fight which, now that the preliminaries were over and Sherman had his four divisions cached in their jump-off position on the left, was scheduled to begin soon after first light next morning.

A mile or more in advance of the line they had taken off from shortly after midday, Thomas and his Cumberlanders had drawn and shed the first blood after all, despite Grant’s original intention to exclude them from any leading part in the accomplishment of their own deliverance. Their losses amounted to about 1100 killed and wounded, but they had inflicted nearly as many casualties as they suffered, including the prisoners they took. Perhaps by now, moreover, Grant had been disabused of his notion as to their reluctance to leave their trenches without the example of Sherman’s men to inspire them. At any rate he seemed pleased: as well he might. Afterwards he told why. “The advantage was greatly on our side now,” he wrote, “and if I could only have been assured that Burnside could hold out ten days longer”—this being the length of time he figured it would take him to finish whipping Bragg and then, if necessary, get reinforcements up to Knoxville—“I should have rested more easily. But we were doing the best we could for him and the cause.”