ening; but on
my arrival the boat had gone. I applied to the commanding officer,
got a rough boat manned by four soldiers, and started down the
river by night. I occasionally took a turn at the oars to relieve
some tired man, and about midnight we reached Shell Mound, where
General Whittaker, of Kentucky, furnished us a new and good crew,
with which we reached Bridgeport by daylight. I started Ewings
division in advance, with orders to turn aside toward Trenton, to
make the enemy believe we were going to turn Braggs left by pretty
much the same road Rosecrans had followed; but with the other three
divisions I followed the main road, via the Big Trestle at
Whitesides, and reached General Hooker's headquarters, just above
Wauhatchee, on the 20th; my troops strung all the way back to
Bridgeport. It was on this occasion that the Fifteenth Corps
gained its peculiar badge: as the men were trudging along the
deeply-cut, muddy road, of a cold, drizzly day, one of our Western
soldiers left his ranks and joined a party of the Twelfth Corps at
their camp-fire. They got into conversation, the Twelfth-Corps men
asking what troops we were, etc., etc. In turn, our fellow (who
had never seen a corps-badge, and noticed that every thing was
marked with a star) asked if they were all brigadier-generals. Of
course they were not, but the star was their corps-badge, and every
wagon, tent, hat, etc., had its star. Then the Twelfth-Corps men
inquired what corps he belonged to, and he answered, "The Fifteenth
Corps." "What is your badge?" "Why," said he (and he was an
Irishman), suiting the action to the word, "forty rounds in the
cartridge-box, and twenty in the pocket." At that time Blair
commanded the corps; but Logan succeeded soon after, and, hearing
the story, adopted the cartridge-box and forty rounds as the
corps-badge.

The condition of the roads was such, and the bridge at Brown's so
frail, that it was not until the 23d that we got three of my
divisions behind the hills near the point indicated above
Chattanooga for crossing the river. It was determined to begin the
battle with these three divisions, aided by a division of Thomas's
army, commanded by General Jeff. C. Davis, that was already near
that point. All the details of the battle of Chattanooga, so far
as I was a witness, are so fully given in my official report
herewith, that I need add nothing to it. It was a magnificent
battle in its conception, in its exec