fair understanding of it. We knew well enough that
there was to be a fight: the fact that we did not want one would have told
us that, for Bragg always retired when we wanted to fight and fought when
we most desired peace. We had manoeuvred him out of Chattanooga, but had
not manoeuvred our entire army into it, and he fell back so sullenly that
those of us who followed, keeping him actually in sight, were a good deal
more concerned about effecting a junction with the rest of our army than
to push the pursuit. By the time that Rosecrans had got his three
scattered corps together we were a long way from Chattanooga, with our
line of communication with it so exposed that Bragg turned to seize it.
Chickamauga was a fight for possession of a road.

Back along this road raced Crittenden's corps, with those of Thomas and
McCook, which had not before traversed it. The whole army was moving by
its left.

There was sharp fighting all along and all day, for the forest was so
dense that the hostile lines came almost into contact before fighting was
possible. One instance was particularly horrible. After some hours of
close engagement my brigade, with foul pieces and exhausted cartridge
boxes, was relieved and withdrawn to the road to protect several batteries
of artillery--probably two dozen pieces--which commanded an open field in
the rear of our line. Before our weary and virtually disarmed men had
actually reached the guns the line in front gave way, fell back behind the
guns and went on, the Lord knows whither. A moment later the field was
gray with Confederates in pursuit. Then the guns opened fire with grape
and canister and for perhaps five minutes--it seemed an hour--nothing
could be heard but the infernal din of their discharge and nothing seen
through the smoke but a great ascension of dust from the smitten soil.
When all was over, and the dust cloud had lifted, the spectacle was too
dreadful to describe. The Confederates were still there--all of them, it
seemed--some almost under the muzzles of the guns. But not a man of all
these brave fellows was on his feet, and so thickly were all covered with
dust that they looked as if they had been reclothed in yellow.

"We bury our dead," said a gunner, grimly, though doubtless all were
afterward dug out, for some were partly alive.

To a "day of danger" succeeded a "night of waking." The enemy, everywhere
held back from the road, continued to stretch his line northward in the