ely asking in
their well-known way, "Where are you? Where are you?" but it is
strange to see how readily, soldiers can become accustomed to the
sound of dangerous missiles under circumstances of familiarity, and
this case was no exception to the rule. Few casualties occurred, and
soon contempt took the place of nervousness, and as we could not
reply in kind on account of the elevation required for our guns, the
men responded by jeers and imprecations whenever a shell fell into
their camp.

Meantime, orders having been issued for the organization of the army,
additional troops were attached to my command, and it became the
Second Division of the Fourth Army Corps, to which Major-General
Gordon Granger was assigned as commander. This necessitated a change
of position of the division, and I moved to ground behind our works,
with my right resting on Fort Negley and my left extending well over
toward Fort Wood, my front being parallel to Missionary Ridge. My
division was now composed of twenty-five regiments, classified into
brigades and demi-brigades, the former commanded by Brigadier-General
G. D. Wagner, Colonel C. G. Harker, and Colonel F. T. Sherman; the
latter, by Colonels Laiboldt, Miller, Wood, Walworth, and Opdyke.
The demi-brigade was an awkward invention of Granger's; but at this
time it was necessitated--perhaps by the depleted condition of our
regiments, which compelled the massing of a great number of
regimental organizations into a division to give it weight and force.

On October 16, 1863, General Grant had been assigned to the command
of the "Military Division of the Mississippi," a geographical area
which embraced the Departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the
Tennessee, thus effecting a consolidation of divided commands which
might have been introduced most profitably at an earlier date. The
same order that assigned General Grant relieved General Rosecrans,
and placed General Thomas in command of the Army of the Cumberland.
At the time of the reception of the order, Rosecrans was busy with
preparations for a movement to open the direct road to Bridgeport
--having received in the interval, since we came back to Chattanooga,
considerable reinforcement by the arrival in his department of the
Eleventh and Twelfth corps, under General Hooker, from the Army of
the Potomac. With this force Rosecrans had already strengthened
certain important points on the railroad between Nashville and
Stevenson, an