The next occasion on which I personally saw the personal force of General Grant appear in results, was when, on the 23d of October, 1863, he was sent to relieve Generals Rosecrans and Thomas, who were bottled in Chattanooga, very much as we Confederates had been in Vicksburg. Although present, I prefer to give the situation as others saw it, and will quote from the official report of General Grant, as appears in the "Rise and Fall of the Confederacy," by Mr. Jefferson Davis. General Grant says: "Up to this period our (Federal) forces were practically invested, the enemy's (Confederate) lines extending from the Tennessee River above Chattanooga to the river at and below Lookout Mountain below the town, with the south, back of the river, picketed nearly to Bridgeport. This main force being fortified in Chattanooga Valley at the foot of and on Missionary Ridge and on Lookout Mountain, and with a brigade in Lookout Valley. True, we held possession of the country north of the river, but it was from sixty to seventy miles over the most impracticable roads to army supplies. The artillery horses and the mules had become so reduced by starvation that they could not be relied upon for moving anything. An attempt at retreat must have been with men alone, and with only such supplies as they could carry. A retreat would have been almost certain annihilation, for the enemy, occupying positions within gunshot of and overlooking our very fortifications, would, unquestionably, have pursued. Already more than ten thousand animals had perished in supplying half rations to the troops by the long and tedious route from Stevenson and Bridgeport over Waldron's Ridge. They could not have been supplied another week." Thus the generous victor of July 4, 1863, who had trusted the Confederates to go home and support their starving families, was called upon to do that for the army of Tennessee, which the Richmond authorities had failed to do for General J. C. Pemberton in the West. It may be remembered that on the 12th of October, 1863, Mr. Jefferson Davis, then President, had visited the battle-field of Chickamauga, and that General Longstreet with a force (stated by Vice-President A. H. Stephens in his "War Between the States," at about five thousand, but by E. A. Pollard in his " Lost Cause," at eleven thousand men) from the army of North Virginia, had soon afterward been detached from General Bragg's command and sent against General Burnside, intrenched at Knoxville. This cut off General Grant from his nearest reinforcement, and put the great lieutenant of Lee in his rear, in case of retreat. Again Grant was underrated, and the thought of his capture was uppermost. In proof of this I quote from the official report of General Bragg, commanding the Confederate forces. After speaking favorably of the movement of Longstreet, he says: "At the same time our cavalry in large force was thrown across the river to operate on this long and difficult route." (Stated by General Grant to be from sixty to seventy miles by wagon). "These dispositions faithfully sustained, insured the enemy's (Federal's) speedy evacuation of Chattanooga for want of food and forage." In speaking of the army as Generals Rosecrans and Thomas left it to General Grant, General Bragg adds these significant words: "We held him at our mercy and his destruction was only a question of time." Now I hold that to extricate an army from that situation in three days, and in a month to entirely reverse the whole aspect of the campaign in the West, and recover all that was lost at Chickamauga required not merely a blind and stupid hurling of masses of men at an enemy, but generalship of the highest order. What then are the facts? General Grant appeared in Chattanooga on the 23d of October, 1863, among starving men and animals. On the night of the 26th, three days later, there were fifty pontoons with twelve hundred men on them, floated for three miles down the river directly in front of the pickets of General Bragg, and they were not discovered until they landed at the ferry near Lookout Valley. They at once seized the valley hills and covered the Brown's Ferry road. A concealed camp of three thousand men was ready opposite, and in forty hours the heights. west of Lookout Creek were lost, the river had been bridged by 10 A.M., General Hooker had entered the valley at Nauhatchie, General Palmer had crossed from the north at Whiteside, and a whole army corps was on the southern side. The practical siege was over, and Grant was not captured but on the offensive. On the 25th of November, the battle of Missionary Ridge was fought, of which Mr. Davis spoke as: "The mortification of the first defeat that ever had resulted from misconduct by the troops." A. H. Stephens wrote: Bragg's army was completely routed. This was the greatest disaster which attended the Confederate arms in a pitched battle, during the war; not so much in the loss of men (about 3,000), but in the loss of ground and demoralization of broken columns." 66 Mr. Stephens said to me in his own house: "That movement by General Grant is equal to the exploits of Hannibal and of Napoleon in the invasion of Italy, and places him among the great generals of all places and times." These are some of the reasons why we should respect the late chieftain; now I shall give one or two reasons why we of the South should love him. One of these I presume was in the mind of General Joseph E. Johnston when recently speaking to a reporter just prior to serving as pall-bearer to his great antagonist. It came to me from a witness--a great statesman now dead. President Andrew Johnson had placed Mr. Davis in irons in Fortress Monroe, and I do not know whether he had sent for General Grant or not, but the latter was at the White House. Mr. Johnson demanded of General Grant at what time Generals Lee, Johnston, Beauregard, and the others could also be arrested and imprisoned. Said my informant: "General Grant had a habit of sitting with face down as if thinking, and it was only when he had need to look his man in the face that he did so. The time had come, and I never before understood how a man could resemble a roused lion; a still, terrible anger. He did not raise his voice, and it may have been a shade lower than common, as he said—I think I have the words rightly—' Mr. President, so long as these men remain at home and observe the terms of their parole, you never can do so. The army of the United States stands between those men and you.' If this be true, and I have never had reason to doubt it, and if the one instance in history where a great civil war and victory was followed by no confiscations and no executions for treason, be due to General Grant, then we of the South owe him more than respect. My opinion here is again confirmed by Mr. A. H. Stephens, who describes his interview with General Grant at City Point, near Hampton Roads, February 1, 1865, as follows: "We were here with General Grant two days. . . The more I became acquainted with him, the more I became thoroughly impressed with the very extraordinary combination of rare elements of character which he exhibited. During the time he met us frequently and conversed freely upon various subjects-not much upon our mission. I saw, however, clearly 'hat he was very anxious for the proposed conference to take place, and from all that was said I inferred—whether correctly or not I do not know-that he was fully apprised of its proposed object. He was, without doubt, exceedingly anxious for a termination of our war and the return of peace and harmony through the country. It was through his instrumentality mainly that Mr. Lincoln finally consented to meet us at Fortress Monroe, as the correspondence shows." One further instance is in General Grant's autograph letter to myself written on the death of Alexander H. Stephens, a letter particularly interesting now, as showing that the kindness of the great military leader is of old date, and that what he expressed in the Buckner letter he has always felt toward the South and its people. The following is a perfect fac-simile of the letter, never before given to the reading public. Henry Whiting Cleveland, |