prepared for battle or any other contingencies which might arise on this distant and isolated theater of action.

When Bragg discovered the real point of crossing and the lines of actual movement it was too late to recall the forces dispatched up the Tennessee or to post columns of sufficient strength on the slopes before Rosecrans to impede his advance in force. How strong the positions thus turned by the Union forces were will appear from the statement that so precipitous and otherwise difficult were the roads over these ranges that at several of them it required a day and a night for a division with its artillery and reduced trains to make the ascent.

The Union commander had delayed his movement until the corn was ripe in order that it might not be necessary to carry grain for his animals, which would have largely increased his trains—so careful, thoughtful, and wise was he in every detail of preparation.

Bragg's failure to resist in the vicinity of Rosecrans's crossings and at the crossings of Raccoon Mountain was due in part to the fact that even after he knew that the heads of columns were over the river he was still inclined to look upon their movements as a feint, and to regard the real point of danger to lie above the city. Rosecrans, even after crossing, sought successfully to strengthen such impressions in Bragg's mind. He directed Wagner's, Wilder's, and Minty's brigades to report to Hazen, and with this force, some 7,000 strong, the latter was ordered to make a conspicuous show of crossing the river far above Chattanooga. This active and efficient officer admirably executed his orders. By extended fires, by marchings and countermarchings, by moving his artillery continuously across openings in sight from the opposite bank, by buglers at widely separated points, and other similar devices, he easily created the belief that an army was encamped on the right bank intending to cross.

With the exception of this force, all of Rosecrans's army was south of the river on September 4, and on the move. The right was already well on its way. On the 6th his army had descended from Raccoon Mountain and occupied the valley between that range and the western slope of Lookout from a point seven miles from Chattanooga to Valley Head, forty-two miles from the city. The next day McCook and Thomas began to ascend Lookout at points respectively forty-two and twenty-six miles from Chattanooga. On the 8th McCook's troops were in motion down the eastern slope of the mountain toward Alpine, and Thomas was descending from Steven's and Frick's Gap, both of which were near where the road from Trenton, after running southwardly, is represented as leading over Lookout. Crittenden had pushed small portions of his command up mere mountain trails, and on the 9th these gained position where they could look down upon Chattanooga. They saw no flags, and soon discovered that Bragg had evacuated. The day before Wagner, still watching from the north bank of the river, had reported to Rosecrans that the enemy was leaving. The news came in the night, and Rosecrans ordered Crittenden to ascertain the situation. His detachments on the mountain had already discovered that the city was deserted. Crittenden was at once ordered to march around the north point of Lookout, and follow Bragg toward Ringgold. At night on the 9th Palmer and Van Cleve's divisions were established at Rossville, five miles south of Chattanooga.

Thus, in three weeks from the time his diversion towards Bragg's right began, and in five days from the time his army was over the river, Rosecrans had repeated the Tullahoma campaign on a far greater scale, and in the face of much more formidable obstacles, and absolutely without fighting, except as Minty had been slightly engaged with Dibrell near Sparta in the outset of the movement, had driven Bragg from the mountain stronghold of Chattanooga, the objective of the campaign. It was well said later by General Meigs, who came from Washington to Chattanooga after its final occupation by the Union army, and spent some days in studying the movements by which it had been secured: "It is not only the greatest operation in our war, but a great thing when compared with any war."

But the occupation of Chattanooga, in a military sense, was not accomplished by sending Crittenden's two divisions beyond it and one brigade into it. Bragg had only withdrawn to save his communications and supplies, and to await the re-enforcements he knew to be hastening from Virginia, from Mobile, and from Mississippi. The battle for Chattanooga was yet to be fought. Bragg had retired with deliberation. He established his headquarters at Lafayette, behind Pigeon Mountains, but his rear guard never passed beyond Lee and Gordon's Mills.

The news that Rosecrans' troops were in Chattanooga, and that he had pushed out after the retreating Bragg, made a tremendous impression upon the North. It was accepted as a capture, and a military occupation of that long-coveted stronghold. It is true it was occupied, but not in a military sense, since the Union army had not been brought into it, or concentrated between it and the enemy.

Hence arose that misconception, which is widespread still, that the Army of the Cumberland had occupied Chattanooga, and thence marching out to attack Bragg, had been defeated by the latter at Chickamauga, and driven back in disorder into Chattanooga.

But, instead, Chickamauga was the battle for Chattanooga, fought by Rosecrans while on the way to take military possession of it, and while he was concentrating his army between Bragg and that city, the objective of the Union campaign. The battle was not for the Chickamauga woods, but for the passes behind them which controlled the way to Chattanooga. These were secured as the immediate result of the battle, and the successful occupation of Chattanooga in the military sense followed—an occupation which lasted till the close of the war.

In connection with the fact of Crittenden's unopposed movement into Chattanooga another point of general misapprehension arose, which, through the years, has formed the basis of unfair and unthinking, if not ignorant criticism of General Rosecrans' brilliant strategy. Why did not Rosecrans face Thomas and McCook about in the valley west of Lookout, where their movements would have been concealed, and hurry them after Crittenden into Chattanooga? It was simply because with McCook's advance nearly fifty miles from Chattanooga by the roads west of Lookout, and Thomas's head of column already down and over Missionary Ridge, full thirty miles away, to withdraw and send them in succession after Crittenden would have been to have invited attack in detail from Bragg upon each head of column as it followed Crittenden, with all the chances in favor of Bragg's success. Besides, the shortest and surest, in fact the only practicable line of concentration looking to the safety of the widely-separated corps was through a movement to the left along the eastern bases of Lookout and Missionary Ridge. It was this movement of Rosecrans for concentrating on Crittenden's position south of Rossville that led to the battle of Chickamauga. Bragg, having been heavily re-enforced, started at the same time from Lafayette to interpose between Rosecrans and Chattanooga, the Union objective of the whole campaign.

Subsequent letters will follow this exciting concentration, and the desperate contests of each army for position, and the bloody battles which ensued, and by which Chattanooga was finally won.

H. V. B.

Washington, August 7.—[Special.]—In the movements of the Union armies none, from first to last, presented such brilliant strategy as the two which brought General Rosecrans from Murfreesboro', to the rear of Chattanooga. Almost equally wonderful was the successful concentration