The Yankee army was right on the other
bank of the Tennessee river. Bragg did not know of their approach until
the cannon fired.
Rosecrans' army is crossing the Tennessee river. A part are already on
Lookout Mountain. Some of their cavalry scouts had captured some of our
foraging parties in Wills valley. The air was full of flying rumors.
Wagons are being packed, camps are broken up, and there is a general
hubbub everywhere. But your old soldier is always ready at a moment's
notice. The assembly is sounded; form companies, and we are ready for
a march, or a fight, or a detail, or anything. If we are marched a
thousand miles or twenty yards, it is all the same. The private soldier
is a machine that has no right to know anything. He is a machine that
moves without any volition of his own. If Edison could invent a wooden
man that could walk and load and shoot, then you would have a good sample
of the private soldier, and it would have this advantage--the private
soldier eats and the wooden man would not.
We left Chattanooga, but whither bound we knew not, and cared not;
but we marched toward Chickamauga and crossed at Lee & Gordon's mill.
THE BULL OF THE WOODS
On our way to Lafayette from Lee & Gordon's mill, I remember a ludicrous
scene, almost bordering on sacrilege.
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