Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 9.djvu/137



ENERAL BRAGG was unfortunately detained a week or ten days longer than he had expected when General Smith made his advance, by the non-arrival of his trains and the difficulty of crossing to the north side of the Tennessee. On the 28th his line of march northward was, however, taken up. The Cumberland mountains, after traversing the State of Tennessee in a southwest direction as an elevated plateau twenty miles or more in breadth, is bifurcated at Pikeville, about fifty miles north of Chattanooga, by the Sequatchie river, a small stream with a narrow but fertile valley walled in by the two ranges thus formed, the eastern one known as Walden's ridge, although its proper name is Wallen's ridge. The passage over the latter into the Sequatchie valley was tedious and difficult, but was safely effected, and on the ist of September General Bragg was with his advance at Pikeville, the head of the valley.

General Buell having been contemplating his invasion of East Tennessee across this valley by way of McMinnville, General Bragg had considered as one of the alternatives of his campaign the feasibility of advancing by the same route directly upon Nashville, or the necessity