Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/100

 which was the right, Sheridan's division was already in an advanced position on the river. The other two divisions under Johnson and Davis marched respectively to Bellefonte and Stevenson. The reserve corps under Major-General Granger followed the river as soon as the preceding columns were out of the way. All these movements were so promptly executed that by August 21 the whole army was in the valley of the Tennessee. But the crossing of the river was not commenced till August 29, when it was successfully accomplished over pontoon and trestle bridges, and by boats and rafts, at three different points, by all the troops and their impedimenta in less than a week.

According to the regular tri-monthly returns made to the army headquarters on August 10, the total strength of the Army of the Cumberland was 4735 officers and 75,183 men — cavalry, infantry, and artillery — of which the cavalry corps comprised 9973 officers and men, the Twenty-first Army Corps 14,367 men, the Fourteenth 22,389, the Twentieth 14,222, and the reserve corps 16,936; the remainder consisting of detached bodies serving as escorts, engineers, and in other duties. As the reserve corps took no part in the operations south of the river till some weeks after the other corps, its number should be deducted from the total, thus reducing the aggregate with which Rosecrans at first confronted Bragg to about 64,000. The artillery numbered 216 field guns.

A despatch sent by General Bragg to the Richmond Government on August 24 proves that he learned of Rosecrans's and Burnside's advances only on that day, when the former had already reached the Tennessee. He reported that Rosecrans had four corps with 70,000 men (a rebel estimate for once under the actual number), and Burnside 25,000 men (an overestimate by 10,000). According to his own statements, he himself had less than 30,000 effectives of the two army corps of Lieutenant-Generals L. Polk and D. H. Hill, and the reserve corps under Major-General Walker. Polk's army corps consisted of the divisions of Cheatham and
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