Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/195



HEN the Government at Washington became convinced that part of Lee's army had been detached to reinforce Bragg, the General-in-chief, Halleck, ordered General Grant, on September 15, four days before the battle of Chickamauga, to send all the troops he could spare, with all possible promptness, to the assistance of General Rosecrans. The order reached Grant at Vicksburg only on the 22d, but he at once complied with it, and soon fleets of steamboats were carrying tens of thousands of men up the Mississippi, bound for Memphis, whence they were to move by land. The deep effect of the news of the reverse at Chickamauga upon the Government is shown by the fact that, for the first time since the outbreak of the Rebellion, it was led to subordinate the theretofore always predominant considerations for the safety of the national capital to the requirements of a crisis elsewhere upon the theatre of war, and to overcome its reluctance to weaken the Army of the Potomac by reinforcing other armies from it. The decision was reached to send the 11th and 12th Army Corps, under Generals Howard and Slocum, as quickly as possible, by rail, to the Tennessee, under the command of General Hooker. The transfer of the nearly 20,000 men of the two corps, of guns, horses and teams and their belongings, was effected in a week — a very creditable achievement for those days. It took place as secretly as possible, and, in response to an appeal from the War Department to the Northern press, not a single reference was made to it in the newspapers.

I was just getting ready to start from Cincinnati for