Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/200

 were concealed by heavy timber, but their presence along this extended front had been well ascertained by reconnoissances, spies and deserters. The length of the line was nearly eight miles — too great — and became a source of weakness to which the final rebel defeat was due. The Confederate, like the Union army, retained its formation of Chickamauga during the first stages of the investment at Chattanooga — that is, the wing under Lieutenant-General Polk formed the right, and that under Lieutenant-General Longstreet the left. The strength of Bragg's forces was, according to the returns telegraphed to the Richmond War Office on October 7: Present for duty, infantry, 4664 officers, 46,447 enlisted men; artillery, 157 officers, 3480 enlisted men, making a total of 54,748 officers and men. The enemy's superiority in infantry and artillery thus appears to have been about thirty per cent. It was shown that the losses at Chickamauga had reduced Bragg's strength of 42,000, exclusive of cavalry, to about 24,000, so that 30,000 men must have been added to his command during the intervening two weeks and a half. These heavy reinforcements appear to have been made up of the two brigades of McLaws's division and two of Hood's divisions of Longstreet's corps, which joined the army just after the battle, a division from Mississippi under Major-General Stevenson, and many thousands of absentees on furlough and sick leave, whom the rebel authorities, by strenuous efforts, succeeded in gathering up and returning to the front.

The Confederate Commander-in-chief had made up his mind to confine his operations against Chattanooga to as close an investment as the local conditions allowed, and to compel the Unionists, both by interrupting their supplies and by shot and shell, either to surrender or retreat north of the Tennessee. This decision was contrary to the judgment of his leading generals, and, as will duly appear, led to what was nothing less than outright insubordination on their part. The interruption of our supplies had already been accomplished in a great measure by forcing us off the