Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 24.djvu/100

 92 Xniltln rn Hi*ttu'l<-ill SiH-it't;/ I 1 "/" />'.

AN IMPORTANT DISPATCH.

FROM LIEUTENANT GENERAL N. B. FORREST.

Did it Determine the Fate of the Confederacy.

A dispatch, says the Washington Star of Jan. 15, 1897, written by the Confederate General Forrest, dated September 21, 1863, dur- ing the movements of troops about Chattanooga, has recently been brought to light. Much importance has been attached to this doc- ument, because of the opinion attributed to General Longstreet that it contained the instructions which determined the fate of the Con- federacy. The dispatch is a brief one, dictated by General Forrest under most exciting conditions, signed by him, and addressed to General Polk, who was asked to forward it to General Bragg. At the time the message was written, General Forrest, it is said, was making observations high up in a tree on Missionary Ridge. He had been sweeping the great battle-field of Chickamauga with his glasses; he believed he saw evidences of an attempt on the part of General Rosencranz and his army to escape from the trap in which the Confederates supposed they had snared him, and in which they expected to capture him and his whole army. He, then, calling down from the tree, dictated the dispatch in question to his adjutant, who wrote it upon a sheet of dingy, blue paper, with a lead pencil, using an upturned saddle stirrup as a writing desk. This dispatch announced to General Polk, General Forrest's belief that the enemy were evacuating Chattanooga, and his opinion that the Confederate army ought to press forward as rapidly as possible.

WHAT BECAME OF THE DOCUMENT.

Q(

According to "Holland," the New York correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, the subsequent history of the dispatch was as follows:

" As soon as the dispatch was written, it was sent to General Polk, who, as requested, sent the information to General Bragg, who was the commanding officer. After this was done, General Polk put the dispatch in his dispatch box, and years after it was found by his son, Dr. Mechlenburg Polk, who is now a practicing physician in New York city. Knowing that Dr. John A. Wyeth was collecting