Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/23

 "Missionary Ridge." 11

our bivouac (we had no tents or shelter save "booths" of tree branches and Httle "fly tents"), in the middle of the main road (which was a lake of mud 50 or 60 feet or more wide) a long stake stuck up with a board sign on it. On the board, was written, "Mule underneath here." A mule had actually sunk out of sight in the mud at that spot.

Imagine, then, if you can, the state of all the camps through- out that vast bog and the condition of the men after two months' sojourn there ! The wonder is that there was any fight left in any of us at all.

Confirmation of the sickliness of "Chickamauga Bottom" came in the Spanish- American War in 1898, when even in that late day the "camp of instruction" established there became one vast hospital.

"Why did we not camp on 'Mission Ridge,' at the foot of which we lay?" Answers are many; one is sufficient. There was no water. An army must have water, and plenty of it. A few men were on the Ridge all the time, and when Bragg, our leader, was compelled to change from the "ofifensive" to the "defensive," he, toward the end of the "two months," threw up a slight breastwork of logs, rails, etc., here and there along the Ridge, and put his half-sick, disgusted and demoralized army behind these shabby defences. That is, he put what was left of his army behind them ! And this brings me to reason No. 2 for our defeat, namely :

General Bragg committed the fatal and astounding blunder of weakening his already much-reduced force (reduced by sick- ness, etc), weakening it by sending from one-third to nearly one-half thereof, under General Longstreet. far away, to Knox- ville, to invest and capture that place; did this in the face of the ever-increasing numbers of the enemy (which it would have been criminal for him to have been ignorant of), and in face also of the fact that his position on Missionary Ridge and Look- out Mountain was untenable save by a large army. This is seen easily by anyone familiar with the ground. For instance, the distance to be defended was vast. Lookout Moimtain itself,