A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [309]
If Rosecrans had at least been able to hold on to Lookout Mountain, the situation facing the Federals would not have been so dire. With the Confederates now in possession of it, all the southern routes into the town, including the river, roads, and railway, were exposed to enemy fire. But the engineers of the Army of the Cumberland had come up with a plan. It required a furtive night expedition along the Tennessee River, beneath the Confederate guns on Lookout Mountain. If successful, they would be able to build a pontoon bridge two miles upriver, where a bend in the river would put the Federal forces beyond the reach of artillery fire.
At 3:00 A.M. on October 27, fifty pontoon boats, each carrying twenty-four soldiers and two rowers, silently paddled past the Confederates. Robert Neve was in the fourth boat. “It was a fine moonlit night and very still,” he wrote. “We passed down very quiet and could even see the Rebel pickets standing before their fires. It did not create any alarm.”7 They seized the landing with relative ease, driving back a small Confederate counterattack with few losses. “The next job was to cut down all trees … all day long we had to work felling trees and making small breastworks. Here we were all but starving. Rations were very short.” A Confederate attack was expected, and it came at midnight on the twenty-eighth. This should have been Longstreet’s second triumph at Chattanooga, his opportunity to defeat Grant without having to engage in a major battle. But Longstreet had not been paying attention to the Federal inroads along the southern end of the valley, and he made a serious mistake now by sending only four brigades against the attack force. The Confederates were easily overwhelmed and had to retreat back up Lookout Mountain.
The next day, the first supply wagons carrying hardtack (called “crackers” by the army) and dried beef came rolling through along the “Cracker Line.” The route stretched back for hundreds of miles. In northern Kentucky, a partially restored Ebenezer Wells led a wagon train of more than two thousand pack animals, fighting fever and exhaustion to keep the supplies moving. Robert Neve soon noticed the difference in his rations. Over the next two weeks more supplies arrived, including fresh vegetables and new uniforms. “Our rations were getting better, and we felt better as well.” His regiment was so close to the Confederate pickets that they agreed to take turns on picket duty. “We would wave each other’s caps and then exchange newspapers.” The reversal of their fortunes was complete; it was now the Confederates who were outnumbered, starving, and miserable and the Federals who were growing in confidence and strength.
General Bragg grasped the magnitude of Longstreet’s mistake in failing to prevent the Federal bridgehead into Chattanooga, but his reaction to the disaster was perverse. Instead of trying to plug the gap or reinforce his position, Bragg chose to send Longstreet away, along with twenty thousand men, on an expedition to take Knoxville, Tennessee, from General Burnside. There was some rationale to the decision: if Burnside could be forced back to central Tennessee, the Confederates would repossess the three railways that passed through Knoxville and the all-important Cumberland Gap, which would restore the quick route to Virginia. But at best the mission was a dangerous sideshow when Federal supplies and troops were pouring into Chattanooga.
Bragg relished the thought of Longstreet’s having to operate on his own, hoping that this would expose some of his rival’s weaknesses. “One of General Longstreet’s most serious faults as a military commander was shown at this time,” admitted Francis Dawson. Longstreet made few preparations for the campaign and never bothered to speak to Dawson about ordnance. “Not one word was said to me by him on the subject. I had an inkling, however, of what was going