This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [241]
The victory had been complete. Hood’s army was shattered beyond repair, and there was no refuge for it north of Alabama. Young General Wilson drove his cavalry after the retreating army in the pitch-darkness of a windy, rainy night. Forrest was guarding the Confederate rear, and his men fought savage delaying actions in the bewildering dark, crouched behind fence-rail barricades while the Union cavalry charged in across inky-black fields, nothing visible except the sputtering flames from the carbines — and, at intervals, black tree trunks gleaming in the wet, and dark figures moving in and out, when sporadic flashes of lightning lit the night.
It was mean, confused fighting, much of it hand-to-hand. A Union and a Confederate officer came together in the gloom and fought a saber duel on horseback, so close together that they grappled and in some fantastic manner managed to exchange sabers, after which they continued to belabor each other; the duel ended when a stray bullet broke the Confederate’s sword arm and he was compelled to surrender. Forrest’s men were driven off at last, but they had delayed the pursuit just long enough to enable Hood to keep from losing what remained of his army, and after midnight Wilson called a halt and put his troopers into bivouac.
At this point Thomas himself rode up. “Old Slow Trot” was coming in at a gallop tonight, and his customary dignity and self-control were gone. He greeted Wilson with a whoop.
“Dang it to hell, Wilson, didn’t I tell you we could lick ’em?” he demanded. “Didn’t I tell you we could lick ’em?”10
In Louisville, Kentucky, General Logan got news of the victory, put his orders away, and turned around to go back to Washington. And in Washington, General Grant himself got the tidings. He had left Petersburg and was on his way to Nashville to come out and see to things personally, and he was stopping overnight in Willard’s Hotel when the telegram reached him. It told the news of the sweeping victory that removed the last possible doubt that the war would be won on schedule. Grant read the telegram, handed it to an aide with the remark, “Well, I guess we will not go to Nashville,” and then dictated a wire to Thomas, offering his hearty congratulations.11
Wilson’s cavalry kept up the pursuit for ten days, but with the men who remained to him Hood at last got away to the south side of the Tennessee River, at Muscle Shoals. Of the forty thousand with whom he had set out on his invasion, he had twenty-one thousand left, most of them in a high degree of disorganization. His army had been practically destroyed. Fragments of it would be used in other fields later on, but as an army it had ceased to exist. Pap Thomas had shattered it.
Thomas comes down in history as the Rock of Chickamauga, the great defensive fighter, the man who could never be driven away but who was not much on the offensive. That may be a correct appraisal. Yet it may also be worth making note that just twice in all the war was a major Confederate army driven away from a prepared position in complete rout — at Chattanooga and at Nashville. Each time the blow that routed it was launched by Thomas.
With Hood back in the Deep South, out of Tennessee and out of the war, 1864 came to an end. It had been a long year and a hard year, and it had witnessed two things never seen before in all the history of man’s warring: the soldiers who had the fighting to do had voted for more of it, with themselves to carry the load, and the people back home, who had had three mortal years of it, had held a free election