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Confederate General Bragg's ...pickets were posted so near the town,
where ours were stationed, that we often held conversation with them,
and gave them newspapers for tobacco. Our pickets at this point were
separated from those of the Confederates only by Chattanooga
Creek---both lines obtaining water from opposite banks of The same
stream. Here occasionally a Federal soldier off duty would venture to
meet a Confederate soldier midway in the stream between the picket
lines. Not a shot would be fired during the brief handshaking. The
pickets on both sides would swarm like bees from their rifle-pits to
watch this impromptu walk and meeting on neutral grounds---a meeting
brought on openly by the mere display of a newspaper and pouch of
smoking tobacco. It would occupy scarcely ten minutes from the time
each soldier left his respective line until his safe return. General
Grant himself, while in the command of the Army at Chattanooga, had
some experience of this kind, as the following from his "Memoir" will
show:
"The
most friendly relations seemed to exist between the pickets of the two
armies. At one place there was a tree, which had fallen across the
stream, and which was used by the soldiers of both armies in drawing
water for their camps. General Longstreet's Corps was stationed there
at the time, and wore blue of a little different shade from our
uniform. Seeing a soldier in blue on this log, I rode up to him,
commenced conversing with him, and asked whose Corps he belonged to. He
was very polite, and, touching his hat to me, said he belonged to
General Longstreet's Corps. I asked him a few questions---but not with
a view of gaining any particular information---all of which he
answered, and I rode off."
The situation of our Army was
extremely critical. Rosecrans had grave apprehensions of the condition
of things, which he telegraphed to President Lincoln. "At the
commencement of the occupation," says Van Horne's Hist. of the Army of
Cumberland, Vol. I p. 392, "there were large trains in good condition,
and the prospect for transporting supplies was somewhat promising. But
early in October the rain began to fall. With its continuance, the
roads became almost impassable. The destruction of hundreds of wagons
and animals by Wheeler was nearly fatal to the army. The remaining
animals from necessity were pressed beyond endurance. The roads rapidly
grew worse; the mules became exhausted by constant motion and lack of
forage; each successive trip to Bridgeport compassed a longer period of
time, and each trip reduced the number of wagons and weight of their
contents; at each succeeding issue the ration was diminished; the
artillery horses, being least useful in the emergency, were deprived of
forage and fell dead in great numbers day by day; and the alternative
of surrender, or retreat with great peril and certain loss of all
material, seemed only delaying its demand for the desperate election of
the army. The thought of surrender could not be entertained, as no
large army had yet lowered its colors at the demand of the foe, and the
Army of the Cumberland could not be the first to experience this
humiliation; and the shortest rations, as long as actual starvation
could be averted, could not force that army to turn its back to the
enemy. So, with full appreciation of the situation, it bravely awaited
the issue." In his "Personal Memoirs," General Grant says: "The men had
been on half rations of hard bread for a considerable time, with but
few other supplies except beef driven from Nashville across the
country. The region along the road became so exhausted of food for the
cattle, that by the time they reached the Chattanooga, they were much
in the condition of the few animals left alive there--'on the lift.'
Indeed, the beef was so poor that the soldiers were in the habit of
saying, with a faint facetiousness, that they were living on 'half
rations of hard bread and beef dried on the hoof.' " The writer has
seen men standing around the Commissarist actually shedding tears for
mouldy and condemned crackers. In their necessity they appropriated to
themselves (it would have been theft, under other circumstances) the
half ration of shelled corn from the hungry and starving mules, as they
ate at their troughs, and in several instances they picked up and
converted into hominy the undigested grains of corn, which had passed
through the intestines of the mules. The writer has had the
satisfaction of eating some of this hominy; but not until he had gone
three days without eating anything else. The heads, tails, ears and
shinbones of the slaughtered beeves were in great demand, which the
soldiers, who had any money, bought at high prices, or confiscated, as
the case may be, and converted into soup. The soldiers endured all this
without complaint. The fuel in our lines gave out. Every limb, twig,
stump and root of the trees was used up. Before the siege abated, we
had to cut trees far up the river, and form rafts, float them down, and
drag and carry them to camp. In our great extremity, we ran into the
lines of the enemy with trucks of cars, guarded by a squad of men, upon
which we hauled the wood into camp; at times we would bring back a
wounded companion with the wood.
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