Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[437] be a short and successful one, and ordered the men to take but one blanket apiece, and no overcoats. In the battle and flight, blankets were thrown aside; and after Chattanooga was besieged, it was a question whether food could be procured; there was no thought of bringing blankets over the mountain-roads. The enemy only refrained from attacking because he thought his prey already caged.¹ It was unnecessary to assault and lose life in the attempt to take what was secure. All Bragg had to do was to wait, and Chattanooga would fall without a battle; starvation would soon reduce the besieged, and retreat or reenforcement was impossible. This was the situation of the Army of the Cumberland, when Grant took command of it, on the 19th of October, 1863. No other of the national armies was reduced to such straits during the war.

But Chattanooga was only the centre of Grant's new front; his operations must necessarily extend to Bridgeport, about thirty miles to the right, where the railroad from Nashville strikes the Tennessee, and formed his solitary line of communication with the North; while, on the left, the whole region watered by the Tennessee was to be defended. This important valley is forty or fifty miles wide, and runs in a southwesterly direction, from Virginia through East Tennessee. Above Chattanooga, the river itself formed one of the main defences of the national forces, in fact, the ditch to their fortifications, for their line was established behind it. Holding the Tennessee