Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[262] and woodlands concealed from the observers the narrow roads that zigzagged between those two places on the neck of Moccasin Point. The crossing of Sherman's troops at Brown's Ferry must have been reported to Bragg; they had disappeared in the woods: if the Confederates did not see them reappear to enter Chattanooga, they might conclude therefrom that the Fifteenth corps was moving up the Tennessee above that town. This was sufficient to attract their attention to the crossing prepared on that side. While Sherman's columns were moving unperceived through the passes of Walden's Ridge, Howard, coming out of the vale in which he had camped near Chattanooga, was entering that city in full daylight. The Confederate watchers by a very natural error must have taken these troops for the same that they had seen on the previous day pass across the river at Brown's Ferry. Bragg had no reports from his spies to correct this error: watching the Federal outposts was so continuous that for the last three days none of his spies had been enabled to transmit to him the least information. Fancying that Grant imitated his own faults, Bragg placed credence in a rumor spread through the Confederate camps according to which Sherman had marched directly to the assistance of Burnside along the right bank of the river.

At the very time when the Union general had decided to devote the day of the 23d to the last preparations for the great struggle, his anxiety and impatience were increased by several signs of a retreat on the part of the enemy. On the 20th, Bragg had sent him, under a flag of truce, a summons to cause all non-combatants to retire at once from Chattanooga, as if he wanted and was able to assault or bombard the place. Grant thought he saw in this message a transparent ruse to conceal a backward movement. He was confirmed in this opinion by the story of a Confederate officer who had deserted in the night of the 22d-23d, and gave him the assurance that the Southerners had begun to evacuate their positions. The news was false, but the fact which had deceived the deserter was so strange that it might have led many other persons into error. Would it be believed, in truth, that Bragg, after having refused to Longstreet, three weeks before, Walker's division, was detaching at that supreme hour a division from his army to send it before Knoxville?