attack was ordered, but by some misunderstanding or disobedience of orders, this movement on the part of the Confederates miscarried, and was abandoned; not, however, until General Bratton, of Jenkins’ old Brigade, came up and attacked the rear guard with such vigor that the enemy was glad enough to get away, leaving their wounded and dead upon the field.  No further movements were made against the army until after our removal to East Tennessee.

About the first of November orders were issued for the transfer of Longstreet to begin, and on the 5th and 6th the greater part of his army was embarked on hastily constructed trains at Tyner’s Station, some five or six miles out on the E.T. & K.R.R.  The horses, artillery, and wagon trains took the dirt road to Sweetwater, in the Sweetwater Valley, one of the most fertile regions in East Tennessee.

Longstreet’s command consisted of Kershaw’s (South Carolina), Bryan’s and Wofford’s (Georgia), and Humphreys’ (Mississippi) Brigades, under Major General McLaws; Anderson’s (Georgia), Jenkins’ (South Carolina), Law’s (Alabama), Robertson’s (Arkansas and Texas), and Benning’s (Georgia) Brigades, under Brigadier General M. Jenkins, commanding division; two batteries of artillery, under General Alexander; and four brigades of cavalry, under Major General Wheeler.

General Hood had been so desperately wounded at Chickamauga, that it was thought he could never return to the army; but he had won a glorious name, the prestige of which the war department thought of too much value to be lost, but to be used afterwards so disastrously in the campaign through Middle Tennessee.  General Hood was, no doubt, an able, resolute, and indefatigable commander, although meteoric, something on the order of Charles, the “Madman of the North;” but his experience did not warrant the department in placing him in the command of an expedition to undertake the impossible—­the defeat of an overwhelming army, behind breastworks, in the heart of its own country.

The movement of Longstreet to East Tennessee and Hood through Middle Tennessee was but the commencement of a series of blunders on the part of our war department that culminated eventually in the South’s downfall.  But it is not our province to speculate in the rosy fields of “might-have-been,” but to record facts.

General Longstreet had of all arms fifteen thousand men, including teamsters, guards, medical and ambulance corps.  General Burnside had an army of twenty-five thousand men and one hundred pieces of artillery, and this was the army Longstreet was expected to capture or destroy.

General Grant was marching from Mississippi with a large portion of his victorious troops of the Vicksburg campaign to reinforce Rosecrans, Sherman coming down through Tennessee, and Meade was sending reinforcements from the East, all to swell the defeated ranks of Rosecrans.  With the knowledge of all these facts, the department was preparing to further reduce the forces of Bragg by sending Longstreet up in East Tennessee, with soldiers badly clad, worse equipped, and with the poorest apology of camp equipage, for an active and progressive campaign.