This was not satisfactory indeed, it was most depressing—­and then there was much confusion prevailing around Rossville; and, this condition of things doubtless increasing my gloomy reflections, it did not seem to me that the outlook for the next day was at all auspicious, unless the enemy was slow to improve his present advantage.  Exhaustion soon quieted all forebodings, though, and I fell into a sound sleep, from which I was not aroused till daylight.

On the morning of the 21st the enemy failed to advance, and his inaction gave us the opportunity for getting the broken and disorganized army into shape.  It took a large part of the day to accomplish this, and the chances of complete victory would have been greatly in Bragg’s favor if he could have attacked us vigorously at this time.  But he had been badly hurt in the two days’ conflict, and his inactivity on the 21st showed that he too had to go through the process of reorganization.  Indeed, his crippled condition began to show itself the preceding evening, and I have always thought that, had General Thomas held on and attacked the Confederate right and rear from where I made the junction with him on the Lafayette road, the field of Chickamauga would have been relinquished to us; but it was fated to be otherwise.

Rosecrans, McCook, and Crittenden passed out of the battle when they went back to Chattanooga, and their absence was discouraging to all aware of it.  Doubtless this had much to do with Thomas’s final withdrawal, thus leaving the field to the enemy, though at an immense cost in killed and wounded.  The night of the 21st the army moved back from Rossville, and my division, as the rearguard of the Twentieth Corps, got within our lines at Chattanooga about 8 o’clock the morning of the 22d.  Our unmolested retirement from Rossville lent additional force to the belief that the enemy had been badly injured, and further impressed me with the conviction that we might have held on.  Indeed, the battle of Chickamauga was somewhat like that of Stone River, victory resting with the side that had the grit to defer longest its relinquishment of the field.

The manoeuvres by which Rosecrans had carried his army over the Cumberland Mountains, crossed the Tennessee River, and possessed himself of Chattanooga, merit the highest commendation up to the abandonment of this town by Bragg on the 8th of September; but I have always fancied that that evacuation made Rosecrans over-confident, and led him to think that he could force Bragg south as far as Rome.  After the Union army passed the river and Chattanooga fell into our hands; we still kept pressing the enemy’s communications, and the configuration of the country necessitated more or less isolation of the different corps.  McCook’s corps of three divisions had crossed two difficult ridges—­Sand and Lookout mountains—­to Alpine in Broomtown Valley with intentions against Summerville.  Thomas’s corps had marched