The river was now opened to us from Lookout valley to Bridgeport.  Between Brown’s Ferry and Kelly’s Ferry the Tennessee runs through a narrow gorge in the mountains, which contracts the stream so much as to increase the current beyond the capacity of an ordinary steamer to stem it.  To get up these rapids, steamers must be cordelled; that is, pulled up by ropes from the shore.  But there is no difficulty in navigating the stream from Bridgeport to Kelly’s Ferry.  The latter point is only eight miles from Chattanooga and connected with it by a good wagon-road, which runs through a low pass in the Raccoon Mountains on the south side of the river to Brown’s Ferry, thence on the north side to the river opposite Chattanooga.  There were several steamers at Bridgeport, and abundance of forage, clothing and provisions.

On the way to Chattanooga I had telegraphed back to Nashville for a good supply of vegetables and small rations, which the troops had been so long deprived of.  Hooker had brought with him from the east a full supply of land transportation.  His animals had not been subjected to hard work on bad roads without forage, but were in good condition.  In five days from my arrival in Chattanooga the way was open to Bridgeport and, with the aid of steamers and Hooker’s teams, in a week the troops were receiving full rations.  It is hard for any one not an eye-witness to realize the relief this brought.  The men were soon reclothed and also well fed, an abundance of ammunition was brought up, and a cheerfulness prevailed not before enjoyed in many weeks.  Neither officers nor men looked upon themselves any longer as doomed.  The weak and languid appearance of the troops, so visible before, disappeared at once.  I do not know what the effect was on the other side, but assume it must have been correspondingly depressing.  Mr. Davis had visited Bragg but a short time before, and must have perceived our condition to be about as Bragg described it in his subsequent report.  “These dispositions,” he said, “faithfully sustained, insured the enemy’s speedy evacuation of Chattanooga for want of food and forage.  Possessed of the shortest route to his depot, and the one by which reinforcements must reach him, we held him at our mercy, and his destruction was only a question of time.”  But the dispositions were not “faithfully sustained,” and I doubt not but thousands of men engaged in trying to “sustain” them now rejoice that they were not.  There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North.  The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation.  The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class.  With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended