A retreat at that time would have been a terrible disaster.  It would not only have been the loss of a most important strategic position to us, but it would have been attended with the loss of all the artillery still left with the Army of the Cumberland and the annihilation of that army itself, either by capture or demoralization.

All supplies for Rosecrans had to be brought from Nashville.  The railroad between this base and the army was in possession of the government up to Bridgeport, the point at which the road crosses to the south side of the Tennessee River; but Bragg, holding Lookout and Raccoon mountains west of Chattanooga, commanded the railroad, the river and the shortest and best wagon-roads, both south and north of the Tennessee, between Chattanooga and Bridgeport.  The distance between these two places is but twenty-six miles by rail, but owing to the position of Bragg, all supplies for Rosecrans had to be hauled by a circuitous route north of the river and over a mountainous country, increasing the distance to over sixty miles.

This country afforded but little food for his animals, nearly ten thousand of which had already starved, and not enough were left to draw a single piece of artillery or even the ambulances to convey the sick.  The men had been on half rations of hard bread for a considerable time, with but few other supplies except beef driven from Nashville across the country.  The region along the road became so exhausted of food for the cattle that by the time they reached Chattanooga they were much in the condition of the few animals left alive there—­“on the lift.”  Indeed, the beef was so poor that the soldiers were in the habit of saying, with a faint facetiousness, that they were living on “half rations of hard bread and beef dried on the Hoof.”

Nothing could be transported but food, and the troops were without sufficient shoes or other clothing suitable for the advancing season.  What they had was well worn.  The fuel within the Federal lines was exhausted, even to the stumps of trees.  There were no teams to draw it from the opposite bank, where it was abundant.  The only way of supplying fuel, for some time before my arrival, had been to cut trees on the north bank of the river at a considerable distance up the stream, form rafts of it and float it down with the current, effecting a landing on the south side within our lines by the use of paddles or poles.  It would then be carried on the shoulders of the men to their camps.

If a retreat had occurred at this time it is not probable that any of the army would have reached the railroad as an organized body, if followed by the enemy.