in the afternoon Grant at length gave Thomas the order
to advance. Eleven Union brigades rushed forward with orders to take the
enemy's rifle-pits at the base of Missionary Ridge, and then halt to
reform. But such was the ease of this first capture, such the eagerness
of the men who had been waiting all day for the moment of action, that,
after but a slight pause, without orders, and moved by a common impulse,
they swept on and up the steep and rocky face of Missionary Ridge,
heedless of the enemy's fire from rifle and cannon at the top, until in
fifty-five minutes after leaving their positions they almost
simultaneously broke over the crest of the ridge in six different
places, capturing the batteries and making prisoners of the supporting
infantry, who, surprised and bewildered by the daring escalade, made
little or no further resistance. Bragg's official report soundly berates
the conduct of his men, apparently forgetting the heavy loss they had
inflicted on their assailants but regardless of which the Union veterans
mounted to victory in an almost miraculous exaltation of patriotic
heroism.

Bragg's Confederate army was not only beaten, but hopelessly demoralized
by the fiery Union assault, and fled in panic and retreat. Grant kept up
a vigorous pursuit to a distance of twenty miles, which he ceased in
order to send an immediate strong reinforcement under Sherman to relieve
Burnside, besieged by the Confederate General Longstreet at Knoxville.
But before this help arrived, Burnside had repulsed Longstreet who,
promptly informed of the Chattanooga disaster, retreated in the
direction of Virginia. Not being pursued, however, this general again
wintered in East Tennessee; and for the same reason, the beaten army of
Bragg halted in its retreat from Missionary Ridge at Dalton, where it
also went into winter quarters. The battle of Chattanooga had opened the
great central gateway to the south, but the rebel army, still determined
and formidable, yet lay in its path, only twenty-eight miles away.

XXVIII

Grant Lieutenant-General--Interview with Lincoln--Grant Visits
Sherman--Plan of Campaigns--Lincoln to Grant--From the Wilderness to Cold
Harbor--The Move to City Point--Siege of Petersburg--Early Menaces
Washington--Lincoln under Fire--Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley

The army rank of lieutenant-general had, before the Civil War, been
conferred only twice on American commanders; on Washington, for service
i