d, Bragg sent
John H. Morgan with twenty-five hundred cavalry to raid Kentucky,
Indiana, and Ohio. Perplexing the outnumbering Federals by his
daring, "Our Jack Morgan" crossed the Ohio at Brandenburg, rode
northeast through Indiana, wheeled south at Hamilton, Ohio, rode
through the suburbs of Cincinnati, reached Buffington Island on the
border of West Virginia, and then, hotly pursued by ever-increasing
forces, made northeast toward Pennsylvania. On the twenty-sixth of
July he surrendered near New Lisbon with less than four hundred
men left.

The Confederate main body passed the summer vainly trying to stem
the advance of the Army of the Cumberland, with which Rosecrans and
Thomas skillfully maneuvered Bragg farther and farther south till
they had forced him into and out of Chattanooga. In the meantime
Burnside's Army of the Ohio cleared eastern Tennessee and settled
down in Knoxville.

But in the middle of September Longstreet came to Bragg's rescue;
and a desperate battle was fought at Chickamauga on the nineteenth
and twentieth. The Confederates had seventy thousand men against
fifty-six thousand Federals: odds of five to four. They were determined
to win at any price; and it cost them eighteen thousand men, killed,
wounded, and missing; which was two thousand more than the Federals
lost. But they felt it was now or never as they turned to bay with,
for once, superior numbers. As usual, too, they coveted Federal
supplies. "Come on, boys, and charge!" yelled an encouraging sergeant,
"they have cheese in their haversacks!" Yet the pride of the soldier
stood higher than hunger. General D. H. Hill stooped to cheer a
very badly wounded man. "What's your regiment?" asked Hill. "Fifth
Confederate, New Orleans, and a damned good regiment it is," came
the ready answer.

Rosecrans, like many another man who succeeds halfway up, failed
at the top. He ordered an immediate general retreat which would
have changed the hard-won Confederate victory into a Federal rout.
But Thomas, with admirable judgment and iron nerve, stood fast
till he had shielded all the others clear. From this time on both
armies knew him as the "Rock of Chickamauga."

The unexpected defeat of Chickamauga roused Washington to immediate,
and this time most sensible, action. Grant was given supreme command
over the whole strategic area. Thomas superseded Rosecrans. Sherman
came down with the Army of the Tennessee. And Hooker railed through
from Virginia