Terrible Swift Sword by Joseph Wheelan

first, Sheridan and his men’s nerves “were often upset by the whirring of twenty-pounder shells dropped inconsiderately into our camp at untimely hours of the night” from nearby Lookout Mountain. But the shelling caused so few casualties that Sheridan’s men soon “responded by jeers and imprecation” whenever a shell landed in the camp. The two armies were so close to one another that the Rebels watched the Yankees turn out for reveille and eat their meager fare, while the Union soldiers studied the Rebel defenses and even spied on Bragg’s headquarters on Missionary Ridge. 23
    The food shortage inspired Sheridan, the former commissary officer, to improvise. A company of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry had attached itself to Sheridan’s division without orders, and its commander volunteered for any duty that Sheridan might assign him. Sheridan sent the cavalrymen, guided by his scout and intelligence agent, James Card, to the Sequatchie Valley outside Chattanooga to obtain supplies. By hiding in a cove at the valley’s upper end and paying generously for everything, in a few days they had acquired plenty of food and forage, supplementing the scanty rations reaching the division from Bridgeport. “In this way I carried men and animals through our beleaguerment [ sic ] in pretty fair condition,” Sheridan wrote. His officers were so amply supplied, in fact, that they shared their fowl and eggs with other officers’ messes. 24
    Still, the siege wore on everyone. Three soldiers who deserted Sheridan’s command and headed north were caught, tried, and condemned to death. Sheridan assembled the entire division for the firing squad execution “to make the example effective,” he wrote. “It was the saddest spectacle I every witnessed, but there could be no evasion.” 25
    On October 23, Grant arrived in Chattanooga on crutches to command the armies of the West. Two weeks earlier in New Orleans, he had dislocated his hip and suffered a head injury when his horse bolted and collided with a carriage during a review prior to his departure for Tennessee (his detractors, with no evidence, whispered that Grant was drunk). At Bridgeport, Rosecrans, on his way out, met with Grant and described a plan made by him and Brigadier General W. F. “Baldy” Smith to open a new supply line between Bridgeport and Chattanooga that would be half the length of the current sixty-mile route, yet safe too. Grant made the plan his.
    The daring operation involved more than 14,000 troops from Chattanooga and Bridgeport. Under the Rebel guns on Raccoon and Lookout Mountains, three converging forces—one floating down the river under the brow of Raccoon Mountain—seized Brown’s Ferry before dawn on October 27. The troops built pontoon bridges, drove off the Rebels along Raccoon Mountain, and opened a second crossing later in the day at Kelley’s Ferry on the west side of the mountain.
    The plan worked flawlessly. Three days later, a steamboat reached Kelley’s Ferry with 40,000 rations. The new supply route, which crossed the Tennessee River in three places, ended food rationing in Chattanooga. It was christened the “Cracker Line” in recognition of troops’ staple food, hardtack crackers. 26
    Â 
    AS SUPPLIES NOW POURED into Chattanooga, Major General Joseph Hooker arrived at Bridgeport at the head of 20,000 men from the Army of the Potomac. In mid-November, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman joined Hooker with four divisions, more than 16,000 men, from Mississippi—the core of his new Army of the Tennessee. With the reinforcements, Union forces surpassed 80,000 men. Those who knew Grant were certain they would see action soon. 27
    While Grant’s army grew, Bragg’s shrank from a peak of 70,000 to about 50,000. Longstreet had left Chattanooga with his I Corps and General Joe Wheeler’s cavalry division to drive Major General Ambrose