denly isolated from every part of the army. He describes his misfortune as follows:
At the moment of the repulse of Davis's division, I was standing in rear of his right, waiting the completion of the closing of McCook's corps to the left. Seeing confusion among Van Cleve's troops, and the distance Davis's men were falling back, and the tide of battle surging towards us, the urgency for Sheridan's troops to intervene became imminent, and I hastened in person to the extreme right to direct Sheridan's movement on the flank of the advancing enemy. It was too late. The crowd of returning troops rolled back and the enemy advanced. Giving the troops directions to rally behind the ridge west of the Dry Valley road, I passed down it, accompanied by General Garfield, Major McMichael, Major Bond and Captain Young of my staff and a few of my escort under a shower of grape, canister and musketry for two or three hundred yards, and attempted to rejoin General Thomas and the troops sent to his support by passing to the rear of the broken portion of our lines, but found the routed troops far towards the left, and, hearing the enemy's advancing musketry and cheers, I became doubtful whether the left had held its ground, and started for Rossville.
In other words, the Commanding General, without an attempt to ascertain the real condition of the left, as in duty and in honor bound, himself magnified the doubt he felt regarding it into the assumption that total defeat had already overtaken the army, and, giving up all thought of further resistance, rode off with a squad of followers, leaving his command to its fate. He put, as we shall see, not only the four miles to Rossville, but the eight to Chattanooga, between himself and his soldiers. This act cost him the loss of his command and irretrievably blotted his record.
General Crittenden became a like victim of the disaster. He tried to find support for his corps batteries, and, when they had been driven off, remained with a small force of about one hundred men on an adjacent hill. After vainly waiting for some time for tidings, the fear seized him that Generals Rosecrans, McCook, Sheridan, and Davis had
