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Help is on the Way: October 1863:
Reflecting on the siege, General Bragg later recalled: "[W]e held [the enemy] at our mercy, and his destruction was only a matter of time." But time was not on Bragg's side. In Washington, President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and Army Chief of Staff Henry Halleck worked around the clock to save the Army of the Cumberland.
Reinforcements from Grant's Army of the Tennessee, led by General William T. Sherman, were also on the move from Mississippi toward Chattanooga. Lincoln assigned Gen. Joseph Hooker to lead two corps from the Army of the Potomac in Virginia to Chattanooga. In a feat of extraordinary logistics, the fully-equipped corps made the 1,233-mile trip by rail from Culpeper, VA to Bridgeport, Ala., in just 11 days.
Washington also made a bold leadership change. It put energetic Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in charge of all Union forces in the region (with Sherman stepping into his shoes as commander of the Army of the Tennessee). With Washington's blessing, Grant's first act was to replace the demoralized head of the Army of the Cumberland, General Rosecrans, with General Thomas. |