His premonitions had ample cause. Bragg as he fell back slowly had
gathered new forces. Rosecrans did not yet know it, but the army before
him was the most powerful that the South ever assembled in the West.
Polk and Cleburne and Breckinridge and Forrest and Fighting Joe Wheeler
and a whole long roll of famous Southern generals were there. Nor had
the vigilant eyes of the Confederacy in the East failed to note the
situation.
Just as the armies were coming into touch a division of the Army of
Northern Virginia was passing by train over the mountains. It was led
by a thick-bearded, powerful man, no less a general than the renowned
Longstreet, sent to help Bragg. The veterans of the Army of Northern
Virginia would swell Bragg's ranks, and the great army, turning a
sanguine face northward, was eager for Rosecrans to come on. The
Southern force would number more than ninety thousand men, more numerous
than ever before or afterward in the West.
It was now late in September, the eve of the eighteenth, and Dick and his
comrades lay near the little creek with the rhythmical name, Chickamauga.
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