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army; the city was then fortified so that it could be taken only by a regular siege; this was forthwith commenced by Bragg. 10 Before the battle of Chickamauga, Grant had been ordered to send reënforcements to Rosecrans from Vicksburg, but it had taken a week for the despatch to reach him and although two divisions were now on the way and two others were getting ready to move, all of them, under Sherman’s command, word to this effect had not reached Washington. Telegrams from Rosecrans to the President and from Dana to Stanton, urging the necessity of immediate reënforcements to hold Chattanooga and the Tennessee line, were received late in the evening of September 23; and Stanton, impressed with the need of prompt action, summoned a midnight conference. Lincoln, to whom John Hay brought the request at his summer abode, the Soldiers’ Home, bestrode his horse and took his way this moonlight night to the War Department, where in addition to the Secretary and three of his subordinates, he met Halleck, Seward and Chase. Stanton proposed sending troops to Chattanooga from the Army of the Potomac; and while the President and Halleck were at first averse to this project, he was so earnest in advocating it that, with the support of Seward and Chase, he overbore their opposition; in the end, the council agreed that if Meade did not purpose an advance at once, the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps under Hooker should be sent to Rosecrans. After conferring with Meade, these 16,000 men were brought from Culpeper Court House, Virginia, to Washington by rail, there transferred to the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and carried via Bellaire, Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville and Nashville, to the Tennessee river. The time of transport, six days for the largest part of the force, showed for that period excellent work. 11

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