There was a certain work to do, which might as well have been begun on the 1st of June as the 24th. Had it been begun on the first of these dates, Bragg's army might, in all probability, have been destroyed. As it was, the heavy rains intervened and saved him from pursuit.

With his military reputation thus strengthened, General Garfield went with his chief into the battle of Chickamauga. His influence over Rosecrans h: 1 by this time become almost supreme. His clear and comprehensive mind grasped every detail, and his opinions were invariably consulted on all important questions. He wrote many orders upon his own judgment, submitting them to Rosecrans for approval or alteration. On the field of Chickamauga, he wrote every order except one, and that one was the fatal order to General Wood which ruined Rosecrans' right wing and lost the battle. The order from Rosecrans to Wood, as the latter interpreted it, required him to move his command behind another division, leaving a wide gap in the line of McCook's corps, which held the right. Wood says that he knew this move would be fatal, but it was ordered and he felt impelled to execute it. Longstreet saw *e blunder, hurled Hood's division into the gap, and within an hour McCook's corps was broken and streaming, a disorganized mob of men, back to Chattanooga. Trying vainly to check the tide of retreat, General Garfield was swept with his yond Rossville. But the chief of concede that defeat had been entire,

chief back bestaff could not

He heard the

roar of Thomas' guns on the left, and gained permission of Rosecrans to go round to that quarter and find the army of the Cumberland. While the commander busied himself with preparing a refuge at Chattanooga for his routed army, his chief of staff went back, accompanied only by a staff officer and a few orderlies, to find whatever part of the army still held its ground, and save what there was left. It was a perilous ride. Long before he reached Thomas one of his orderlies was killed. Almost alone he pushed on over the obstructed road, through pursuers and pursued, found the heroic Thomas encircled by fire, but still firm, told him of the disaster on the right, and explained how he could withdraw his right wing and fix it upon a new line to meet Longstreet's column, which had turned the right of Thomas' position and was marching in heavy column upon his rear. The movement was made just in time; but Thomas' line. was too short, it would not reach to the base of the mountain. Longstreet saw the gap, drove his column into it and would have struck Thomas' line fatally in the rear, but in that critical moment General Gordon Granger came up with Steadman's division, which moved in heavy column, threw itself upon Longstreet, and after a terrific struggle, drove him back. The dead and wounded lay in heaps where those two columns met, but the army of General Thomas was saved. As night closed in upon the heroic army of the Cumberland, Generals Garfield and Granger, on foot and enveloped in smoke, directed the loading and pointing of a battery of Napoleon guns, whose

flash, as they thundered after the retreating column of the assailants, was the last light that shown upon the battle field of Chickamauga. The struggle was over, and the rebels retired repulsed. Had the two shattered corps of McCook and Crittenden that night been brought upon the field and enabled Thomas to hold his ground, there might have been a second day to that battle which would have changed its complexion in history.

The battle of Chickamauga practically closed General Garfield's military career. About four weeks after the engagement he was sent by Rosecrans to Washington to report minutely to the President and the War Department the position, deeds, resources, and capabilities of the army at Chattanooga. He went, had frequent lengthy interviews with the President and Secretary Stanton, and thus, point by point, made a most thorough and satisfactory report. Meanwhile, General Garfield had been promoted to a major-generalship of volunteers for gallant and meritorious services at the battle of Chickamauga,' to take rank from the 19th of September, 1863. Rosecrans had been removed from the command of the army at Chattanooga and General Grant appointed to his place.

General Garfield was now called to a new field of duty. In October of the year previous, while the Forty-Second was retreating from Cumberland Gap, the people of the Nineteenth Congressional District of Ohio had elected him as their representative to the Thirty-Eighth Congress.