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 24 “They Called It a Demonstration” T h e Fi g h t f o r D u g G a p, M a y 8 , 1 8 6 4 Across the Tennessee The first day’s march was uncomfortably warm, and heavy traffic on the road forced many stops and starts, which for boys standing in place saddled with heavy packs was a torture. Not a single soldier fell out this time, and they arrived at Shell Mound, Tennessee, with every boy in the Twenty-Ninth “feeling finely.” After camp chores were finished, the Boys got up a game of ball down on the river flats, while others hiked up to Nickajack Cave for a look-see.1 The last time Geary had been here, it had been with his now deceased son. He had watched Eddie and his chums launch a rowboat on a subterranean lake and disappear beneath the mountain. Eddie’s smile had been so bright that it lit up the gloomy vault. The memory of that excursion with his lost boy was too much, and Geary hung back.2 Sgt. Nathan Parmater and some of the others passed through the cave’s gigantic lobby and squeezed through chutes that dropped far down into the earth.3 They picked up the pace the next day, marching over the road they’d built last fall, then down into the Wauhatchie valley, where Geary dismounted and lingered at the spot where Eddie had died.4 They wound around the base of Lookout Mountain and kept going through the dusk until thousands of campfires in Chattanooga came into view. The Eleventh and Twelfth Corps had been combined to form the Twentieth Corps, Army of the Cumberland. Col. Adolph Buschbeck’s brigade of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey soldiers had marched to this point to rendezvous with them, and for the first time in many months, the White Star Division was assembled in one place.5 Charles Candy commanded the First Brigade, containing the regiments that had marched and fought side by side since Cedar Mountain: the Fifth, Seventh, Twenty-Ninth, and Sixty-Sixth Regiments of Ohioans, and the Twenty-Eighth and 147th Pennsylvania Infantries. Col. David Ireland, who had saluted the Twenty-Ninth’s charge to the breastworks at Culp’s Hill, commanded the Third Brigade of Geary’s division. To the boys of the Twenty-Ninth Ohio, this latest change in affiliation mattered little, except it required every boy who expected an uninterrupted supply of letters and packages to advise home of his new address: 20th AC, Army of the Cumberland, 2nd Div., 1st. Brig. They were on the road to Ringgold long before sunrise, up and over Missionary Ridge, and across Chattanooga Creek. The sense of urgency was increasing with every mile, along with the volume of troops clogging the few roads that traversed these valleys. The countryside was mostly wild, except for occasional clearings in which sat small, rough farms and dooryard gardens showing early peas, corn t h e f i g h t f o r d u g g a p , m ay 8 , 1 8 6 4 305 spikes, and flowers. The whole of the Twentieth Corps was up now. The Giddings Boys were shunted off to the side of the road to allow their corps commander, Joe Hooker, and his escort to tear past.6 The trees were leafing out fast, softening the sharp edges of the giant rock slabs that tilted out from the mountainsides behind them.7 They marched across the battlefield of Chickamauga, where ground creepers reached for the bones of the imperfectly buried. Every soldier took note of the way spring came on in this region: abrupt and irrepressible. White petals sifted down into drifts beneath every fruit tree and flowering shrub. General Geary saw the resurgence of life in the Georgia springtime, and paired a dark observation with his lyrical description, “All nature seems to be inclined to be peaceful, and to multiply and replenish the earth, each after its kind, and man alone is making preparations for the destruction of his race.”8 The prodigious preparations that had been made for this campaign were becoming more apparent as they hurried along to get to their small place in this immense enterprise. They were started on their third spring campaign since coming into this war, but this one was different. This one represented maybe not the exact end, but the beginning of the end. Gen...

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