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4 “A Kind Providence Has Been with Us All Along”: Charles and the Western Theater, 1863–Early 1864 The fall of 1863 brought with it great hope for Charles Henry Howard as he moved with the XI Corps to the Western Theater. Perhaps it was his brother, Otis, who put it best when he stated, “I feel that I was sent out here for some wise and good purpose.”1 There was reason to be optimistic, for things could not have gotten much worse for the Howard brothers and for that matter the entire XI Corps. After the physical and mental defeat of the XI Corps at Chancellorsville and the lackluster performance put forth by the corps at Gettysburg, perhaps a new setting was exactly what was called for to boost the morale of the unit—from corps commander on down. Therefore, when the XI and XII Corps transferred to the Western Theater, men within the ranks viewed it favorably as it was commonly believed that the Western Theater brought with it less of the “politics ” associated with an army in such close proximity to the nation’s capital. Charles said so much when he bluntly stated, “I am happy and I trust thankful that we are dealing with men now who are superior to petty jealousy and have motives higher even than self-aggrandizement.”2 Charles reiterated this notion in a March 1864 letter when he remarked, “There is less of ‘ jealousy and petty ambition’ in the West, I think, than there was in the Army of the Potomac.”3 Furthermore, there was a belief that the close and critical eye of the nation’s press on the Army of the Potomac provided further scrutiny to the men of the XI Corps under Oliver Otis Howard’s command—a level of analysis that only exacerbated the situation. Thus, while the movement west came with high expectations , the men surely welcomed the respite from the ever-watchful eyes of Washington. “A Kind Providence Has Been with Us All Along” 114 The transfer of the two corps to the Western Theater could not have come at a better time for Union forces in the West. William Rosecrans’s Union Army of the Cumberland had just met Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee at the battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. A decisive Union defeat that could have easily turned into a rout without the heroics of the “Rock of Chickamauga,” George Thomas, it forced the Union Army back to the confines of Chattanooga, where Bragg laid in wait and prepared for a siege of the city. The encirclement of the Union Army at Chattanooga had virtually cut off supplies to the beleaguered force of the Army of the Cumberland. Additional manpower was required in an effort to release the hold on the city and the crucial supply line. In one of the greatest wartime transportation feats to date, the XI and XII Corps (some twenty thousand men) traveled 1,233 miles in eleven days. Such a momentous endeavor by nineteenth-century standards proved successful because of the coordination of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton with the presidents of all the major rail lines. General Ulysses Grant arrived in Chattanooga shortly thereafter and took command of the situation. Grant immediately communicated with William Sherman and his Army of the Tennessee, imploring him to make haste and move to Chattanooga from his position in Memphis to assist in the breakout. Grant’s promotion to command of the Military Division of the Mississippi led to the command of the Army of the Tennessee falling to William Sherman.4 With the arrival of the XI and XII Corps, the opening of a supply line to Union forces in Chattanooga took precedence. The infamous “cracker line,” as it became known, proved crucial in the relief of the soldiers at Chattanooga from a steady diet of “Lincoln’s crackers,” or hardtack. The new plan, devised by William “Baldy” Smith, would reduce the supply-base distance from sixty miles down to twenty-seven, using a variety of land, water, and pontoon bridge travel.5 In order for the movement to be successful , it called for a bold assault upon the Confederate-controlled Brown’s Ferry—the plan being that once the landing was under Union control, fifty pontoon bridges could be brought down to connect to the other bank of the Tennessee River and enable supplies and men to be brought into Chattanooga on the northern side...

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