Those who remained in Chattanooga described this combat as the most magnificent one of the grand panorama of war which the various battles of Chattanooga proved to be. General Meigs has graphically described it at a moment when it was just dark enough to see the flash of the muskets, and still light enough to distinguish the general outline of the contending masses. The mountain was lit up by the fires of the men in the second line, and the flash of the musketry and artillery. An unearthly noise rose from the mountain, as if the old monster was groaning with the punishment the pigmy combatants inflicted upon him as well as upon each other, and during it all the great guns on the summit continued, as in rage, to bellow defiance at the smaller guns in our forts on the other side of the river, which, with lighter tone and more rapidly, as if mocking the imbecility of its giant enemy, continued to fire till the day roared itself into darkness. General M. C. Meigs has given the combat its name of the "battle above the clouds." It is true that Hooker fought above the clouds, but more than this, he manufactured the clouds that he might fight above them. During the night before the engagement a slight, misty rain had fallen, and when the sun rose, cold and dull, next morning, a fog hung over the river and enveloped the mountain, serving as a convenient mask to Hooker's movements. As the day advanced, however, the fog began to lift, and was fast disappearing, when the battle on the west side of the mountain began to rage heavily. Then the smoke of Hooker's musketry and artillery began to mingle with the mist and clouds; they grew heavy again, and settled down close upon the mountain, so that at one time the clouds thus formed hid the contending forces from the view of those in the valley, and Hooker literally fought the battle above clouds of his own making. The "inspiring presence" with which Hooker is endowed, and to which I have alluded, has had many illustrations. McClellan, with whom Hooker was no favorite, acknowledged that the loss of Hooker's presence by wounds, during the battle of Antietam, cost him many valuable fruits of that conflict. While such an acknowledgment is disgraceful to McClellan, who could thus admit that the absence of one corps commander out of five could lose him a battle, it is highly complimentary to Hooker, who appears, by the way, to have been the only officer at Antietam who was fighting for any definite object, any vital or key-point of the field.