"Since I saw you this morning," he said, addressing me, "I have got my troops together again. They are in good spirits, and ready for another fight. I have no hesitation in saying to you"--at this moment he saw Assistant Secretary of War Dana at the other end of the table, and would have liked to stop, but had gone too far, and so he added, "and I have no hesitation in saying to _you_, Mr. Dana, that this battle has been lost because we had no supreme head to the army on the field to direct it." Nothing was ever truer than this. All that was at one time needed to have secured us a great victory was to have had some one to tell Crittenden that it was his manifest duty to charge with Thomas. The next day was too late; Longstreet was then across the river; McCook was routed; he, Crittenden, and Rosecrans were in Chattanooga (the latter had already telegraphed to Washington that his army was totally defeated and routed); and all that Thomas could hope to do with his remnant of the army was to cover the retreat. This he was enabled to do by the timely appearance of the reserve corps and its two very able leaders, Granger and Steedman. Granger was the character, Steedman the remarkable man of these two, and both such men as Thomas needed in his emergency. They brought with them the reserve corps of twenty-five thousand men--fifteen thousand of them enlisted men, the other ten thousand were Steedman and Granger themselves. They were each men in whom their troops had implicit confidence, and this doubled their strength, or rather was their strength, for no army can be said to have any strength if it has not confidence in its leaders. [Illustration: GORDON GRANGER.]