Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 8.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[469] duty of covering the movements and bringing up the rear of the right wing as it withdrew to Chickamauga Station. Cleburne strengthened his skirmishers and made all the display of force practicable. At the proper time the artillery was withdrawn and started, then the infantry line in turn, and the pickets were left under charge of a competent staff officer, with instructions to withdraw them at a stated hour, which was successfully accomplished without the loss of a man. Later the bridge across the Chickamauga was filled with rails and fired, and Cleburne's division took up its sorrowful march to the railroad, which was reached at a late hour.

The scene of disorder and demoralization at the station beggars description; it can only be realized by one who has seen a beaten army. Regiments were separated from brigades, brigades from their divisions, and in a large part of the army organization was apparently destroyed. The staff officers of the various commands spent the remainder of the night in endeavoring to bring order out of chaos.

In a biographic sketch of Cleburne General Hardee thus speaks of this engagement (see “The Irish in America,” page 645):

Cleburne's position on the right was most insecure, from its liability to be turned. He maintained it with his accustomed ability, and upon the repulse of the last assault directed in person a counter charge, which effected the capture of a large number of prisoners and several stands of colors. The assailants gave up the contest and withdrew from our front. But while the cheers of victory raised on the right were extending down the line the left of the army had been carried by assault and the day was lost. All that now remained to the victorious right was to cover the retreat of the army. This it did successfully. If the right, instead of the left, had been carried it would have given the enemy possession of the only line of retreat, and no organized body of the Confederate army could have escaped. In the gloom of night-fall Cleburne's division, the last to retire, sadly withdrew from the ground it had held so gallantly, and brought up the rear of the retiring army.

Before dawn on the morning of the 26th General Bragg put the infantry of the army in motion towards Dalton, leaving the trains and artillery to follow, and Cleburne to guard the rear. His division, in tact from the disasters of the 24th and 25th, was perhaps the only one in the army to which that responsibility could have been safely entrusted. The trains were toiling forward over a single narrow road, the artillery wheels cutting into the soft mud up to the axles, and requiring heavy details to prize them out, and the rear wagon was still in sight when the enemy, flushed with victory and pressing forward in energetic pursuit,