Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[59] point which opens or closes the entrance to the rich districts of the south. The southern branch follows the East Chickamauga Creek by Ringgold and the cut made between Taylor's Ridge and Oak Ridge. The centre of the network of routes that traverse the country to the eastward of Lookout Mountain is La Fayette, a town lying about twenty-five miles from Chattanooga and at an equal distance from Pigeon Mountain and Taylor's Ridge. The first of these routes are those leading to Ringgold, Dalton, Resaca, and the villages of Summerville and Broomton in the Chattooga Valley: the last two routes come together at Alpine and enter a little more to the west Winston's Gap. The other routes are the Stevens' Gap road, which crosses Pigeon Mountain through the pass at Dug Gap; the road leading to Frick's Gap and Trenton via Catlett's Gap in Pigeon Mountain and the head-waters of Pond Springs in McLemore's Cove; and, finally, the Chattanooga road. This last crosses West Chickamauga Creek at the ford of Gordon's Mills, and the extremity of Missionary Ridge through the pass at Rossville, where it meets with the Ringgold road. Several roads over which wagons can pass in summer connect, besides, La Fayette with the valley of McLemore's Cove. The most important on the south are the Sulphur Springs road by the pass of Bluebird Gap in Pigeon Mountain, and more to the northward the Crawfish Springs road through a pass near Catlett's Gap. The scarcity of the roads, the lack of water, and the altitude of the defiles made the passage across Raccoon Mountain and Lookout Mountain very difficult; but it was necessary to cross them so as to reach McLemore's Cove, for it was only through that way they could approach Chattanooga. This plan was adopted by Rosecrans, notwithstanding its difficulties. It gave him, to procure supplies of provisions, the use of the railway as far as Bridgeport, which did away with the first obstacle—that is to say, the Cumberland plateau. The adoption of this plan enabled him also to threaten the communications of the enemy, whom he could force to leave the shelter of the Chattanooga gorges to come and defend Dalton. The want of a railway and the danger of exposing the base of operations of the army precluded the possibility of a more extended flanking movement—as far as Gadsden, for instance—which would have avoided the double chain of mountains.