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

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[281] having discharged their loads, and retaining on board only a few men of the crew, have promptly returned to the right bank to take more passengers. Thus Morgan Smith's division was soon collected on the opposite shore. The pontonniers likewise have set to work; twenty-five boats, which with the floor-sections were following Sherman, are placed in position and furnish the means of establishing immediately the first section of the bridge. It was a difficult work, for on the Tennessee River floated uprooted trees, which, driven on the opposite bank, threatened at every moment to sever the moorings. It was necessary to raise the anchors, and to maintain the boats in their positions they had to be made fast to the trunks of old trees growing on the shore. Thus, a free passage was left for the strongest part of the current. At five o'clock in the morning the work of constructing the bridge was begun simultaneously at both ends by taking off, one after another, the boats required, while the others continued to ply backward and forward to transport General John E. Smith's division after the division of his namesake. But a certain number of the boats remain idle. Swollen by the rains, the Tennessee is more than four hundred yards wide and the Chickamauga nearly sixty. The pontonniers could build but one bridge, that over the former river, the one hundred and forty-one boats not being sufficient to carry one thousand yards of flooring.

At the break of day eight thousand infantry are gathered on the left bank: they can defy the attacks of the enemy. But the latter has given no sign of life since the sentinels scattered on the bank have retired before Giles Smith. The construction of the bridge over the Chickamauga is progressing. The two sections of the bridge over the Tennessee are approaching each other, but as the number of available boats was diminishing, the passage would have been almost interrupted without the aid afforded by the steamer Dunbar. This vessel, repaired by the direction of General W. F. Smith, was engaged throughout the night in transporting from one shore to the other a number of horses detached from Sherman's artillery and intended for a portion of the guns belonging to Thomas. This work, rendered necessary by the condition of the Chattanooga bridge, damaged by the freshets, was finished early in the morning, when the Dunbar immediately