grand division, under the supreme command of General Grant, and what
turned out to be of almost equal importance was the fact that Brigadier
General William F. Smith was relieved from service in West Virginia,
where he had been recently assigned to duty, and sent to contribute his
part towards strengthening the national grasp upon the vast region of
which Chattanooga was justly considered the strategic center.

Whatever the government at that time may have thought of him as a
commander of troops, it is certain that it was willing to recognize and
use his experience and marked intellectual resources as an engineer
officer to their fullest extent. As it turned out, it could not have
paid him a greater compliment, nor given him a better opportunity for
distinction. His fame had gone before him, and on his arrival at
Chattanooga, although he preferred the command of troops, he was
assigned at once to duty as Chief Engineer of the Department and Army
of the Cumberland. Fortunately this gave him the control, not only of
the engineer troops and materials, and the engineer operations of that
army, but carried with it the right and duty of knowing the army's
condition and requirements as well as all the plans which might be
considered for extricating it from the extraordinary perils and
difficulties which surrounded it.

Although efforts have been made at various times and by various
writers, to minimize these perils and difficulties, it cannot be denied
that the situation of that army was at that epoch an exceedingly grave
one. It had been rudely checked, if not completely beaten, in one of
the most desperate and bloody battles of the war, and shut up in
Chattanooga by Bragg's army on the south, and by an almost impassable
mountain region on the north and west. Its communication by rail with
its secondary base at Bridgeport, and with its primary base at