From April 1864 until the end of the war, Horace Porter served as lieutenant colonel attached to Grant's staff. He accompanied him into battle in the Wilderness, Cold Harbor and Petersburg campaigns and was there at the courthouse at Appomattox. His portrait of his two years with Grant has emerged as the most readable first-hand account we have of the General in action.
Two and a half months after the Confederate Army's drive into Union territory had been checked by the Federals at Gettysburg, the two armies met near Chattanooga, Tennessee, to dispute control of the west. Here they locked in the bloody battle of Chickamauga, one of the most hotly contested engagements of American history, and one of the most extraordinary.
For two days—September 19 and 20, 1863—125,000 men struggled for the prize city of Chattanooga in terrain more like a jungle than a battlefield. All regarded the battle as decisive. On its outcome depended, for the South, the fate of Atlanta and all Georgia. For the North, it promised the one opportunity to cut the Confederacy through the middle and possibly end the war before Christmas. For the courage they displayed, these men surpassed any in the wars of western civilization.
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