It seems that it was not generally known that the Ninth Corps had arrived in the valley. The rebels attempted to lay down a pontoon bridge at Hough's Ferry, a short distance below Loudon. The troops sent to oppose the crossing were from both the Ninth and Twenty-third Corps. The enemy was not a little surprised at the successful resistance which our troops made to his advance. He was held all day from advancing from the river, and the opinion was that Longstreet would be defeated on the morrow. General Grant had requested General Burnside to maintain himself for a short time, until he, Grant, could fight the battle of Missionary Ridge; then he would promptly send him assistance. General Burnside, it seems, was so confident that he could hold his own with Longstreet, that he proposed to allow Longstreet to cross the Tennessee so that it would not be possible for him to return to General Bragg in time to aid him in the coming fight.
So, on the night of the 14th, it was decided to fall back, and on the 15th General Burnside gave orders to retreat slowly as far as Lenoir's. Our battery remained in camp all this time, ready to move. It was not until 5 P. M., on the 15th, that we began to move on the main road to Campbell's station. This night march was the most horrid of all my nearly four years' experience in the United States Army. Language will fail to do it justice. I was chief of the left section and brought up the rear, or was supposed to. It had rained for twenty-four hours and the frost was about all out of the ground. The soil was a rich clay, two or three feet in depth. Our horses were not very strong, and after they had dragged the guns and caissons about a mile, their strength was gone.
I was instructed to retreat slowly and in case our rear guard, composed of infantry and cavalry, should find it necessary to make a stand, I was to go into battery. The right and center sections had gone far ahead of me, as the road was not cut up so bad for them, and it literally seemed, in the language of the poet Horace, that the "Devil would take the hindmost." After the first mile we came to a long, deep bed of sticky mud. I rode in advance, and found that about a half mile ahead there was a little knoll of cleared land, comparatively dry, and skirted by a high, worm fence of good oak rails. So I went back and ordered an advance. By pushing hard, we were able to move our tired teams. Before we had made 200 yards, we were stalled. Then we all, non-commissioned officers, privates and myself, put our shoulders to the wheels and made another 200 yards. We were all wet inside by sweat and outside by mud and water. Never have I seen men do better. At last, somehow, near morning, we reached the knoll, a mile and a half from camp, physically used up. The caissons in front with guns to the rear, we drew up by the roadside and replenished the smouldering fires with rails. Our horses, poor things, were reeling, scarcely able to stand under the weight of their harness.