On the 24th of August I returned to Harrison's Landing with my regiment and two 10-pound rifled guns of Lilly's Indiana Battery, under a Lieutenant. He was a volunteer officer, but a studious one, and had mastered the science of artillery firing. I placed the two guns on the bluff on our side of the river, and ordered the Lieutenant to open fire at the Confederate fort, probably about two miles away, when I rode on to the bank of the river, opposite the Confederate fort, where I could plainly see the effect of the artillery firing. I waited an hour for the guns to open, but they didn't, and I rode back to see about it. He had cut down some trees to get a plain view of the Confederate fort, dug holes for the trails of the guns, and there they stood, pointing at the sky, and the Lieutenant stood there steadily eyeing the Confederate fort, with its three guns, en barbette, a brass gun in the center and a steel gun each side of it. I yelled at him to know why he didn't fire, and he replied, without taking his eyes from the fort, "I am waiting for some one to stand up on the parapet of the fort; I have an instrument here (a flat piece of brass full of holes of different sizes) by which I can tell the exact distance in yards if some one will stand up; with another instrument I know the elevation, just how much lower that fort is than where my guns stand." I replied, "Perhaps no soldier will ever stand up," and he answered, "Oh, yes, there will," and almost immediately said, "There. I have got it," and while he kneeled upon the ground to figure out the problem, and cut his shells, and load his guns, I dismounted and went down the bluff immediately in front of his guns until I found a place from which I could plainly see the Confederate fort, and, adjusting my field glass, hoped to see the effect of his shots; but I was enveloped in smoke when he fired, and could see nothing. But we learned the effect of his scientific firing a few days afterward when we captured a copy of the Daily Chattanooga Rebel, printed on wall paper, Henry Watterson, now the distinguished editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, publisher, that said the Yankee artillery at Harrison's Landing at the first fire dismounted the brass gun in the Confederate fort, and killed four men. No one showed himself about that fort afterwards, and, although he continued firing, more to make a noise and worry Bragg at Chattanooga than anything else, the Confederates made no attempt to reply to our artillery. Those two shots by him, scientifically fired, after he knew the elevation and distance, hit the mark and did the business. Roosevelt says, "It is the shots that hit that count;" that is true. One center shot is worth forty shot at random. That is why Dewey, in Manilla Bay, sunk the Spanish fleet. I spent several days, a few years ago, at Fortress Monroe, in Virginia, and all the forenoon of each day listened to the firing of heavy guns by the battleships of our navy at targets, when it cost five hundred dollars for every shot fired. The absolute accuracy of scientific firing is an astonishment. I have seen a man fire sixteen shots at a target one even mile away, and hit the bull's eye every shot, and he declared that he could hit it every time for a hundred shots. Our navy is made up of volunteers; it is expensive to educate them, but they make the best gunners in the world, and if we keep a navy at all, it is the greatest economy to keep it always in a state of the highest efficiency.
Our country has, and always will, depend upon patriotic volunteers in time of need. I read in an English magazine that an Englishman on one of Dewey's ships in Manilla Bay noticed that the gunner's lips moved as if he was saying something after each shot. He crowded up close to him, and every time the gun was fired the gunner said "Cash." The Englishman told the captain of the ship about it, who said the explanation was easy – that gunner before he enlisted in the navy was a dry-goods clerk, and always said "Cash" when a transaction was completed. The soldiers who saved the Republic were citizen soldiers, the best soldiery in the world, and it will always be so while the Republic shall endure.
On September 4th, 1863, my regiment was ordered to join Wilder, north of Chattanooga, and on reporting to Wilder I found that my regiment was ordered to report to General Thomas to be used by General Rosecrans for scouting purposes, and immediately ascended to the top of Walden's Ridge, a continuation of Lookout Mountain, on the north side of the Tennessee River, and from that elevation I looked for hours with my field glass into the deserted streets of Chattanooga, and became convinced that Bragg had evacuated that Confederate stronghold. Crossing the Tennessee River on the pontoons at Bridgeport, I reported to General Thomas, and in person to General Rosecrans at Trenton, twenty miles from Chattanooga, on the west side of Lookout Mountain, on the forenoon of September 8th, 1863, and gave General Rosecrans my reason for believing that Chattanooga had been evacuated by Bragg, and nothing left there but his cavalry to curtain his movements. I told General Rosecrans I had found a cow-path on the west side of Lookout Mountain, four miles from its head, that cattle could go up onto the mountain, and offered to send a body of the Ninety-Second men onto the mountain by that cow-path, and drive the enemy's cavalry from off the mountain, demonstrating that Chattanooga was evacuated, and by the order of General Rosecrans I did so, and again reported to him in person at Trenton about 9 o'clock on the evening of September 8th, 1863, and was ordered by him to take the advance into Chattanooga on the morning of the 9th of September, 1863. Crossing the nose of the mountain on the Nashville road early on the morning of September 9th, I found the enemy's cavalry holding the road, and my regiment was driving them over the mountain when Wilder's Brigade battery from Moccasin Point on the north side of the Tennessee began throwing its shells onto the mountain, enfilading my line of skirmishers, and I was compelled to fall back. It was decidedly disagreeable to be fired upon by the artillery of the brigade to which my regiment belonged. How to communicate with Wilder and stop that firing was a difficult problem, and I thought the only way to do so would be to have some one swim the river; but that would occasion long delay. A little boy, a stranger to me, said he had served in the signal corps, and could send a message by tying his handkerchief to two hazel sticks, and when he was ready, standing on a jutting rock where he could be seen by Wilder's men across the river, he inquired what message, and I said, "Ninety-Second Illinois," and he had not long been waving his flag, spelling out the words, when Wilder's men on the north side of the river set up a great cheer, and, knowing they would no longer fire upon us, we pressed forward, driving the Confederates before us and off the mountain, and at 10 o'clock a.m. the flag of the Ninety-Second Illinois Volunteers was floating from the top of the Crutchfield House, the first Union flag to float in Chattanooga since Bragg's army occupied that place.