In late June 1863, Union Major General William S. Rosecrans launched a bold, swift offensive from Murfreesboro to drive Confederate General Braxton Bragg's 43,000-man Army of Tennessee from its entrenchments at Shelbyville and Wartrace, capture Chattanooga, and possibly force the Confederates out of Tennessee. Rosecrans divided his 70,000-strong Army of the Cumberland into four independent columns that advanced toward Manchester, Shelbyville, and the roads leading toward Chattanooga, and by July 4 the Confederate retreat to Chattanooga had left nearly all of Tennessee in Union hands. As part of these operations, when Bragg withdrew to Tullahoma on June 28, Rosecrans sent the mounted brigade of Colonel John T. Wilder across the rain-swollen Elk River near Pelham to destroy the railroad bridge and tracks between Decherd and Cowan. Wilder's men destroyed about 300 yards of track and some facilities at Decherd, scattered a small Confederate garrison, then moved up the Cumberland Plateau as Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler pursued them. The brigade stopped at University Heights, tore up track around Tracy City, and was then pursued down the plateau by Forrest's cavalry; overall, Wilder's raid was viewed as a failure. The campaign also intersected with the later memory of the war through Charles Quintard, an Episcopalian minister who served as chaplain in Polk's Corps of the Army of Tennessee, became Bishop of Tennessee after the war, and supported the University of the South. In a memoir published posthumously in 1905, Quintard recast the conflict as a holy crusade centered on Christian character, overlooking many of the war's misdeeds, while also recalling that in Nashville after the war he aided sick and dying Union soldiers and received a purse of gold from grateful Federal officers.