A West Point graduate, General William Rosecrans was 43 years old when he fought at Chickamauga. In September 1863 he had an unblemished record of success which had begun with a minor victory over Lee at Rich Mountain in western Virginia. Thereafter he had been transferred west and fought successfully at Iuka and Corinth. Promoted to command the Army of the Cumberland, he became very popular with his men who called him ‘Old Rosy’. At Murfreesboro his tenacity had earned him victory over Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. Most of his army were veterans of that battle.
The Army of the Cumberland comprised three line and one reserve corps. Major General George H. Thomas commanded the army’s largest formation, the four-division XIV Corps with some 23,000 effectives. Major Generals Alexander McCook and Thomas Crittenden commanded XX and XXI Corps, respectively. Each corps had three divisions, McCook’s with 13,000 and Crittenden’s with 12,000 men. All the divisions of these three corps had three brigades. Major General Gordon Granger led the Reserve Corps, which was really an oversized division, with 5,000 men. The army’s cavalry corps screened the flanks and did not participate in the battle. Excluding several detached brigades, the army had some 53,000 effective infantry and gunners to fight at Chickamauga.
A 43-year-old West Point graduate, William S. Rosecrans was very popular with his men who called him ‘Old Rosy’. He commanded at Murfreesboro where his tenacity earned him victory over Bragg. An excellent strategist, personally brave, reputed to be a heavy drinker and known to be heartily profane, his excitable personality impaired his battlefield ability. (Library of Congress)
Rosecrans’ army began the campaign in fine fettle. The army’s medical director had implemented a new diet and new cooking methods and the men’s health improved dramatically. Toiling through the rugged Tennessee and north Georgia terrain required immense stamina. (Tennessee State Library)
These two figures are typical of the appearance of Union Infantry in the field by the late summer of 1863. Long gone are the parade ground spit and polish; the determining factor is now purely practicality. The line officers are dressed little better than the rankers. The Second Lieutenant (left) has a privately-made copy of the issue fatigue blouse which has obviously seen better times, and his shabby appearance is similar to that of the Private alongside him. (Ronald B. Volstad)
With the exception of a trio of Pennsylvanian units, the army’s regiments hailed from the mid-and north-west states of the Union. There was no effort to brigade the regiments according to state. Typically the soldiers were farmers or mechanics. Their ranks included far fewer immigrants than the eastern army’s. German immigrants to the Midwest did compose several regiments. The 9th Ohio Regiment, for example, was known as the ‘Prussian’ regiment. Its men demonstrated the highest devotion to their new country, losing more than half their numbers, the second heaviest regimental loss, at the battle. Scandinavian immigrants composed the 15th Wisconsin. Colonel Heg died at Chickamauga while leading this ‘Scandinavian’ regiment.
Most soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland carried some version of a rifled musket into battle. A few fortunate companies and the entire crack 21st Ohio carried the five-chambered Colt revolving rifle. Wilder’s ‘Lightning Brigade’ and the 39th Indiana Regiment possessed Spencer seven-shot repeating rifles and fought as mounted infantry.
King’s US regulars gave Rosecrans a superb brigade as indicated by this account: ‘The regulars charged across a wide, open space and, without firing a shot – drove a superior force of the enemy. The Confederates retreated just in time to prevent us from using the bayonet – the almost invariable result of a bayonet charge pressed home.’ (National Archives)
The hard centre of Bragg’s army comprised those men who had fought with him nine months previously at Murfreesboro. Joining them were a variety of reinforcements. Preston’s 5,000-man division had never engaged in a large battle and included an entirely green brigade led by Archibald Gracie. Cheatham’s division from east Tennessee, Breckinridge and B. R. Johnson from Mississippi, regiments from various coastal com-mands, and Longstreet’s corps from Virginia joined the army prior to the battle. To accommodate these additions, Bragg organized his army into five infantry corps of two divisions each and one additional provisional division commanded by B. R. Johnson. Most divisions had three brigades.
Nominally, infantry uniform was dark-blue blouse and kepi and lightblue trousers. But western standards of dress were informal. At very least, most men(including those from the 44th Indiana seen here) discarded the kepi and wore some version of the slouch hat. (US Army Military History Institute)
Arriving at accurate comparative strength totals for either army is impossible. Each used a different system of counting, and many records are incomplete. One Confederate brigade, for example, carried into action 2,025 according to its commander Brigadier General Manigault. He mentions that this total excludes 67 soldiers assigned as wagon guards and the infirmary corps of 105 men. Other units included such detachments in their totals. Exclusive of Longstreet’s men, Bragg had 40,876 infantry and gunners at the battle. Long-street added five brigades with about 6,000 men. Like his adversary, Bragg had a cavalry corps screening his flank but it did not participate in the fight. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s 3,500 horse soldiers were present, however, and they served as extremely effective mounted infantry. In sum, Bragg had in excess of 50,000 men including 33 foot and four mounted brigades to oppose Rosecrans’ 53,000 men who formed 30 foot and one mounted infantry brigade.
Like their opponents, most soldiers in the Army of Tennessee carried a rifled musket, but the Confederates were inferior in all types of equipment. A typical regiment, the 47th Georgia, had separate companies armed with either rifles or muskets. Men of the 5th Tennessee replaced their muskets with Enfields abandoned on the field by the enemy. After the battle ordnance officers complained that the ammuntion manufactured by southern arsenals for the Enfield rifle was slightly oversized. This prevented the lubrication of the outside of the cartridge, standard practice for imported Enfield cartridges manufactured in Britain, and thus slowed down loading and increased the chance of fouling. The western Rebel dressed even more informally than his Yankee foe. Free-mantle described the men of Liddell’s brigade as ‘good sized, healthy, and well clothed’ without any uniformity of dress, wearing various shades of grey or brown and felt hats. They preferred their coarse homespun jackets and trousers to government issue uniforms. In contrast, many of Longstreet’s men received new grey uniforms during their trip west. The arrival of eastern troops stimulated much interest and mutual jealousy.
Confederate guerrillas, bushwackers and cavalry raiders were sure to try to interrupt an invader’s supply line. These enemies enjoyed detailed knowledge of the terrain and support from the civilian population. One of the most formidable of them, Nathan Forrest, explained: ‘I know the country perfectly . . . and am well acquainted with all the prominent planters . . . I also have officers in my command . . . who have rafted timber out of the [river] bottoms, and know every foot of ground.’ (Tennessee State Library)
The standard of marksmanship in both armies was quite high. A Tennessee private recalls a target shooting competition in which the mark was put some 500 yards’ distant. Every marksman hit it. The firing stirred a rabbit which began to run in panic. At a range of 250 yards a soldier shot the rabbit dead. During the battle they put their marksmanship to use. Officers in a Mississippi regiment told the men that they would have to move, because a Yankee sharpshooter was firing and ‘killing every time he shot’. A soldier volunteered to get him: ‘At first I could not see the man but could see the smoke of his gun, but he soon exposed himself to ram his gun, that was my chance and I fired at him about 125 yards, striking him under the left shoulder-blade.’ These were soldiers who could and did hit the man they aimed at when they raised their rifles and ‘pulled down’ at the target.
Yet the soldiers fired thousands of shots that missed. A Kentucky veteran explains, and also well describes the tactics of a fire fight: ‘While ninety per cent of these shots were being fired the men were lying flat on their faces and were overshooting each other when suddenly one or the other would spring to his feet and with a bound and a yell rush at a double-quick upon their foe, giving him time to fire one or at most two rounds when his ranks would be broken and compelled to retire.’ Whether in reserve or in the firing line, soldiers lay down to present smaller targets. If they remained in position for any length of time, they hastily gathered logs, rocks and fence rails to make breastworks for protection against enemy fire. Regimental battle accounts describe how a regiment would shift position and then send a detail back to the former position to carry forward the breastworks so that they could be reused.
Even more so than in Union armies. Confederate uniforms were a confused mixture of State- and Government-issued equipment combined with personal and looted items. Western theatre armies had even less uniformity than their relatives in the East. This particular ‘Reb’ is a Private in the 7th Florida Volunteer Infantry, part of Trigg’s Brigade of Preston’s Division. (Ronald B. Volstad)
The transfer of Longstreet’s Corps from Virginia to Tennessee was a bold attempt to regain the initiative. President Jefferson Davis said, ‘I can but hope . . . that with the large army which General Bragg commands he will recover by force the country out of which he seems to have been manoeuvred.’ (Tennessee State Library)
| Armaments of the Army of Tennessee in March 1863 | |
| Infantry | |
| Smooth-bore percussion muskets | 11,869 |
| Rifled arms of different calibres | 19,942 |
| Cavalry | |
| Smooth-bore percussion muskets | 1,363 |
| Rifles of different calibres | 4,649 |
| Carbines of different calibres and musketoons | 1,469 |
| Double-barrelled guns | 773 |
| Pistols (Colt’s pattern) | 1,566 |
| Pistols (percussion single-barrelled) | 42 |
| Field Artillery | |
| 12lb light guns | 16 |
| 6lb guns | 40 |
| 12lb howitzers | 40 |
| Rifled guns, calibre 3.8in* | 7 |
| Rifled guns calibre 3.68in* | 2 |
| Rifled guns, calibre 3.3in | 2 |
| Rifled guns, calibre 3in | 11 |
| Rifled guns, calibre 2.9in (Parrott) | 6 |
| Ellsworth’s breech-loading | 1 |
| * taken at Murfreesboro. | |
The departing Virginia troops took a 965-mile circuitous route through the Carolinas and Georgia. The railroad gauges were not uniform. At many points the rail lines did not connect, requiring the troops to detrain, proceed by foot, re-entrain and continue. Worn rails and overworked engines and cars limited train speed. Their arrival created quite a stir. A soldier in the 27th Mississippi recalls that they ‘passed in high glee, and said they had come to show us how they fought in Virginia’. (Library of Congress)
As in all battles, the waiting before the conflict began tried nerves the most. A Tennessee soldier wrote, ‘The 5th is not (as generals say) eager for the fray, that is a humbug, but willing and not afraid to fight . . . I expected I would be afraid but the firing soon brought on the old battle feeling.’ Officers on both sides noted how few straggled from the fight at Chickamauga. A Kentucky soldier spoke for most when he wrote, ‘The old veteran needs no one to tell him when a crisis is approaching, he instinctively . . . comprehends the meaning of these movements and nerves himself for the desperate work before him.’
Finally, in both armies an officer’s authority was directly related to his battlefield bravery. As one Confederate officer described it, ‘every atom of authority has to be purchased by a drop of your blood’. After two years of active service the citizen volunteers had become veterans and displayed thoroughly professional infantry tactics. To European eyes they did not look polished; Freemantle sniffed that Bragg’s men could not form a square on the parade ground, but they knew what they needed to know to survive in combat. They lay down whenever possible, whether in reserve positions or in the front line. They would get up to fire or charge, perform the passage of the lines while under fire, and most impressively, change front and dress ranks while charging at the double and being pelted with rifle and canister fire. They tended to become scattered after a charge and were thus vulnerable to counter-attack. This tendency imparted an ebb and flow to the tactics of a battle.
A description of a typical action, a change of formation under fire and a counter-attack, by the Federal 8th Kentucky exemplifies their skill: ‘The colonel ordered “On the right, into line, march!” . . . We executed this manoeuvre at the double-quick, with as much precision as we ever did on the drill-field. As soon as Rousseau’s men had cleared our front, our boys opened “fire at will”. When within sixty yards of the enemy, the order was given and repeated at the top of the voice of every captain: “Fix bayonets, charge!” When we were within twenty yards of the enemy they broke into a perfect rout. The Eighth Kentucky and Fifty-first Ohio boys kept up the charge, firing and re-loading as fast as expert hands could.’
The Army of Tennessee’s artillery arsenal which fought at Chickamauga amounted to 31 foot and three and a half cavalry batteries. All gunners in both armies rode into battle which gave the batteries good mobility. Most Rebel batteries had four artillery tubes manned by an average of 91 officers and men. The guns were a thoroughly mixed lot comprising everything from obsolete 61b smoothbores to modern 3in rifled guns. They included 12 and 241b howitzers, several of the latter mounted on 61b carriages so that the shock of repeated firing during the battle caused the carriage to collapse, and the ubiquitous 121b Napoleons. Confederate artillery ammunition was inferior, fuzes proved unreliable, shells failed to explode. The friction primers necessary to fire the guns were poorly made and generated complaints after the battle. Some divisions and corps organized the artillery into battalions, others assigned batteries directly to the infantry brigades. There were two army reserve artillery battalions as well.
Union artillery too comprised a mixed bag. A few regular army batteries had four field pieces, with one exception the rest had six each. The battery assigned to Wilder’s Brigade of mounted infantry, the 18th Indiana, included six 3in rifled guns and four mountain howitzers. No effort was made to arm a typical six-gun battery with uniform pieces. The smallest common denominator was the two-gun section. Some batteries had three sections armed with three different types of weapon, many had two sections of one type and one of another, while a few had all three sections using the same type of gun. Difficult to describe, it was even more difficult for those officers assigned the task of providing the neccessary variety of ammunition. Thirty Federal batteries engaged during the battle.
Because of the closed terrain around Chickamauga Creek, gunners found few opportunities to support effectively their infantry assaults let alone deploy their guns in any kind of grand battery. On the defensive, dangers abounded because the woods enabled infantry to approach undetected. Thus many batteries suffered the fate described by a soldier in the 19th Ohio: ‘We ran full upon the left flank of a Rebel battery heavily supported by infantry. Instantaneously our boys concentrated their fire upon this and with a shower of lead drove the Rebel gunners and their support from their pieces.’ Rendered immobile after having its horses shot down, the battery fell to the subsequent infantry charge.
| Union Artillery by Type Present on the field* | |
| 6lb smoothbore | 10 |
| 121b light | 16 |
| 12lb howitzer | 16 |
| 121b Napoleon | 46 |
| mountain howitzer | 4 |
| 3-inch rifled | 38 |
| 10lb Parrott | 28 |
| 61b James rifled | 32 |
| 24lb howitzer | 2 |
| Grand total | 192 |
| *Does not include guns serving with cavalry | |
This Lieutenant-Colonel and the two Privates who accompany him are typical of mid-war Confederate Artillery, although it is unusual to see an officer’s sash worn in the field. The Cannon is the 3 in, 10-pdr. ‘Parrott rifle’, quite possibly captured from Union troops. In the heavily wooded terrain at Chickamauga, this rifled piece would be no more effective than a smoothbore. (Ronald B. Volstad)
Cavalry tactics were similiar on both sides. The wooded, broken terrain made mounted charges rare. Typically troopers rode into battle, left their horses at some convenient place – one horseholder remained behind to hold his and three other horses – in Forrest’s cavalry the ratio was one to five – and performed as infantry skirmishers. They remained close to their horses so that they could quickly remount and retreat or pursue or transfer to another sector of the field. Observing some Confederate cavalry skirmishers, Freemantle commented that their horse management ‘was very pretty’.
Union ability, exemplified by the 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics, to build bridges and rail lines (here across the Tennessee River at Chattanooga) contributed immensely to Old Rosy’s capture of Chattanooga. (US Army Military History Institute)
Medical practice during the war has usually been portrayed as having been primitive. Although both armies had their share of unskilled surgeons and drunkards who bloodily plunged into frenzies of amputations, they also had many thoughtful practitioners who tried to provide the best possible care. The factor most hindering their efforts was ignorance of bacteriology. The brightest among them recognized some link between sanitation, both in camp and during surgery, and well-being. Medical personnel in the Army of the Cumberland appreciated the dangers posed by the overcrowding of wounded men and tried to alleviate conditions in this area. They realized the benefits of quick surgical intervention following a wound. Rosecrans’ medical director reported with sorrow that the retreat from the battlefield caused many with knee and ankle injuries to die unneccessarily because amputations had to be postponed until the wounded reached Chattanooga.
Mounted charges by Cavalry were a relatively rare occurence in the Civil War. It was far more usual for them to be employed as scouts, skirmishers, raiders or at best mounted infantry. In the broken terrain of the Chickamauga valley mounted engagements were even less likely but the fighting was as bitter as ever. (Ronald B. Volstad)
Much depended upon the vigilance of commanding officers. In Thomas’s well-managed corps, medical personnel inspected all regiments and batteries before campaigning began, to verify that they had abundant supplies of medicines and surgical instruments. In addition, the corps had a reserve supply consisting of ‘hospital tents, blankets, sheets, hair pillows, shirts, drawers, bed-sacks, surgical instruments, bandages, lint, mess-chests, concentrated milk and beef, liquor, chloroform’ and other items ‘experience has taught to be most needed and useful’ in field emergencies. Rosecrans’ medical men were much better supplied with everything, particularly concentrated foods and chloroform, than were Bragg’s.
A mixed-wood forest covered most of the ground west of Chickamauga Creek. One participant called the rough and broken country, ‘a dark wilderness of woods and vines and overhanging limbs’. In the frontier style the local farmers – the Poe, Dyer, Snodgrass and Brotherton families – had fenced in their yards and fields and allowed their livestock to range freely outside these fences. Over time the livestock had trampled and grazed many shrubs and brambles leaving the spaces between the trees free from underbrush. Here typical sightlines extended out some 125 to 150 yards on a clear sunny day. Once the light began to fail, either from cloying gun smoke caught beneath the tree canopy or as the sun began to go down, visibility dramatically declined. Throughout the forest dense tangles of vegetation blocked visibility and impaired movement. A Confederate battery commander described how he had to keep his guns a mere 100 yards behind the advancing infantry in order to keep them in view. The open forest did permit the passage of artillery batteries but the terrain greatly restricted the guns’ field of fire. After the battle the Union army’s Medical Director observed that the proportion of rifle to cannon wounds was much higher than usual, a fact he attributed to the undulating, forested terrain.
Fighting in woodland posed near insurmountable command and control difficulties. Frequently regi-mental commanders could not see their entire line of battle; those higher up the chain of command could see only fragments of their command. Officers knew how important it was that their troops maintain alignment; to do otherwise risked a dangerous enfilade fire. This came about when a sector of a defending line did not confront opponents directly to its front. It could then fire to the side, concentrating against the enemy’s dangling, exposed flanks. Yet in the wooded terrain along Chickamauga Creek it was often impossible to preserve proper alignment. A Confederate colonel well describes the problem. Ordered to dress to his right: ‘I soon discovered that the arrangement and advance of the line was irregular, and that Polk’s brigade was moving with great rapidity and gaining on me to the right. I then began to incline to the right as rapidly as I could to keep a good line, but before I could join on to the left of Polk’s brigade . . . my skirmishers were hotly engaged.’ The colonel lost sight of Polk as the fight to his front commanded his attention. Consequently both his brigade and Polk’s suffered deadly enfilade fire on their exposed flanks. Time and again during the two-day battle it was enfilade fire that broke a defending line or shot an attack to bits.
Typical campaign terrain. (US National Archives)
This Sergeant of the 2nd Infantry wears the full dress, single-breasted, frock-coat (double-breasted for field officers) piped in branch-of-service-colour (Infantry light-blue) with brass shoulder-scales. He wears the ‘Hardee’ hat which, though smart in appearance, was a universally hated item. These were generally replaced as soon as possible with the kepi or slouch hat. This full dress ideal was of no practical use and the appearance of any infantryman in the field would rapidly degenerate to the state of affairs illustrated on p. 15. (Shirley Mallinson)
Federal soldiers enjoying a break during the march. A Florida gunner wrote that Longstreet’s men, ‘. . . say that New England Yankees do not fight as these men do’. But one of Longstreet’s Texans wrote, ‘I see no difference between this army and the Yanks we met in Virginia.’ (Library of Congress)
The ground was entirely unfamiliar to the Union forces. To try to control the fighting, Rosecrans ordered his subordinates to keep in touch with headquarters via a courier chain. The Federal commander also employed his personal escort and a battalion of cavalry as couriers, but as Rosecrans observed with the benefit of hindsight, the system was ‘imperfect, and much had to be left to the discretion’ of his subordinates. Difficult though it was for the Union high command, at least they were pulling in harness together. Rosecrans had trained his army. It had been together for a year, during which time it had fought two major battles.
The same cannot be said of Bragg’s army, a third of whom had joined in the weeks immediately preceding the battle. Personal animosities divided the Rebel command and the Confederate corps structure was only newly in place and as yet untried. To complicate the chain of command yet farther, when Longstreet reached the battlefield at the end of the first day’s fighting, Bragg created an entirely new command structure. Such improvisation impaired Rebel command performance. In partial compensation Confederate generals utilized the services of knowledgeable local guides, including soldiers who were fighting across the fields where they had lived. Finally, one other consideration explains much of what took place. Officers on both sides were extremely short of sleep. Consecutive days of marching in close proximity to the enemy, which involved long hours on duty and intense strain, left everyone ‘excessively exhausted’ and dull-witted.
When Bragg evacuated Chattanooga, his men despaired. A soldier in the 22nd Alabama wrote to his sister that ‘There is much despondency in the army, many deserters and many others feeling whipped.’ When reinforcements came by train, morale soared. A soldier of the 18th Alabama in a letter to his family said that ‘We have a large army here I don’t know how soon we will have to fight. I think we will whip them when we fight.’ Seen here is a typical Southern rail depot. (Library of Congress)