On the night of the 20th Bragg believed his army crippled. He was not far from the truth. The battle had featured stand-up combat fought with uniquely western determination on both sides, and the result had been a vast slaughter. At about midnight Bishop Polk went to Bragg to announce that the enemy was ‘fleeing precipitately from the field’. Bragg was not so sure, and arose next morning expecting to find the two armies still in contact. He knew his men were weary from hard marching and battle. Typically they were also short of provisions because Bragg had sent the supply trains far to the rear before the battle began. Hundreds of his army’s horses were dead, which much reduced mobility. The troops had consumed prodigious amounts of ammunition and needed to replenish. For these reasons, as Bragg later explained in his report, it was necessary to pause and refit before renewing the fight. He rode to his picket line where he learned, for the first time, that the enemy had conceded the field. Bragg ordered pickets all along his army’s front to advance, but did not launch a pursuit.
While their generals delayed, the Rebel soldiers inspected the battlefield and saw, ‘. . . the forest trees splintered and torn by the plunging shot and shell . . . dismounted caissons and artillery wheels, dead horses, guns, cartridge boxes, bayonets . . . Trees and saplings, not larger than a man’s body to a height of six or eight feet, contained from a dozen to as high as sixty rifle balls . . . But worst of all [were the] upturned faces and glaring eyes, torn and mangled bodies . . . at the Snodgrass place, there were acres covered with wounded and many dead.’ Here the victorious soldiers ‘peel’ their fallen enemies. (Library of Congress)
He met Longstreet who proposed that since ‘the hunt was up’ there was little to fear from the the dispirited Yankees and much to be gained by rapid movement. Longstreet had been schooled in the aggressive tactics of the Army of Northern Virginia; he suggested that they cross the Tennessee River north of Chattanooga thereby severing Rosecrans’ line of commmunications and forcing him to abandon Chattanooga itself. He also received a report from Forrest who, typically, was pursuing the foe relentlessly. Forrest had seen a long wagon train crossing the Tennessee River and hastily dictated a report to Bragg: ‘I think they are evacuating as hard as they can go . . . I think we ought to press forward as rapidly as possible.’ It was the moment for decisive action. Bragg could either operate against Rosecrans’ line of communications or march on Chattanooga directly and assault the city. Instead, he did neither, merely following his foe to Chattanooga, and passively investing the city.
The Confederates claimed to have captured 51 field pieces, a figure supported in a gun by gun tabulation made by an Ordnance Department officer. Moreover, several Rebel battery commanders exchanged worn or obsolete pieces for superior Yankee ordnance while on the field. Union reports, on the other hand, acknowledged the loss of 36 field pieces, although their own statistics yield a figure of 39. Whatever the truth of it, the Army of Tennessee certainly captured more artillery pieces during the battle than any other Confederate force captured during a field engagement at any time during the war.
Bedford Forrest had a meeting with Bragg to urge a pursuit. Afterwards Forrest’s orderly asked if the army was to advance: ‘Terrific profanity, then, “I have written to him. I have sent to him. I have given him information on the condition of the Federal Army.” Another stream of profanity. “What does he fight battles for?”‘ (Tennessee State Library)
Unlike Bragg, the soldiers had no doubts that an important victory had been won. A Florida gunner wrote on 21 September that ‘we have whipped the Yankees badly’. A Tennessee soldier wrote, ‘This is the only battle that I have ever fought in that we have held the battlefield, and it does me good to march across it, northward.’ The Army of Tennessee had yet to fight a defensive battle, and its ferocious assaults had been costly, incurring at least 18,454 casualties. Stewart’s division had suffered more than any other, two of its brigades being among the four that received the greatest battering. Clayton and Bate suffered 44 and 51 per cent losses, respectively. Gregg’s brigade, which had operated adjacent to these units, also lost 44 per cent casualties. Heading the doleful list of valour was Benning’s Georgia Brigade, which had come west to suffer a staggering 56.6 per cent loss. Officer losses had been particularly high. For example, four of the brigades in Walker’s command took 33 field officers – captains up to colonels – into action and lost three killed, nineteen wounded and one missing.
The Union army retreat to Chattanooga, seen in this period photograph with Lookout Mountain looming in the background. The day after the battle a Mississippi soldier wrote in his diary about a glorious victory, but added, ‘Why the enemy have been allowed to get away so easily I am at a loss to know . . . There is something mysterious about this fight that remains to be solved.’ (National Archives)
Many survivors could only attribute their good fortune to divine intervention: ‘My Dear Wife . . . I am just out of the titest place that ever I have bin in wee have had a very hard fight here on saterday and sunday I went through it un hurt dos seem that nothing but the finger of God could cary a man through such a seen.’ (US Army Military History Institute)
| Confederate Regimental Losses at Chickamauga | |||||
| Engaged | Killed | Wounded | Missing | % | |
| 10th Tennessee | 328 | 44 | 180 | — | 68.0 |
| 1st Alabama Btn | 260 | 24 | 144 | — | 64.6 |
| 5th Georgia | 317 | 27 | 165 | 2 | 61.1 |
| 2nd Tennessee | 264 | 13 | 145 | 1 | 60.2 |
| 15/37th Tennessee | 202 | 15 | 102 | 4 | 59.9 |
| 16th Alabama | 414 | 25 | 218 | — | 58.6 |
| 6/9th Tennessee | 335 | 26 | 168 | — | 57.9 |
| 18th Alabama | 527 | 41 | 256 | — | 56.3 |
| 22nd Alabama | 371 | 44 | 161 | — | 55.2 |
| 23rd Tennessee | 181 | 8 | 77 | 13 | 54.1 |
| 29th Mississippi | 368 | 38 | 156 | — | 52.7 |
| 58th Alabama | 288 | 25 | 124 | — | 51.7 |
| 37th Georgia | 391 | 19 | 168 | 7 | 50.1 |
| 63rd Tennessee | 402 | 16 | 184 | — | 49.7 |
| 41st Alabama | 325 | 27 | 120 | 11 | 48.6 |
| 32nd Tennessee | 341 | 9 | 156 | — | 48.3 |
| 20th Tennessee | 183 | 8 | 80 | — | 48.0 |
| 1st Arkansas | 430 | 13 | 180 | 1 | 45.1 |
| 9th Kentucky | 230 | 11 | 89 | 2 | 44.3 |
| Of the top twenty reported percentage losses of all Confederate regiments in all battles, six occurred at Chickamauga | |||||
Bragg unleashed Wheeler’s cavalry corps, seen here capturing a supply train, against Rosecrans’ communications. The Army of the Cumberland endured short rations until Grant arrived to restore the situation. (Tennessee State Library)
On 4 October the Bragg-hating clique of high-ranking officers, including Simon Buckner (seen here), composed a circular letter to the Commander Jefferson Davis: ‘Two weeks ago this army, elated by a great victory which promised to be the most fruitful of the war, was in readiness to pursue its defeated enemy. That enemy, driven in confusion from the field, was fleeing in disorder and panic-stricken across the Tennessee River. Today, after having been twelve days in line of battle in that enemy’s front . . . the Army of Tennessee has seen a new Sebastopol rise steadily before its view.’ (Tennessee State Library)
An Illinois soldier wrote to his mother that all he had to eat was one ear of corn for the day, ‘But Old Rosey Rosecrans won’t fall back nor I won’t.’ (US Army Military History Institute)
The young men of both armies accepted death in an astonishingly matter of fact manner. An Alabama soldier saw his brother hit with ‘a minnie ball in the left breast penetrating his left lung’ as they were charging forward on the 20th. The soldier visited his brother the next day: ‘He is very calm all the time and quite rational, talking freely about death . . . he did not expect to be killed in the war, desired to see his wife and children and die at home, did hope to raise his children, but is resigned to the will of God.’ One of Hood’s Texans echoed this sentiment: ‘My Precious Wife: God has heard your prayers, and through His mercy I am preserved through the perils of another great battle, far more dangerous in its individual and personal incidents to our brigade than any of the war. The oldest soldiers agree that they have never seen the like.’
Across the lines, the Army of the Cumberland experienced, for the first time, the bitterness of defeat. A soldier in the 25th Illinois concluded, ‘I guess we were better whipped than ever before.’ An Ohio soldier said that the more his comrades looked at it, the more serious it seemed: ‘Thus far in our service we had never retreated from any field of action, nor left our dead and wounded.’ The battle had cost the army at least 16,170 men, and now they sat in Chattanooga gazing at the Rebels holding the heights above.
When Bragg failed to press his advantage, morale recovered. A Federal soldier wrote that the anticipated assault on the town had not yet come and, ‘I expect their waiting so long has bin a good thing for us. They say we have got a big reinforcements clost at hand. If that is so we will send old Bragg back a howling.’ Indeed, over the succeeding weeks, some 37,000 Union reinforcements came to the aid of the army besieged in Chattanooga. Moreover, alarmed at the persistent panic in Chattanooga – Lincoln said that Rosecrans reminded him of a duck who had been hit on the head – the president ordered the hero of Vicksburg to take over. He offered Grant the option of keeping Rosecrans, but Grant preferred Thomas. So Thomas, already being called ‘the Rock of Chickamauga’, rose to the top of the Army of the Cumberland.
In Grant’s reorganization, Gordon Granger assumed command of a corps consolidated from the much battered XX and XXI corps. Crittenden, McCook and Negley (seen here) were all relieved of command. (Tennessee State Library)
| Union Regimental Losses at Chickamauga | |||||
| Engaged | Killed | Wounded | Missing | % | |
| 51st Illinois | 209 | 18 | 92 | 18 | 61.2 |
| 26th Ohio | 362 | 27 | 140 | 45 | 58.5 |
| 96th Illinois | 401 | 39 | 134 | 52 | 56.1 |
| 25th Illinois | 337 | 10 | 171 | 24 | 54.9 |
| 14th Ohio | 449 | 35 | 167 | 43 | 54.5 |
| 8th Kansas | 406 | 30 | 165 | 25 | 54.1 |
| 35th Illinois | 299 | 17 | 130 | 13 | 53.5 |
| 87th Indiana | 380 | 40 | 142 | 8 | 50.0 |
The South could not match the Union buildup. D. H. Hill believed that the battle had been decisive: ‘It seemed to me that the élan of the Southern soldier was never seen after Chickamauga.’ Soldiers realized that Chickamauga represented a gamble, that by denuding other fronts to reinforce Bragg, ‘what had to be done must be done quickly’. Instead, when Bragg failed to act, the gamble was lost. The Confederate soldier ‘fought stoutly to the last,’ concluded Hill, ‘but, after Chickamauga, with the sullenness of despair and without the enthusiasm of hope. That “barren victory” sealed the fate of the Southern Confederacy.’
Rosecrans became swept up in the rout of his right wing, a débâcle that led to his dismissal shortly afterwards. In later years acquaintances believed they could still see the ghosts of Chickamauga in his once confident eyes. (National Archives)