Fight to the Finish at the River of Death
September 19–20, 1963: Battle of Chickamauga
William Terdoslavich
The Army of the Cumberland advanced from Tennessee into Georgia like an unstoppable blue wave. Three times lucky, it was looking to win again.
Major General William Rosecrans, a somewhat mercurial and extroverted commander, did not win the same plaudits and praise that Ulysses S. Grant did, but he was moving in the right direction: south at the enemy’s expense.
Little did he know that after kicking the Confederacy out of Tennessee, the South would kick him back, all the way to Chattanooga.
Nasty surprises have a way of doing that.
A Brilliant Maneuver
The road that took the Army of the Cumberland to Chickamauga started at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where Major General William Rosecrans won a major battle nine months before by making fewer mistakes than his opponent, General Braxton Bragg, the contentious commander of the Army of Tennessee.
It took six months for Rosecrans to rebuild his army. His telegrams to the war department always asked for more supplies, horses and men. The War Department always replied by demanding action.
On June 26, Rosecrans heeded that order.
Marching his army east, then south, Rosecrans bypassed Bragg’s position at Tullahoma. Outflanked, Bragg pulled back his army to Chattanooga, a key rail junction and gateway to Georgia. But Rosecrans’s bloodless victory did not improve his standing with the War Department, which took more joy in Union triumphs at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
It took a peremptory order from “general in chief” Henry Halleck to get Rosecrans moving again in early August. Rosecrans crossed his army over the Tennessee River to the west of Chattanooga, outflanking Bragg again and forcing him to give up the city. Rosecrans believed Bragg would retreat to Rome, Georgia, but Bragg had a different idea. It was the “western concentration,” a strategy also advocated by General P.G.T. Beauregard and taken up by Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Secretary of War James Seddon. Extra units would be peeled off from other armies and send to Bragg to double the size of his force, which would then attack the Army of the Cumberland.
Bragg turned to face his enemy in early September, just as Rosecrans began crossing his three widely separated corps through the mountains of northwestern Georgia. If Bragg could pounce on one of these columns with his entire force, he could destroy Rosecrans’s forces one piece at a time.
On September 9, Bragg’s subordinates failed to spring the trap on a Union division probing east across Chickamauga Creek toward Dug Gap. It fell back to join Major General George Thomas’s corps. On September 12, Bragg again failed to smash the corps of Major General Thomas Crittenden as it moved southeast from Chattanooga. In both instances, good opportunities to destroy Rosecrans’s force in detail were blown. Confederate cavalry, in short supply, failed to provide adequate intelligence. Lack of information reinforced the timidity and caution of subordinate commanders, who were tasked with attacking promptly but instead advanced with caution, delay, and poor coordination.
Rosecrans was finally wising up to the consequences of his wishful thinking. To avoid defeat, Rosecrans ordered Major Generals Crittenden and Andrew McCook to march their corps toward Thomas’s position at McLemore’s Cove, about fifteen miles south of Chattanooga, between Missionary Ridge and Pigeon Mountain.
There was going to be a battle, but not on Bragg’s terms.
Over the River and Through the Woods . . .
On the morning of September 19, Thomas dispatched a division to attack a single Confederate brigade that had crossed Chickamauga Creek. Instead, the division blundered into the cavalry corps of Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest and the corps of Major General W.H.T. Walker. Thomas reinforced with a second division when word came back of a bigger fight.
The battle took place in thick, scrubby woods that curtailed visibility and increased chaos. Brigades broke into regiments and regiments into companies. Calls for reinforcements sucked in more troops. Eventually the battle developed into a push against Thomas’s lines at Kelly Field, one of the few pieces of open ground in the area. Rosecrans reinforced Thomas’s command with two more divisions, and the lines held. The Union still controlled the roads going north to Chattanooga.
That night, Rosecrans and Bragg would plan their mistakes.
Rosecrans met with his corps commanders and chief of staff Brigadier General James Garfield (a future U.S. president). After receiving reports, Rosecrans decided to reinforce his left to protect the road to Chattanooga, a conclusion seconded by Thomas. Orders were drawn to move almost half of Rosecrans’s divisions while facing the enemy. This was a risky proposition. If the enemy attacked any unit on the move, the unit would be ill-formed to defend itself, risking disorder, rout, or destruction.
Exhausted from weeks of long days on the march, Thomas rode back from the meeting to his HQ. But he was not tired enough to sleep just yet. He ordered Major General James Negley to move his division to the corps’ left flank the next morning. Then he ordered all his front-line troops to erect earthworks to strengthen their positions.
Bragg also had a conference, but not all his commanders met him at the same time. With no chief of staff to translate Bragg’s intentions into clear language, many were given vague, verbal orders.
Bragg had five corps to work with, commanded by generals Leonidas Polk, D. H. Hill, Simon Bolivar Buckner, W.H.T. Walker, and the recently arrived James Longstreet. But Bragg put all into disorder by reorganizing his forces into two wings, with Polk on the right (commanding Walker and D. H. Hill) and Longstreet on the left (commanding his own corps and Buckner’s). Orders were issued to Polk and Longstreet to renew the attack the next morning.
Tempers Rise with the Sun
Sunrise came at 5:47 A.M. on September 20.
By 6 A.M., Bragg was angry.
He had ordered Polk to begin his attack at sunrise. But Bragg heard no gunfire coming from Polk’s sector. Messengers galloped back and forth. Polk finally got his command in gear before Bragg could arrive to chew him out personally. Polk never informed his subordinate, D. H. Hill, to attack at dawn with the divisions of Major Generals John Breckenridge and Patrick Cleburne, so nothing happened. The attack finally came off after Polk prodded D. H. Hill—at 9:30 A.M.
By 11 A.M., Breckenridge made some progress on the Union left, given that his brigades were hitting the recently arrived brigades of Negley’s division (which had arrived after marching from Thomas’s right earlier that morning.). Thomas sent reinforcements to Negley, so Breckenridge’s attack was stopped cold. Cleburne hit the Kelly Field defenses head-on and got nowhere. Cheatham’s division from Polk’s corps was then committed and repulsed, also suffering heavy casualties. By 11 A.M., Polk threw in his last fresh units, the two divisions of Walker’s corps, to support Breckenridge’s attack. Turning the Union right at Kelly Field was becoming a hard job.
The morning was just as confusing on the Union side. Never at his best while under pressure, Rosecrans was becoming excitable, just as he had been at Murfreesboro, months before. His temper began to flare.
Recall that Negley’s division was ordered to march to Thomas’s left early that morning, and tried to move out while its skirmishers were still deployed. Rosecrans chewed out Negley for the error. Rosecrans then ordered Brigadier General Thomas Wood’s division to replace Negley in line. Wood misinterpreted the order and deployed his division behind Negley’s. When Rosecrans saw this, he blew his top, reaming out Wood in front of his staff. Well charred by Rosecrans’s explosion, Wood ordered his brigades to take their place in line, freeing up Negley’s division to march to Thomas’s left. That was at 9:30 A.M.
Meanwhile, on the Confederate left, Longstreet prepared for attack, thankfully spared Bragg’s dysfunctional attention. Unlike Polk, who hastily committed his units piecemeal in unplanned assaults, Longstreet gathered six divisions to hit the Union line in one blow. Three divisions were arrayed left to right on a front of less than a thousand yards, with two more in column behind the center division and a sixth division held in reserve. This force was assembled in thick woods just a few hundred yards away from the Union lines and went unseen.
Rosecrans would unknowingly give Longstreet his golden opportunity. Receiving an unconfirmed report that two divisions in Thomas’s center-right were out of position and exposing a flank, Rosecrans ordered Wood to pull his division out of line and reinforce the threatened sector. Garfield was very busy writing orders to coordinate the shifting of two Union divisions from the right to the left, so he could not deal with this problem. Another staff officer was assigned to write the order. He dispatched it without reading it back to Rosecrans to ensure its accuracy.
Wood received the faulty order, but obeyed it promptly rather than face Rosecrans’s anger again. At 11 A.M., just as Wood pulled his division out, thus opening a gap in the Union line, Longstreet launched his attack. The divisions of Brigadier Generals Jefferson Davis and Philip Sheridan were on the march when they were caught in the flank by Longstreet’s divisions, and were quickly routed after trying to make a stand.
Then Longstreet wheeled his divisions right to roll up the Union flank.
Losses were light.
He was on the verge of destroying a Union army.
And it had only taken forty-five minutes.
Rock Beats Scissors
Rosecrans’s HQ was located in a farmhouse not far from the disaster on his right. He could not rally the broken divisions rushing to the safety of the rear. Rosecrans lost his nerve, taking flight with his routed units up the road to Chattanooga, accompanied by McCook and Crittenden. At least he dispatched Garfield to find Thomas, who now faced the crisis alone.
Calm in the face of chaos, Thomas became aware that something had gone wrong to his right. Union troops were fleeing. That could only mean a successful Confederate attack that could sweep up his position, too. Thomas rallied retreating brigades and repositioned unbroken units to form a semicircle, his right wing extended into the wooden rise of Horseshoe Ridge, his left arm bent back to conform with the slopes of Snodgrass Hill. About a half mile east, three more Union divisions were also arrayed in a semicircle, trying to hold their position at Kelly Field. It was 1:15 P.M.
Longstreet sent three divisions to pound Thomas’s line, coming within an ace of breaking through. But the unexpected happened. Posted a mile or so north of Thomas’s position, Major General Gordon Granger marched to the sound of the guns without orders. His timely arrival with two brigades of his reserve corps allowed Thomas to extend his line on Horseshoe Ridge to stop Longstreet’s latest thrust.
By 3:30, Garfield had arrived at Thomas HQ, and quickly sent word back to Chattanooga that Thomas was making a stand. With that message, Thomas ascended into legend as “the Rock of Chickamauga.” Within the hour, Rosecrans read the message and ordered Thomas to assume command of all units, adding that ammo and supplies were on the way.
The crisis had not passed yet. Polk managed to worm a division to the north of the Union’s Kelly Field position. Thomas shifted a division to face the threat, with one brigade dispatched to hit the Confederate division in the flank, rolling it up by 5 P.M. That enemy unit could have cut off Thomas’s withdrawal.
Many of Thomas’s divisions were battered, bloodied, and very low on ammo. Nightfall would bring an end to the fighting, and under the cover of darkness, Thomas would first withdraw the Kelly Field units, then his forces on Snodgrass Hill and Horseshoe Ridge, and send them north to Chattanooga.
Bragg did not pursue, but eventually took positions in the hills overlooking Chattanooga to begin a siege.
Victory in Defeat, Defeat in Victory
Chickamauga was a rare battle in that the Confederates outnumbered the Union, 66,000 to 58,000. Casualties were frightfully high, about 18,000 for the South (2,312 killed, 14,674 wounded, and 1,468 missing), while 16,000 fell fighting for the North (1,656 killed, 9,749 wounded, and 4,774 missing).
In the wake of defeat, the Lincoln signed off on the creation of a “Division of the Mississippi,” giving Major General U. S. Grant overall command of Union forces between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains. Grant removed Rosecrans, Crittenden, and McCook from their respective posts, giving Thomas command of the Army of the Cumberland.
The Army of Tennessee went into another self-destructive round of command rebellion, with Polk, Breckenridge, Buckner, and Cleburne all agitating President Jefferson Davis to relieve Bragg. Even Longstreet concurred. Davis kept Bragg, not removing him from command until after his later defeat at Chattanooga.
But the real loser proved to be the spirit of the Confederate Army. “[It] seems that the élan of the southern soldier was never seen after Chickamauga,” wrote D. H. Hill, several decades after war’s end. “He fought stoutly to the last . . . with the sullenness of despair and without the enthusiasm of hope.”
Chickamauga proved to be an empty victory for the South, as Bragg failed to either destroy the Army of the Cumberland or retake Chattanooga.
For the Union, it was not a defeat, just an inconvenient setback.