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Chickamauga And Chattanooga

In Chattanooga, Gen. Braxton Bragg positioned his two corps to defend the city. He was given sufficient time to improve the defenses of the city; General Rosecrans, after the rapid southeastward march through Middle Tennessee, paused in the Tullahoma area for six weeks to rest his army, rebuild his railroad supply line, and wait for the corn and wheat to ripen. In the meantime, Bragg appealed to Richmond for reinforcements while at the same time corps commander William J. Hardee was transferred to Mississippi. But by mid-August, Rosecrans was ready to move again. After much delay, Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside was marching his Army of the Ohio southeast through Kentucky toward Knoxville. Bragg assumed Rosecrans would approach Chattanooga from the north, with Burnside in supporting distance to the northeast.

That is what Rosecrans hoped Bragg would believe, but his intentions were again different. Rosecrans supported his ruse by sending three infantry brigades and cavalry— including Wilder's mounted infantry, who had earned their comrades' admiration and the nickname the "Lightning Brigade"—under Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen, on a long march through the mountains north of Chattanooga. On August 21, a Confederate "day of prayer and fasting" in Chattanooga was interrupted by Federal artillery fire from Stringers Ridge on the far bank of the Tennessee River.

Rosecrans concentrated two of the Army of the Cumberland's three infantry corps near Stevenson, Alabama, where the railroad from Nashville joined the east-west Memphis & Charleston running to Chattanooga. Hazen's force, as well as Thomas Crittenden's corps, remained northeast of Chattanooga. By the time Bragg's intelligence revealed the location of Rosecrans's army, the Union force was already crossing the Tennessee River near Stevenson. Bragg vacillated, even as he received reinforcements; Maj. Gen. Simon Buckner and the rest of his force were ordered south from Knoxville, and other reinforcements from Mississippi under Maj. Gen. William H. T. Walker came. Finally, admitting that he had again been outmaneuvered, Bragg withdrew from the "Gateway City" without firing a shot on September 7.

Rosecrans was ecstatic. Sending Crittenden's corps into Chattanooga to follow up Bragg's retreat, he dispatched his other two corps on separate routes through northwest Georgia to get onto Bragg's flank and into his rear. Although corps commander George Thomas suggested to Rosecrans that he first consolidate the Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga and fortify the city, "Old Rosy" was convinced that the Army of Tennessee was in panic-stricken retreat and that Bragg would not turn to fight north of Atlanta. Events proved him wrong and Rosecrans would come to grief at the Battle of Chickamauga.

The most significant single Civil War battle west of the Appalachian Mountains in terms of casualties was Chickamauga, fought September 19-20, 1863, with 34,624 total casualties. The campaign for Chattanooga until mid-September had gone well for Maj. Gen. William Starke Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland. A series of Federal feints and flanking moves to the south compelled Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee to abandon the Gateway City and protect his supply lines in northwest Georgia. Not content to stay and fortify Chattanooga, Rosecrans moved on the heels of what he thought was a fleeing Rebel army. Three of Rosecrans's four corps—Maj. Gen. Alexander McCook's XX Corps on the right, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas's XIV Corps in the center, and Maj. Gen. Thomas Crittenden's XXI Corps on the left—forged ahead on a broad front.

Bragg, an intense, brooding man often at odds with his subordinates over many matters, was finally putting the brakes on his long southward flight that, except for the weeks preceding the Battle of Stones River, started almost a year earlier after the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. Through erroneous reports planted among civilians and deserters, Bragg created a counterintelligence scam designed to give the Federals the idea that his army was scattered and demoralized. Instead, the were regrouping in LaFayette and awaiting reinforcements from Mississippi, Virginia, and elsewhere just as two of Rosecrans's corps were crossing Lookout Mountain in northwest Georgia: McCook's near Alpine in the south and Thomas's at Stevens's Gap in the center, while Crittenden, after occupying Chattanooga, passed Missionary Ridge through Rossville Gap, occupying Ringgold and Lee and Gordon's Mill.

By the second week in September Rosecrans was beginning to notice what Bragg had in mind—to defeat the separated parts of the Army of the Cumberland in detail, that is, one at a time. At Davis's Cross Roads on September 10 and 11, General Bragg missed a golden opportunity to defeat in detail General Thomas's XIV Corps. On September 9, Brig. Gen. James Negley's division, passing through Stevens's Gap, entered McLemore's Cove, seizing Davis's Cross Roads. Bragg prepared to strike Negley's isolated division. Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's Confederate division took position at Dug Gap east of the crossroads while Maj. Gen. Thomas Hindman's division was positioned several miles north of the crossroads. A lack of initiative on the part of Hindman frustrated Bragg's plans of September 10. By the next morning, Brig. Gen. Absalom Baird's division reinforced Negley, but the Confederate force in the area grew larger as well. However, once again the Rebel command failed to strike a swift blow and the commencement of skirmishing caused Thomas to order his two divisions to pull back from Davis's Cross Roads, frustrating Bragg's opportunity to severely cripple and possibly begin to defeat in detail Rosecrans's army.

On September 12-13, an attack against Crittenden, whose corps was concentrating on Lee and Gordon's Mill, was also scrapped when Polk protested that Crittenden had consolidated his scattered divisions. Rosecrans moved, when it was almost too late, to pull back McCook and Thomas and close on Crittenden's corps anchored on Lee and Gordon's Mill. By the night of September 17, Crittenden's corps, the army's left wing, was at the mill, Thomas was at Pond Spring, and McCook held the Federal right at Stevens's Gap. Rosecrans continued to edge his army northward the next day and evening, September 18, as the Yankees bought time in disputing the Confederate crossings of the Chickamauga. The battle opened with these cavalry-infantry engagements at Alexander's Bridge and Reed's Bridge, frustrating Bragg's plan to turn Rosecrans's left and cut him off from Chattanooga.

Because Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Ohio occupied Knoxville after Buckner's evacuation of the East Tennessee city, crucial miles of the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, the most direct railway between Virginia's Piedmont and Chattanooga, were in Federal hands. Therefore, when two divisions of Longstreet's corps received the assignment to transfer to Bragg's command, they were forced to take a roundabout route through the Carolinas and Atlanta, finally disembarking the cars at Catoosa Station near Ringgold. After more than two years of war, the South's crazy quilt railroad system was in terrible shape. Adding to the problems of varying gauges of track and private ownership, the war had taken its toll on locomotives, rolling stock, bridges, and rights-of-way. Longstreet's 15,000 veterans used sixteen different rail lines for the seven-hundred-mile trip from Gordonsville, Virginia, to Catoosa Station. Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of South Carolina politician James Chesnut and an astute observer of the wartime conditions in the South, had the opportunity to observe Longstreet's force en route. She described the scene in her diary: ". . . what seemed miles of platform cars, and soldiers rolled in their blankets lying in rows with their heads all covered, fast asleep. In their gray blankets . . . they looked like swathed mummies."

Also on September 18, brigades of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's Army of Northern Virginia corps began to arrive on the field, adding to the reinforcements Bragg had already received. Bragg had formed five infantry corps under Lt. Gens. Leonidas Polk and Daniel H. Hill and Maj. Gens. Simon Buckner, William H. T. Walker, and John B. Hood. Bragg had hoped to deliver a punishing blow to the Federal left, now held by Thomas's four divisions, east of the LaFayette Road, with Walker's and Polk's corps early on September 19. But the attack started late and by the time Polk's men crossed Chickamauga Creek, Thomas had launched a preemptory attack that beat back Forrest's dismounted cavalry near Jay's Mill until "Shot Pouch" Walker's infantry came to their aid. By the time the Rebels returned the courtesy, reinforcements from Crittenden and McCook stemmed an overrun of the Federal left.

Fierce fighting erupted all along the four-mile front of wooded areas occasionally dotted with small fields on September 19. Three major Confederate assaults—by Maj. Gen. Alexander Stewart's and Bushrod R. Johnson's divisions of Buckner's corps in the center; John Bell Hood's division on the Rebel left; and a dusk attack by Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division of Hill's corps on the right—all punished, but failed to shatter, the Federal lines. Union reinforcements, arriving in timely fashion, stemmed Bragg's sledgehammer-like blows. Though ruptured momentarily by A. P. Stewart's "Little Giant" division, the Federal lines stood firm at the end of the day.

On September 20, Bragg ordered Polk to renew his attack on Thomas's advancing en echelon, while Longstreet looked for an opening in the center. Although Polk's attacks on the Federal left began late at 9:30 A.M., they were vicious. From his headquarters near the Widow Glenn House, Rosecrans received a report of a gap in his line on Thomas's right near the Brotherton Cabin. Actually, the units were in place, but were concealed by the tree line. Brig. Gen. Thomas Wood's two-brigade division was ordered to move into the phantom gap, which created a real rupture in the Federal line. The timing was disastrous. Longstreet, unaware of the windfall, by chance launched an assault that propelled eight brigades of Rebel veterans into the gap. The flood waters of Confederate infantry flowed unstoppably across the LaFayette Road, past the Brotherton Cabin and directly toward Rosecrans's headquarters. Col. John Wilder's 2,000-man brigade, armed with Spencer seven-shot repeating rifles, in position near the Widow Glenn House, tried to slow the Rebel onslaught, but could not turn back Longstreet's determined veterans. Rosecrans, his headquarters staff, McCook, and Crittenden and thousands of their soldiers left the field hurriedly as Longstreet's men surged northward.

Meanwhile, George Thomas's units were holding their own against the bludgeoning of Polk's wing. But now a new problem confronted the stout general. Longstreet's force was rolling northward toward Snodgrass Hill, which was perpendicular to Thomas's breastworks east of the LaFayette Road. Cool as the chill that greeted him that September morning was Thomas, as he formed a new line along Snodgrass Hill and Horseshoe Ridge to the west. Thomas's resistance to Longstreet's slashing attacks was enormously aided by the arrival of two reserve brigades sent from south of Rossville Gap led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger on his own initiative. The line held against repeated attacks by Longstreet's wing. By evening, Thomas executed an orderly withdrawal north through McFarland's Gap and joined the rest of the Army of the Cumberland on its way to Chattanooga. His heroic stand earned him the nom de guerre the "Rock of Chickamauga."

Rosecrans lost his command and did not lead an army into combat for the remainder of the war. Although both McCook and Crittenden were acquitted of wrongdoing in Courts of Inquiry, McCook never had another field command except briefly while serving in Washington during Jubal Early's July 1864 raid and Crittenden resigned in December 1864, after serving as a divisional commander in the Army of the Potomac. Braxton Bragg's greatest victory soon lost its luster as he again began feuding with his generals. Though he drove the Union army from the field of battle, he was appalled by the 18,454 Confederate casualties-2,000 more than the Federals, who listed more than 3,000 as missing—and despite the urging of his subordinates, he refused to follow up by attacking the Federals before they made Chattanooga. In the end, the decision led to Bragg's downfall.

After defeat at Chickamauga, the Federal Army of the Cumberland retreated into the protection afforded by Chattanooga, and by September 22 all units had reached the fortified town. Defenses were quickly improved. They were cautiously followed by the Army of Tennessee, and General Bragg, appalled by the casualties suffered by his army, did not land a knockout blow on his opponent. Instead, he was content to besiege Rosecrans while he sorted out internal dissension in his army.

The Rebels soon established an investment line anchored on the left on Lookout Mountain (after Rosecrans unwisely withdrew a brigade from the strategic position), the center in Chattanooga Valley and the right on Missionary Ridge, with Rebel cavalry ranging west and northeast of Chattanooga, effectively sealing off the Union Army except for a tenuous wagon road to the northwest across Walden's Ridge. The Army of the Cumberland became the first major Federal force to be besieged. To add to the Federals' discomfort, Bragg sent Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler on a cavalry raid. On September 29-30, Wheeler crossed the Tennessee River some forty miles upriver from Chattanooga and the next day in the Sequatchie Valley came upon a large train at Anderson's Cross Roads. As Wheeler's force was plundering the train, Col. Edward M. McCook's Federal cavalry attacked the Rebel horsemen, nearly capturing Wheeler. Wheeler's cavalry then raced ahead to McMinnville, where they captured the garrison, but close pursuit by Federal horse soldiers, particularly those led by Brig. Gen. George Crook, limited damage to the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad south of Murfreesboro. At Farmington, on October 7, Crook's people overtook and mauled one of Wheeler's divisions. On October 9 Wheeler's exhausted corps, having failed to significantly damage the railroad, recrossed the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. But the destruction of wagons and loss of mules at Anderson's Cross Roads was devastating to the Federals.

Fretful over the sudden reversal of fortune in Tennessee, Lincoln searched for a solution to his leadership problems there. He saw it in U. S. Grant. The Army of the Tennessee commander was recovering from an injury caused by a fall from an unfamiliar horse while he was visiting Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks in New Orleans in mid-September. It was rumored that drunkenness caused the mishap. (The criticism of Grant's drinking continued to melt away with his successes, prompting Southern diarist Mary Chesnut to observe wryly, "Since Vicksburg they have not a word to say against Grant's habits. He has the disagreeable habit of not retreating before irresistible veterans.")

Lincoln named Grant to command the newly constituted Division of the Mississippi. The division included the Departments of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee. Grant's headquarters were to be in the field, which, with the armies in Mississippi idle, was Chattanooga. Maj. Gen. W. T. Sherman with four divisions of the Army of the Tennessee had been boated from Vicksburg to Memphis and were en route to Corinth and rebuilding the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Two corps from the then idle Army of the Potomac in northeast Virginia were also ordered to relieve the Army of the Cumberland. Lincoln placed Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker in charge of this force and gave Grant the option to relieve General Rosecrans. Grant was not a Rosecrans fan, and on October 18 he ordered Rosecrans to turn over his army to Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas.

While the besieged Federals awaited relief from Bragg's infantry and artillery investing Chattanooga, key subordinates of the Rebel chief awaited relief from him. Though shortly after Chickamauga, Bragg rid himself of General Polk and a troublesome division commander, a number of the army's generals petitioned President Davis to replace Bragg as army commander. Jefferson Davis saw the need for his personal intervention and arrived at Bragg's headquarters on October 9 to resolve the controversy. James Longstreet and the other three corps commanders present gave Bragg a lack of confidence vote in front of their leader and the Confederate president.

Though Davis had already decided to keep Bragg as commander of the Army of Tennessee before the meeting, he hoped to ease the situation surrounding the stormy commander. Several generals were transferred or shunted aside and Davis subsequently endorsed a special mission for Longstreet—to march northeast with his corps and Wheeler's cavalry and crush Burnside's army and retake Knoxville. Back in Richmond, Davis offered Bragg some tactical advice to continue the success of the siege. "It is reported here that the enemy are crossing at Bridgeport [Alabama]. If so, it may give you the opportunity to beat the detachment moving up to reinforce Rosecrans as was contemplated. You will be able to anticipate him, and fight with the advantage of fighting him in detail!'

Meanwhile, Bedford Forrest, most of his horse soldiers reassigned to Wheeler and participants in his ill-fated raid, had had a stormy confrontation with General Bragg in which he had declared he would not again serve under Bragg. Forrest was, with the approval of President Davis, sent to northeast Mississippi with a small detachment and ordered to assume command of Confederate forces there.

When Grant arrived in Chattanooga on October 23, things began to quicken for the Federals. Bragg did not defeat the XI and XII corps of the Army of the Potomac in detail as suggested by Davis. Instead, the expeditionary force, the lead elements of which arrived at Bridgeport on October 1, only six days after being ordered west, seized the initiative. In a plan perfected by the new chief engineer in Chattanooga, Maj. Gen. William E "Baldy" Smith, and approved by Rosecrans before his departure, Federal forces in Chattanooga prepared to take Brown's Ferry from the Confederates and establish a bridgehead on a portion of the Tennessee River out of range of the Rebel guns. In the predawn hours of October 27, soldiers from William Hazen's brigade floated silently downriver in pontoon boats while a larger infantry force led by Brig. Gen. John Turchin marched overland to Brown's Ferry. At the same time Hooker, with three divisions, marched northeast through Lookout Valley in support.

Hazen's men rowed their boats ashore and surprised Confederate pickets. As fighting broke out, Turchin's overland force used the boats to cross the river, and the Rebels withdrew, unable to hold out as Federal reinforcements arrived continuously. By midafternoon, the pontoons were being planked over and a bridge was in place creating a supply line, which soon was fed by boats steaming up the Tennessee River to Kelley's Ferry, and was dubbed the "Cracker Line" by the grateful Army of the Cumberland soldiers, in honor of receiving shipments of the usually despised army hardtack or "crackers."

The Confederates, slow to react to the presence of Hooker's expeditionary force, behaved even more strangely when the advance from Bridgeport was confirmed. Longstreet, in command of that sector, sent John Bell Hood's division, commanded by Brig. Gen. Micah Jenkins after Hood was wounded at Chickamauga, to make a night attack on the southernmost division of Hooker's force. That was the division of Brig. Gen. John W. Geary, one of the more interesting of the politician-generals in the Federal army, camping in Lookout Valley near Wauhatchie railroad station. Sending the brigade of Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law to the north to isolate Geary from the rest of Hooker's force, camped south of Brown's Ferry, Jenkins launched a determined night attack against Geary.

Confusion reigned in the moonlit battle. Geary's men held a good defensive position against the unseen enemy, but Jenkins's men pressed Geary's flanks and Geary's son was killed while directing an artillery battery. Farther north, two XI Corps divisions ordered by Hooker to reinforce Geary failed to reach Wauhatchie, though a bayonet charge was mounted which drove Law from his hilltop position. The XI Corps soldiers, much maligned for their poor performance at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, fought bravely and gained respect in this attack. As Geary desperately held on, the Confederates mysteriously withdrew about three-thirty A.M. on October 29 and the "Cracker Line" was secure.

A legend that sprang from the Battle of Wauhatchie was that some stampeding mules were mistaken in the darkness as a cavalry charge by the Rebels. Grant was amused when his quartermaster petitioned for the mules to receive brevet (honorary) promotions to horses for their part in the Battle of Wauhatchie.

In mid-November, Sherman arrived in the Chattanooga area with his 17,000 Army of the Tennessee veterans, bringing the total number of Federals to more than 70,000. Grant then devised a plan to break the siege of Chattanooga, one that was also taking its toll on the Confederate soldiers, who were suffering themselves from lack of supplies and cold and wet conditions. Grant sent Sherman to the north side of the Tennessee River with instructions to recross the river and attack the right flank of Bragg's line on Missionary Ridge. To the west, Hooker was to seize Lookout Mountain, cross Chattanooga valley, and approach Missionary Ridge extending northeast-southwest for many miles via Rossville Gap.

To the Army of the Cumberland, Grant gave an assignment that was to be a demonstration. The Confederates held a prominent hill, Orchard Knob, midway between the Federal position in Chattanooga and the Rebel rifle pits at the base of Missionary Ridge. Two divisions of Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger's reconstituted IV Corps, under Brig. Gens. Philip H. Sheridan and Thomas J. Wood, appeared in the afternoon to be drilling outside the Federal fortifications. Even the Confederates came out to watch. Then suddenly at one-thirty P.M., a signal cannon was fired and the two divisions rushed Orchard Knob.

Within one hour the Rebels were pushed back to their rifle pits at the base of Missionary Ridge. The demonstration exceeded expectations—Thomas brought up units to support the forward line and Grant moved his headquarters to Orchard Knob. The success encouraged Grant to order General Hooker to proceed beyond Lookout Mountain through Rossville Gap after the attack on the mountain planned for the following day.

On November 24, the fighting started when Hooker's three divisions scaled the precipitous western face of Lookout Mountain about eight A.M. and gained the bench at the Cravens House. The fog and mist that lingered throughout the day later gave this action the name the "Battle Above the Clouds." The action culminated when the Union soldiers captured key positions around the Cravens House two thirds the way up the mountain. That night, Bragg withdrew all Confederate forces from Lookout Mountain. The success of Hooker's troops in driving the Rebels from the mountain fortified the resolve of the Federals. On the same day Sherman moved forward from a hidden camp north of the Tennessee River, crossed on pontoons, and gained a foothold in the northern extension of Missionary Ridge, known locally as Billy Goat Hill.

The next day, November 25, as the Stars and Stripes flew from the top of Lookout Mountain and Hooker's advance elements were crossing Chattanooga Valley on their way to challenge Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge's Confederates at Rossville Gap, Sherman's force was advancing against Tunnel Hill, where the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad ran underground for a short distance before entering Chattanooga. The position was held by Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division. Nearby was Maj. Gen. Carter L. Steven- son's division, which had arrived overnight from Lookout Mountain. Sherman was reinforced by part of Maj. Gen. Oliver 0. Howard's XI Corps, which marched north on the near side of the river after the Rebels were cleared from Orchard Knob.

The reinforcements did not help Sherman. At day's start, his troops found themselves confronted by the well-defended Tunnel Hill, the route to unhinge and roll up the Confederate line on Missionary Ridge from the north. Cleburne's soldiers, inspired by their leader, turned back repeated assaults across the rugged terrain by the Union forces.

Despite their success against Orchard Knob, Grant did not have confidence in Thomas's Army of the Cumberland soldiers with the cloud of the Chickamauga defeat hanging over them. Grant's plan did not call for their use if the flank assaults succeeded. As reports of Sherman's plight became known, however, Grant asked Thomas to demonstrate against the center to divert reinforcements from adding to the difficulties Sherman was having with Cleburne. Thomas's objective was to be at the rifle pits at the base of the ridge but poor command and engineering work by the Confederate leadership left the center curiously vulnerable.

After some delay and with darkness not far away, the Army of the Cumberland troops began a parade ground–like advance across a gradual slope to the first Confederate line of defense at the base of Missionary Ridge. The momentum they felt after rushing and gaining the rifle pits was contagious. In a dramatic parallel charge up the steep ridge slopes, not unlike the sweep of Pickett's, Pettigrew's, and Trimble's troops across the fields of Gettysburg, except that the terrain was far more treacherous, regiment after regiment raced to the top shouting "Chickamauga, Chickamauga" as they went. Hindered by confusing orders, the Rebels fled in a manner not unlike the Yankee retreat from the "River of Death." The poorly located Rebel artillery could not fire on the advancing Federals without hitting their own forces. As Grant and Thomas watched in amazement, the inspired men of the Army of the Cumberland climbed and took the ridge.

The rout began immediately as Confederate soldiers streamed down the back of the ridge toward Georgia. Hooker, who had already been successful in driving the Rebels from the Rossville Gap area and Sherman, with Cleburne desperately fighting a rear-guard action, joined forces with Thomas by nightfall. The next day the combined Federal forces pushed Bragg's army beyond Rossville and into Georgia. The disgraceful defeat at Missionary Ridge toppled Bragg from command of the Army of Tennessee.

Jay Wertzand Edwin C. Bearss. . William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1997.

Chattanooga This book is about the struggle for Chattanooga. Beginning with the climax of the engagement at Chickamauga, September 19 and 20, 1863, the story focuses on the siege of Chattanooga and the battles that finally determined which side would control that strategic railroad town.

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