The activity of Minty and Wilder, and the bold front shown by the troops of Crittenden at and about Lee and Gordon’s Mill, prevented a serious attack by General Leonidas Polk, who was in front of that position. These facts together with the affair at Dug Gap and the presence of McCook’s Corps at Alpine caused the Confederate Army to hesitate; thus General Rosecrans was given time to concentrate his whole army—not Crittenden’s Corps only—at Chickamauga, across the Lafayette road, between the Confederate Army and Chattanooga. Bragg’s plan was to attack Crittenden’s left and rear, throwing it back upon the centre—General Thomas’s—before Crittenden could be reinforced, and then to thrust his army between Rosecrans and Chattanooga. Rosecrans’s plan was to prevent such a disaster. Late in the afternoon of September 18, the first Confederate troops crossed the Chickamauga towards the west; this movement was still going on on the morning of the 19th, when something unexpected happened to Bragg’s Army.
About two-thirds of the Confederate Army had crossed and was facing towards Lee and Gordon’s Mill, when at 9 o’clock a brisk engagement commenced with Forrest’s cavalry on the right of the Confederate line at Jay’s Mill, near Reed’s Bridge.
While these movements of the Confederate Army were being inaugurated from Lafayette down on the east side of Chickamauga, the Union Army, at the foot of Stevens’s Gap in the cove and McCook’s Twentieth Corps, twenty miles away near Alpine, had to get together and join Crittenden’s Twenty-first Corps at Lee and Gordon’s Mill.
While waiting to receive sufficient information to convince him that Bragg had halted at Lafayette, Rosecrans had on September 11 or 12 greatly widened the distance between his corps. It was a very dangerous maneuver to face Bragg, and had a more enterprising general been in command of the Confederate Army, the result would probably have been fatal for the Union forces. General D. H. Hill says in a Century Magazine article, that Bragg was confused by the rapid movements of the Union Corps; the presence of McCook’s Corps, south of Lafayette, at Alpine, held Bragg for a while at that place. He was not well informed as to the movements of Rosecrans’s Army.[16]
Bragg, by failing to attack the detached Fourteenth Corps nearest him in McLemore’s Cove, and afterwards to march towards the more distant detached Twenty-first Corps at Lee and Gordon’s gave the Union commander an opportunity to concentrate, and place his united army across the road from Lafayette to Chattanooga, at Kelly’s farm between Rossville and Lee and Gordon’s Mill. How was this movement done?
While it took Bragg five days—from September 12 to 17—to concentrate his army from Lafayette and Ringgold near Lee and Gordon’s, it required the same length of time for McCook to march his corps from the vicinity of Alpine to connect it with Thomas at the foot of Stevens’s Gap in the cove. There was a distance of forty miles from flank to flank of the Union Army, that is, from Alpine to Lee and Gordon’s. But McCook marched fifty-seven miles by the route he took in order to connect with Thomas. General Rosecrans in his official report says: “He [General McCook] had, with great prudence, already moved his trains back to the rear of Little River, on the mountain, but unfortunately, being ignorant of the mountain road, moved down the mountain at Winston’s Gap, down Lookout Valley to Cooper’s Gap, up the mountain, and down again, closing up with General Thomas on the 17th.”[17]
Looking back at this scattering of Rosecrans’s forces by the sending of McCook’s Corps to Alpine—twenty miles southwest of Lafayette—one can understand that such tactics were serious mistakes. General Rosecrans thought himself justified for the movement upon the supposed correctness of the information he had received, namely, that Bragg’s Army was in full retreat towards Rome, Georgia. It is apparent, however, that a reconnoisance of the cavalry to Alpine and Summerville would have accomplished the same result as the corps of infantry which was sent. The alternative before Rosecrans, when he discovered the retreat of the Confederate Army, was to concentrate the Fourteenth and Twentieth corps at Chattanooga, occupy Rossville Gap with a strong outpost, well entrenched, and Lookout Mountain with another entrenched detachment; he could then have waited for further developments. It is hardly probable that Bragg would have attacked him after having received his reinforcements, but would perhaps have fallen back on his line of supplies at some point in the rear. Before that could have occurred, however, the reinforcements that Rosecrans afterwards received would have been able to protect his line of communications.
By the evening of the 17th the Union troops were substantially within supporting distance, but not yet in line to resist an attack by the enemy upon Crittenden at Lee and Gordon’s, but orders were immediately given to move the Fourteenth and Twentieth corps towards the northeast, down the west Chickamauga River, in order to cover the Lafayette road, somewhere near Crittenden’s Corps. The position of the troops and narrowness of the roads retarded the march.
It must be kept in mind, that the movements which Rosecrans made after he discovered that Bragg had halted at Lafayette, were for the purpose of concentrating upon Chattanooga; and that the route Rosecrans took after the junction of the Fourteenth and Twentieth corps was perhaps the shortest route he could take to Chattanooga, while he could at the same time watch the enemy. He encountered Bragg’s force at Chickamauga and was forced to fight there. This was, therefore, the battle for Chattanooga. He gained his point—the military occupancy of Chattanooga—but it required two battles to win it; those of Chickamauga and the three days fight immediately around Chattanooga.
During the 18th Minty’s cavalry, in position east of Reed’s Bridge, was attacked by Bushrod Johnson’s troops coming from Ringgold, and Wilder’s mounted infantry at Alexander’s, by Walker’s Corps. Both were holding bridges, but were driven back into the Lafayette road. General Rosecrans’s plan, as given in orders, was that General Thomas on his way down the cove road passing Crawfish Springs, near the battlefield, should post General Negley’s division there, relieving two divisions of Crittenden’s Corps. With the remainder of his corps, he was to march by way of Widow Glenn’s house to the Lafayette road, and take position at Kelly’s farm, across this road. General Crittenden was to move Palmer’s and Van Cleve’s divisions, relieved by Negley, to the left of his line, and with them prolong his left, from the left of Wood’s division, so as to cover that part of the Lafayette road, near Lee and Gordon’s. McCook’s Corps was to follow General Thomas and take temporary position at Crawfish Springs, protecting the right of the Union line, and to keep his corps mainly in reserve.