The cavalry was to close on McCook’s right, and to watch the crossings of the Chickamauga in that region.
The Union movements began on the morning of the 18th, but were so slow, that McCook’s Corps only reached Pond Spring at dark, and bivouaced there for the night. Crittenden’s two divisions reached their positions on the Lafayette road near midnight. In view of the accumulated evidence, that the enemy was crossing his forces over the Chickamauga below Lee and Gordon’s on the 18th, General Thomas pushed forward his corps, uninterruptedly during the night. He halted his leading division—Negley’s—at the assigned position near Crawfish Springs, where his corps rested for two hours at midnight and made coffee. From there on Baird’s division was in the lead, and General Thomas and staff rode with General Baird at the head of the column. This was a weird night-march. The utmost secrecy was kept. If the enemy—who was just across the river not far away—had discovered the movement, he would perhaps also have marched in the night and occupied the place for which General Thomas was aiming. General Hill’s Corps and Wheeler’s Cavalry of the Confederate Army were on the east side of the Chickamauga, in order to prevent the Fourteenth and Twentieth corps from making this march. To deceive the enemy campfires were left burning in the camps in the early evening; in fact all along the road southwest of Crawfish Springs, frequent fires were kindled. Soon after leaving Crawfish Springs the column deflected to the right into an obscure cross-country road, which led to Kelly’s farm. Along the windings of this road, some of the hardest fights of the 19th and 20th took place. A pond afterwards known as “bloody pond” was passed soon after leaving Crawfish Springs; to the left, and a short distance from this pond, General William H. Lytle was killed September 20. Still further on was the place where the fatal blunder of the 20th occurred—at about 11 a. m.—near Brotherton’s house; General T. J. Wood, obeying his interpretation of an order from General Rosecrans, having withdrawn from the line, let in Longstreet’s troops.
This road runs almost entirely through thick hardwood timber, but about half way between Crawfish Springs and Kelly’s farm, there was a little dwelling in the midst of a clearing, known as Widow Glenn’s. Here the next day, General Rosecrans lifted the name of the widow from the depths of utter obscurity to the heights of national fame, by making her home his headquarters. In fact, the whole region from Missionary Ridge, on the left of the marching column as far as Rossville Gap (four miles to the northwest) to the Chickamauga on the east, was densely wooded and covered with heavy undergrowth. A few small farms scattered through this woodland were tilled by the obscurest of backwoodsmen, who lived in small log cabins or small frame buildings. Their names would never have been known, even in Chattanooga nine miles away, had it not been for the accidental fighting there of the greatest battle of the west. Widow Glenn’s, Kelly’s farm, Snodgrass Hill, McDonald’s, Poe’s, Brotherton’s, Dyer’s, Vittetoe’s, and Viniard’s were suddenly made historical by the battle of Chickamauga.
General George H. Thomas was a very sedate man. There was about him, at all times, the very atmosphere of solid merit and reserved strength. As he rode beside General Baird, attended by the two staff corps, there was no indication that he was conscious of his high position. His modesty was always conspicuous. No one in the long line of troops stretching for miles behind could see in this unpretentious officer the true hero of the coming conflict, who would be known in the future as the “Rock of Chickamauga.” After Negley’s division was left in position near Crawfish, there remained in the marching column the three divisions of Baird, Brannan, and Reynolds. Baird’s and Brannan’s had three brigades each, but Reynolds’s had only two; Wilder’s was mounted and operated as cavalry, wherefore it was not always with its division.
Chickamauga, September 19, 1863
Adapted from Fiske’s The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War, p. 266
About daylight on September 19, Baird’s division filed across the Lafayette road near Kelly’s log house, stacked arms, and commenced to prepare breakfast. Forrest’s Confederate cavalry lay at that time in the neighborhood of Jay’s Mill, one mile to the east, near Reed’s Bridge; Hood’s and Walker’s corps were further up, or west towards Lee’s and Gordon’s and within a mile and a half of Crittenden’s left. The stream was in many places easily fordable. The whole Confederate Army was across the Chickamauga at sunrise with the exception of Hindman’s, Breckenridge’s, and Cleburne’s divisions. Thomas made temporary headquarters under a large tree by the roadside; while waiting for the closing up of the rear division, he lay down on some blankets, and told his aide not to let him sleep more than an hour. General Gordon Granger, who commanded the reserve corps, had been ordered by Rosecrans on September 13 to bring three brigades of this corps—which happened then to be at Bridgeport, Alabama, guarding that point of the Union line of supplies—to the Rossville Gap. His duty was to guard the approaches from the south and east and to generally support the main army. He moved with his usual energy and arrived at the gap on September 14, although the distance is about thirty-five miles. He brought with him two brigades of Steedman’s division, viz.: Mitchell’s and Whittaker’s, and Daniel McCook’s brigades of James D. Morgan’s division. Granger’s presence in the front of Rossville Gap at McAffee’s Church with Whittaker’s brigade, and his sending Daniel McCook’s and Mitchell’s brigades towards Jay’s Mill and Reed’s Bridge, assisted greatly in postponing the crossing of the Confederate forces until the 18th and thus preventing an attack on Crittenden’s left flank.
On the morning of the 19th McCook’s brigade was bivouacing somewhere near Reed’s Bridge. McCook rode over to where Thomas was, and said hurriedly he must speak to him. He told General Thomas that a Confederate brigade had crossed at Reed’s Bridge and that his (own) brigade had then burned this bridge, thus this detached brigade could be captured, if General Thomas would send forces enough to do it. At that moment the head of Brannan’s division was approaching in rear of the line of Baird’s division to take position on the latter’s left. Thomas ordered Brannan to reconnoitre in that direction with two brigades and to attack any force met. His advance brigade—Croxton’s—encountered very soon Forrest’s cavalry, about 7:30 or 8 a. m. (some reports say 9 a. m.) and drove it more than half a mile. “This vigorous movement disconcerted the plans of the enemy to move on our left and opened the battle of the 19th September,” says General Rosecrans in his official report.[18] Forrest was in that place as a defense of Bragg’s right flank. The sudden musketry of Croxton’s attack on Forrest far to the right of the Confederate commanders startled them and gave them the first intimation, that Bragg’s order did not meet the situation.
General H. V. Boynton says that, at the time the isolated Confederate brigade was reported as on the west side of Chickamauga, early in the morning of September 19, two-thirds of the Confederate Army were on the west side.
It was 6:30 a. m. when Brannan left Kelly’s and moved north; he took the Reed’s Bridge road for the capturing of the isolated brigade. It was between 8 and 9 a. m., before the enemy was struck.