When at last Rosecrans did move, by some of the ablest strategy displayed in the whole war he compelled Bragg to fall back successively from one position to another, all the way from Tullahoma to Chattanooga. This was not done without frequent and heavy skirmishes, however; but the superiority of the National cavalry had now been developed at the West as well as at the East, and they all resulted in one way. Colonel (afterward Senator) John F. Miller was conspicuous in several of these actions, and in that at Liberty Gap one of his eyes was shot out by a rifle-ball.
The purpose of Rosecrans was to get possession of Chattanooga; and when Bragg crossed the Tennessee and occupied that town, he set to work to manoeuvre him out of it. To effect this, he moved southwest, as if he were intending to pass around Chattanooga and invade Georgia. This caused Bragg to fall back to Lafayette, and the National troops took possession of Chattanooga. But at this time Rosecrans was for a while in a critical situation, where a more skilful general than Bragg would probably have destroyed him; for his three corps—commanded by Thomas, Crittenden, and McCook—were widely separated. The later movements of this campaign had been rendered tediously slow by the heavy rains and the almost impassable nature of the ground; so that although Rosecrans had set out from Murfreesboro' in June, it was now the middle of September.
Supposing that Bragg was in full retreat, Rosecrans began to follow him; but Bragg had received large reinforcements, and turned back from Lafayette, intent upon attacking Rosecrans. The two armies, feeling for each other and approaching somewhat cautiously for a week, met at last, and there was fought, September 19 and 20, 1863, a great battle on the banks of a creek, whose Indian name of Chickamauga is said to signify "river of death."
Rosecrans had about fifty-five thousand men; Bragg, after the arrival of Longstreet at midnight of the 18th, about seventy thousand. The general direction of the lines of battle was with the National troops facing southeast, and the Confederates facing northwest, though these lines were variously bent, broken, and changed in the course of the action. Thomas held the left of Rosecrans's line, Crittenden the centre, and McCook the right. Bragg was the attacking party, and his plan was, while making a feint on the National right, to fall heavily upon the left, flank it, crush it, and seize the roads that led to Chattanooga. If he could do this, it would not only cut off Rosecrans from his base and insure his decisive defeat, but would give Bragg possession of Chattanooga, where he could control the river and the passage through the mountains between the East and the West. The concentration of the National forces in the valley had been witnessed by the Confederates from the mountain height southeast of the creek, who therefore knew what they had to meet and how it was disposed.
The battle of the 19th began at ten o'clock in the forenoon, and lasted all day. The Confederate army crossed the creek without opposition, and moved forward confidently to the attack. But the left of the position—the key-point—was held by the command of Gen. George H. Thomas, who for a slow and stubborn fight was perhaps the best corps commander produced by either side in the whole war. Opposed to him, on the Confederate right, was Gen. (also Bishop) Leonidas Polk. There was less of concerted action in the attack than Bragg had planned for, partly because Thomas unexpectedly struck out with a counter-movement when an opportunity offered; but there was no lack of bloody and persistent fighting. Brigades and divisions moved forward to the charge, were driven back, and charged again. Batteries were taken and re-taken, the horses were killed, and the captains and gunners in some instances, refusing to leave them, were shot down at the wheels. Brigades and regiments were shattered, and on both sides many prisoners were taken. Thomas's line was forced back, but before night he regained his first position, and the day closed with the situation practically unchanged.
| MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS. |
During the night both sides corrected their lines and made what preparation they could for a renewal of the struggle. Bragg intended to attack again at daybreak, his plan (now perfectly evident to his opponent) being substantially the same as on the day before. He wanted to crush the National left, force back the centre, and make a grand left wheel with his entire army, placing his right firmly across the path to Chattanooga. But the morning was foggy, Polk was slow, and the fighting did not begin till the middle of the forenoon. Between Polk and Thomas the edge of battle swayed back and forth, and the Confederates could make no permanent impression. Thomas was obliged to call repeatedly for reinforcements, which sometimes reached him and sometimes failed to; but whether they came or not, he held manfully to all the essential portions of his ground.
Rosecrans was constantly uneasy about his right centre, where he knew the line to be weak; and at this point the great disaster of the day began, though in an unexpected manner. It arose from an order that was both miswritten and misinterpreted. This order, addressed to Gen. Thomas J. Wood, who commanded a division, was written by a member of Rosecrans's staff who had not had a military education, and was not sufficiently impressed with the exact meaning of the technical terms. It read: "The general commanding directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible, and support him." It was impossible to obey both clauses of this order; since to "close up" means to bring the ends of the lines together so that there shall be no gap and they shall form one continuous line, while to "support," in the technical military sense, means to take a position in the rear, ready to advance when ordered. The aid that wrote the order evidently used the word "support" only in the general sense of assist, strengthen, protect, encourage, and did not dream of its conflicting with the command to "close up." General Wood, a West Point graduate, instead of sending or going to Rosecrans for better orders, obeyed literally the second clause, and withdrew his command from the line to form it in the rear of Reynolds. Opposite to the wide and fatal opening thus left was Longstreet, the ablest corps commander in the Confederate service, who instantly saw his advantage and promptly poured his men, six divisions of them, through the gap. This cut off McCook's corps from the rest of the army, and it was speedily defeated and routed in confusion. The centre was crumbled, and it looked as if the whole army must be destroyed. Rosecrans, who had been with the defeated right wing, appeared to lose his head completely, and rode back in all haste to Chattanooga to make arrangements for gathering there the fragments of his forces. At nightfall he sent his chief of staff, Gen. James A. Garfield (afterward President), to find what had become of Thomas, and Garfield found Thomas where not even the destruction of three-fifths of the army had moved or daunted him.
When Thomas's right flank was exposed to assault by the disruption of the centre, he swung it back to a position known as Horseshoe Ridge, still covering the road. Longstreet was pressing forward to pass the right of this position, when he was stopped by Gordon Granger, who had been with a reserve at Rossville Gap, but was wiser and bolder than his orders, and, instead of remaining there, moved forward to the support of Thomas. The Confederate commander, when complete victory was apparently so near, seemed reckless of the lives of his men, thrusting them forward again and again in futile charges, where Thomas's batteries literally mowed them down with grape and canister, and a steady fire of musketry increased the bloody harvest. About dusk the ammunition was exhausted, and the last charges of the Confederates were repelled with the bayonet. Thomas had fairly won the title of "the rock of Chickamauga." In the night he fell back in good order to Rossville, leaving the enemy in possession of the field, with all the dead and wounded. Sheridan, who had been on the right of the line and was separated by its disruption, kept his command together, marched around the mountain, and before morning joined Thomas at Rossville, whence they fell back the next day to Chattanooga, where order was quickly restored and the defences strengthened.
The National loss in the two-days' battle of Chickamauga—killed, wounded, and missing—was sixteen thousand three hundred and thirty-six. The Confederate reports are incomplete and unsatisfactory; but estimates of Bragg's loss make it at least eighteen thousand, and some carry it up nearly to twenty-one thousand. With the exception of Gettysburg, this was thus far the most destructive action of the war. Tactically it was a victory for Bragg, who was left in possession of the field; but that which he was fighting for, Chattanooga, he did not get.