The Battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga
Chickamauga
was the biggest battle fought in the Western Theater, and the bloodiest, with
more than 34,000 casualties. The name for the muddy creek comes from the Cherokee,
and has been translated to mean the "river of death." U.S. Maj. Gen.
William S. Rosecrans' troops had maneuvered Gen. Braxton Bragg's Confederate
troops out of Chattanooga without a fight by threatening his supply lines. Bragg
had moved his headquarters to LaFayette, where he planned his next move. Rosecrans,
thinking Bragg was in full retreat, dangerously divided his three corps along
a 40-mile front, pursuing Bragg's men through the rugged Northwest Georgia mountains.
Bragg hoped to destroy the isolated fragments of the Union army as they emerged
from the mountains, but his goal was not realized when his subordinate officers
failed to execute their orders. Rosecrans recognized the vulnerability of his
troops, and quickly concentrated his men west of Chickamauga Creek near Lee
& Gordon's Mill on the Chattanooga-LaFayette road.
With news of reinforcements, Bragg regained confidence and began the Battle
of Chickamauga on the morning of Sept. 19, 1863, with Confederates attacking
the Union left flank under Gen. George H. Thomas, in a sequence of attacks from
north to south. Bragg was trying to push the Federals into a mountain hollow
known as McLemore's Cove, but by the end of the day, the battered Union troops
had held fast. That evening, Bragg was reinforced by troops from Virginia, under
Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, tipping the numerical scales in the Confederates'
favor, with approximately 66,000 Rebels versus 58,000 Yankees. The next day,
the Confederate attacks resumed, with the turning point coming from a mistake
on the Union side. A Union officer reported erroneously that a gap existed in
his line. Without verifying whether this was true, Rosecrans ordered a division
to pull out of position to plug the alleged gap, thereby creating a real gap.
As luck would have it, at this precise spot and time, Longstreet had sent thousands
of charging Confederate troops, which had the effect of routing four Union divisions
and sending them fleeing back to Chattanooga. Some Union troops did not run,
and Gen. George Thomas gathered them at a small elevation called Snodgrass Hill,
and fought a bloody rearguard action that successfully allowed the Federal army
to retreat before being totally destroyed. When sundown came, Thomas, later
to be nicknamed the "Rock of Chickamauga," guided the remainder of
the army through a mountain gap back to Chattanooga. Senior officers under Bragg
urged him to immediately pursue the disorganized Federals, but he ignored their
advice and possibly missed an opportunity to completely destroy a major part
of the Union army.
The battles for Chattanooga, coming two months later from Nov. 23-25, 1863,
was a Union victory that set the stage for the Atlanta Campaign. Rosecrans had
retreated into the river town and waited for help. The Confederates had taken
the heights at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, and entrenched in the
Chattanooga Valley between, and managed to cut the city's rail and river supply
lines, placing the Union troops under siege. Rosecrans' troops were subsisting
on starvation rations which came to town over a thin, 60-mile supply line. Into
this situation came Gen. U.S. Grant, who had been promoted to command of the
Union armies in the Western Theater in mid-October. After the disaster at Chickamauga,
he had replaced Rosecrans with Thomas, ordered reinforcements to Chattanooga,
including two corps from Virginia under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker
and four divisions from Vicksburg led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman,
and worked to resupply the trapped men. On Oct. 27, Union troops quietly floated
down the Tennessee River at night to capture Brown's Ferry, allowing Union steamboats
to transport supplies within eight miles of Chattanooga. Meanwhile on the Confederate
side, Bragg was losing control of his army. His senior officers thought him
incompetent, and unanimously voiced their lack of confidence in his command
to Confederate President Davis, but Davis refused to act. At Davis' suggestion,
Bragg sent Longstreet and his 15,000 men to Knoxville, to be rid of one of his
biggest critics. The effect was to reduce Bragg's fighting strength. By the
time Sherman's troops arrived in mid-November, the Union supplies were flowing
to Federal troops, and the Union forces numbered nearly 70,000 versus 46,000
Confederates. On Nov. 23, Thomas' troops captured Orchard Knob, a small hill
that was the forwar
d
position of the Confederates. The next day, Sherman's men launched an attack
on Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne's men at the right flank of the Confederates
and Missionary Ridge, but got bogged down when they discovered a deep valley
between them and their goal. Meanwhile that day, Gen. Joe Hooker's men had achieved
success in taking Lookout Mountain in the "Battle Above the Clouds."
The next day, Sherman continued to assault Cleburne's troops but with little
success, as Hooker worked his way across the Chattanooga Valley to Bragg's left.
Grant, impatient at his command post on Orchard Knob, ordered Thomas' men toward
the first row of trenches at the bottom of Missionary Ridge to relieve the pressure
on Sherman. Thomas' men, consisting of four divisions, accomplished the task
quickly, but realized that they were exposed to fire from trenches located above
them. In a spontaneous move, the Federals charged up the 500-foot hill, shocking
both Grant on Orchard Knob and the Confederates on Missionary Ridge, and winning
the battle as they sent the rebels retreating into Georgia. A rearguard action
by Cleburne at Ringgold, Georgia, saved the Confederate troops from ruin. The
Confederates lost approximately 6,700 men to the Union's 5,000 casualties, but
more importantly, the Confederates had lost a strategic transportation hub.
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