Chickamauga: Bloody Battle In The West

Glenn Tucker

• Publisher: Golden Springs Publishing
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781786251152
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la guerre de Sécession

Two and a half months after the Confederate Army's drive into Union territory had been checked by the Federals at Gettysburg, the two armies met near Chattanooga, Tennessee, to dispute control of the west. Here they locked in the bloody battle of Chickamauga, one of the most hotly contested engagements of American history, and one of the most extraordinary.For two days —September 19 and 20, 1863 — 125, 000 men struggled for the prize city of Chattanooga in terrain more like a jungle than a battlefield. All regarded the battle as decisive. On its outcome depended, for the South, the fate of Atlanta and all Georgia. For the North, it promised the one opportunity to cut the Confederacy through the middle and possibly end the war before Christmas. For the courage they displayed, these men surpassed any in the wars of western civilization.It was, perhaps above all else from the strategist's point of view, a battle of strong personalities. Leading the Federals was William Starke Rosecrans, of German ancestry, hot-tempered and sometimes vacillating. Opposed to him was the hard-fighting, brave and resourceful Braxton Bragg, a martinet who could be slow moving and careless in supervising the execution of his orders. Possibly most outstanding of all was the Union General George Henry Thomas, whose remarkable courage and tactical skill saved his side from overwhelming defeat and earned him the sobriquet of "Rock of Chickamauga."

PART I — ROSECRANS: Gifted eccentric

CHAPTER ONE — A Hoosier Horseman Opens the Gate

ELEMENTS of Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland entered Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the morning of September 9, 1863, without the loss of a man.

Much as the American people of a later generation would dread the ghastly sacrifice of life they believed would inevitably be exacted at the crossing of the Rhine, or in storming the Japanese mainland, so had the North come to look with terror toward the impending battle for the heart city of the South, protected by its lofty mountains and great, bridgeless river.

But Rosecrans, by skillful maneuvers heralded to the North as comparable to those of Napoleon or Marlborough at their best, had dislodged Bragg, first from Tullahoma, where the Southern army had rested through the spring months while the Northern general leisurely collected horses and prepared his forward movement, and then, as the corn ripened and provisions were promised ahead, from Chattanooga itself.

This railroad communication center, which alone of all the Southern cities tied the Confederacy into a fairly compact nation, had been thus won speedily, artfully, by strategy instead of lead.

Rosecrans had bypassed the fort-girdled city by a feint to his left, then a wide swing to his right, and like over-ripened fruit it fell at the mere tread of the approacher. Colonel John T. Wilder, the Greensburg, Indiana, ironmaster whose brigade of mounted infantry had equipped itself out of its own pocketbooks with the sensational new Spencer repeating rifle, had ridden down the right bank of the Tennessee as early as August 21, at a time when Bragg intended to fight it out for the town. Young Captain Eli Lilly, the Greencastle, Indiana, druggist who had become as proficient with the guns as any artillery instructor in the old army, had set up his battery on the close reaches of Stringer’s Ridge. In compliance with orders from Major General Thomas L. Crittenden, who commanded the 21st Corps that made up the left wing of Rosecrans’ army, he had tossed some shells across the Tennessee River to advise the Southern general that the season for evacuation of the city was at hand.

Wilder gave plausibility to Rosecrans’ feint to the left by operating ingeniously along the north bank of the river so as to suggest a movement in force above Chattanooga. He with his mounted infantry and Colonel Robert H. G. Minty with a mixed cavalry brigade of Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and United States regular troops, guarded every ford and patrolled every mile of waterfront from Washington to Williams Island, a distance of about fifty miles.

The resourceful Hoosier occupied the attention of an entire Confederate army corps by threatening suddenly and haphazardly to attack at the different crossings. Every night he sent out details to build large campfires behind the fords, thus indicating the presence of sizable forces: divisions or army corps. To give the impression of large-scale pontoon building, he had his men saw boards and throw the end pieces into the creeks feeding the Tennessee River. To enhance the illusion he had them pound on barrels, and even a sailor might mistake the sound for hammering on the sides of boats. Brigadier General William B. Hazen, who commanded a brigade of Major General John M. Palmer’s division, Crittenden’s corps, operated upstream with Wilder and added to Bragg’s uncertainty by making diversions and pretenses at crossings. Because of these stratagems, Bragg kept his men busy fortifying the upstream fords, when all the while Rosecrans was shifting his army and covertly crossing behind the mountains downstream.{1}

Wilder had come up in front of Chattanooga so rapidly and unexpectedly that he captured artillerymen and animals of a Confederate battery on the north shore, then bagged a part of the picket, while Captain Lilly was unlimbering his guns. The Federals looked down from their heights and saw soldiers and civilians running about in what they called “great consternation.” Soon a Confederate battery west of the town opened. Lilly replied accurately and the fire was quickly silenced. A 32-pounder in the town was handled more effectively, but a Federal shell hit inside the embrasure from which the gun was being fired, and it too was silenced. Lilly pounded and sank a steamboat, the Paint Rock, disabled another, the Dunbar, at the Chattanooga wharf, and tore apart and splintered the pontoons which Bragg had been holding in readiness to be thrown across the river should he decide to recross and operate against Rosecrans’ flank or rear. The Northerner already was giving a hint that he was moving impetuously.

Meantime Colonel Smith D. Atkins, the youthful Freeport, Illinois, lawyer who commanded the 92nd Illinois mounted infantry of Wilder’s brigade, had crossed downstream at Battle Creek, after annoying the enemy upstream at Harrison, being protected by two rifled 10-pounders of the 5th Wisconsin battery. The brush at Harrison gave the battery opportunity to test its marksmanship in some of the first firing along the river. As Atkins had approached the riverbank he had seen a Confederate officer with a sash across his shoulder come down to the opposite bank and kneel under a box elder.

“What is he doing?” Atkins inquired of his adjutant, but a little puff of blue smoke gave the answer before the rifle ball sang over their heads. The Confederate was getting in a first shot at the approaching enemy. Colonel Atkins observed, “If you see a man shooting a rifle at you a mile away you have plenty of time to dodge . . . but you may as well stand still.” He knew that one is as likely to dodge into as away from the path of the bullet. The evidence of Confederate resistance caused the lieutenant commanding the Wisconsin battery to take the range on the Confederate gun emplacements—a fort with a brass gun in the center and two steel guns on the flanks. The lieutenant had a novel device, “a flat piece of brass full of holes of different sizes,” by which, if a man stood up on the opposite shore, he could determine the range and begin what Atkins called “scientific firing.”

No range-finder could have been more exact. When the Federals entered Chattanooga they learned that their first shot had dismantled the brass gun inside the Confederate fort and killed four men.

Once over the river, Atkins was ordered by Major General Joseph J. Reynolds to move toward Chattanooga. He marched at 3 A.M. on the morning of September 9, drove in the enemy pickets, passed over and around the head of Lookout Mountain where it is skirted by the river, and at 9:30 A.M. pushed his advance scouts down the Chattanooga streets.

The only obstacle to Atkins’ entry was that Wilder and other units still had the city under desultory fire from across the river and it was difficult to inform them that friends, not enemies, were approaching from the southwest. Patiently a lad with a semaphore spelled out the words “Ninety-second Illinois.” By the time three letters of the last word had been signaled, a great shout went up from Wilder’s men on the opposite bank. A short time later the Stars and Stripes flew from the roof of the Crutchfield house, three stories high on the Chattanooga skyline. It had been Bragg’s head-quarters.{2}

Bragg had at length detected the progress of Rosecrans’ two corps under Major Generals George H. Thomas and Alexander McD. McCook toward his left and rear, but he made no effort to retard them at the river. He had, in fact, withdrawn the brigade he had earlier stationed on outpost duty opposite Bridgeport, where he had burned the railroad bridge. He had begun on September 8 to move his army toward Ringgold and La Fayette, Georgia, across the parched land. The 33rd Alabama found the dust “half way up to our knees” and thought they must look like “a low line of dusty creatures without feet” as the regiment passed down the Chattanooga street, and, a little later, headed in Indian file through the mountain passes.

As he came around Lookout Mountain, Atkins could witness the withdrawal of Bragg’s rear guard. He directed one of his companies to follow toward Rossville, five miles out on the roads to the south, then moved with the balance of the regiment to the Chattanooga railroad depot.

While the initial bombardment was in progress George D. Wagner, commanding a brigade of Wood’s division, Crittenden’s corps, had reinforced Wilder on the north bank and set up additional batteries. They joined for several days in the random firing that preceded the evacuation. Though Wilder’s men insisted they bombed not the town but only the fortifications, someone’s shell fired from Stringer’s Ridge on Saturday, August 21, the day the bombardment opened, hit in front of the First Presbyterian Church on Market Street. President Davis had requested a “fast day” for the Southern cause and it was being observed faithfully in the town. A visiting minister, the Reverend B. M. Palmer of New Orleans, was delivering his prayer before the crowded congregation.

Sudden and frightening as was the explosion, the cool, gritty minister did not break the even tenor of his supplication; nor did the larger part of the congregation leave its place, including Colonel C. W. Heiskell and Dr. W. J. Worsham, both of the 19th Tennessee Infantry.

The main injury was to a little girl, whose leg was broken. Her parents, rushing her from the city, halted at the home of Colonel Beriah F. Moore. The colonel was absent, and his elderly father declined to admit the distressed family, maintaining that his house was already packed with fugitives from the bombardment. The refusal kindled anger among onlookers. Witnessing the incident was Brigadier General Preston Smith, the gallant Memphis militia officer who had been grievously wounded at Shiloh and had commanded Cleburne’s celebrated division on part of the Kentucky campaign. He severely upbraided the old man for barring his door to the wounded child. This so incensed Colonel Moore when he heard the facts that he in turn denounced Smith in writing as a coward and bully. Such heat was not infrequent among the high-spirited officers of Bragg’s army, even when an enemy was knocking at the Confederacy’s inner door.

General Smith accepted the challenge, though dueling was supposed to be suspended for the war. But neither the general nor the colonel was in a position to give or receive much satisfaction, for General Smith had an appointment he had to keep with death a few days later in the deep woods at Chickamauga, and Colonel Moore had a like rendezvous within sight of his father’s home on Missionary Ridge. Colonel Heiskell interceded to give each a brief, additional span of life.

About the only other result of the bombardment was that twenty-three-year-old Henry Watterson, who sat in the congregation, gained a bride. The young newspaperman had returned to his native Tennessee after a short term as music critic on the New York Times and was editing and printing the daily Chattanooga Rebel on wallpaper, while serving also on the staffs of some of the Confederate generals. He admired the young lady who sat composedly in the choir during the bombardment, escorted her home, and soon made her Mrs. Watterson.{3}

Brigadier General Wagner sent the first foot soldiers into the town. The 97th Ohio under Colonel John Q. Lane crossed the river in boats which the Northerners had secreted in coves and protected with artillery along the riverbank. Wilder went up the river and crossed at Friar’s Island, fighting off a Confederate rear guard. By this time Crittenden’s forces were converging on Chattanooga from three directions. The mixed Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky brigade of Samuel Beatty moved in from the Tennessee River crossing at Shellmound, worked its way up Nickajack Trace and reached the summit of Lookout Mountain on the early morning of September 9, where it looked down on Chattanooga, empty of everything except Confederate rear-guard cavalry. Dust clouds were visible to the south. Beatty hurried word to Rosecrans that Bragg had vacated the town, confirming intelligence already dispatched to army headquarters by Wagner; then he moved toward Rossville to maintain contact and report on the enemy’s retreat.

Colonel William Grose’s brigade followed Samuel Beatty. It scaled Lookout Mountain near the Hawkins farm nine miles southwest of Chattanooga and drove off Bragg’s left-wing skirmishers in a neat little action that probably involved about as much severe fighting as Hooker’s more extensive occupation of Lookout Mountain a few weeks later in the widely-heralded “battle above the clouds.” Now the 24th Ohio, a regiment which had fought at Cheat Mountain in West Virginia, had been a part of Buell’s succoring force that rushed to Grant’s aid at Shiloh, and had stood faithfully at Stone’s River, distinguished itself by its impetuous assault. Grose gave especial praise to Captain Isaac N. Dryden “for daring bravery in ascending the mountain and driving and punishing the enemy.” He too would live until he entered the woods at Chickamauga.{4}

CHAPTER TWO — Over the River and Ranges

FEW MORE spectacular feats had occurred during the war than Rosecrans’ crossing of the Tennessee River in late August and early September 1863.

The army collected a sufficient number of boats for the construction of a single pontoon, which was thrown over the river at Caperton’s Ferry, the crossing for the town of Stevenson, the important railroad junction of the area. Major General Philip H. Sheridan, a division commander of McCook’s corps, meantime began building a trestle bridge at Bridgeport. It was not very satisfactory because a substantial portion of it collapsed while under construction, but fortunately for the army, no troops were on it when the timbers plunged into the river. By September 2, when a good part of the army was already over the river, it was repaired and serviceable, and Sheridan crossed.

The divisions of Richard W. Johnson and Jefferson C. Davis, both of McCook’s corps, marched across the pontoon bridge during the three days of August 29, 30, and 31. Brigadier General John M. Brannan’s division of Thomas’ corps made a more resourceful and exciting crossing at the mouth of Battle Creek, which enters the river between Shellmound and Bridgeport, about twenty-five air miles below Chattanooga. The locality was shielded from Bragg’s army, then still in the town, not only by the great bends of the winding river, but also by the parallel ridges of Raccoon and Lookout mountains.

Brannan’s division crossed mainly in the most primitive of craft, pirogues such as were used by the Indians and the early French settlers. They were hollowed out from the huge Tennessee poplars and would hold a small company, or up to fifty men. The poplars were cut and shaped behind the protecting forests along Battle Creek and floated down to the river when Rosecrans signaled the moment for crossing. From other timbers the soldiers built barges large enough to float the artillery, while the good swimmers fastened fence rails into small rafts that would hold their guns, ammunition, equipment and clothing. These they pushed ahead of them as they breasted the current. The odd-looking flotilla swept out of the mouth of Battle Creek on August 29, covered by Federal sharpshooters along the north bank. Brannan easily effected a landing and drove off the Confederate pickets on the southern shore.{5}

Reynolds’ division crossed mainly in small boats that had been collected up and down the river. Soon t...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• TO THE MEMORY
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART I - ROSECRANS: Gifted eccentric
• PART II - BRAGG: Brusque, .Prickly But “‘Will Fight”
• PART III - LONGSTREET: Whirlwind In The Forest
• PART IV - THOMAS: Rock of Chickamauga
• ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND, U.S.A. - Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans
• ARMY OF TENNESSEE, C.S.A. - General Braxton Bragg
• Bibliography