The Battle of Chickamauga, fought on September 18–20, 1863, between the United States Army, or Union Army, and Confederate forces in the American Civil War, marked the end of a U.S. Army offensive, the Chickamauga Campaign, in southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. It was the first major battle of the war fought in Georgia and the most significant Union defeat in the Western Theater, and it involved the second-highest number of casualties after the Battle of Gettysburg.
The battle was fought between the U.S. Army's Army of the Cumberland under Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans and the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Gen. Braxton Bragg, and was named for Chickamauga Creek. The West Chickamauga Creek meanders near and forms the southeast boundary of the battle area and the park in northwest Georgia. (The South Chickamauga ultimately flows into the Tennessee River about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) northeast of downtown Chattanooga).
After his successful Tullahoma Campaign, Rosecrans renewed the offensive, aiming to force the Confederates out of Chattanooga. In early September, Rosecrans consolidated his forces scattered in Tennessee and Georgia and forced Bragg's army out of Chattanooga, heading south. The Union troops followed it and brushed with it at Davis's Cross Roads. Bragg was determined to reoccupy Chattanooga and decided to meet a part of Rosecrans's army, defeat it, and then move back into the city. On September 17 he headed north, intending to attack the isolated XXI Corps. As Bragg marched north on September 18, his cavalry and infantry fought with Union cavalry and mounted infantry, which were armed with Spencer repeating rifles. The two armies fought at Alexander's Bridge and Reed's Bridge, as the Confederates tried to cross the West Chickamauga Creek.
A number of failed communications occurred before the official fighting started. Bragg had a tendency to bypass his wing commanders and give orders straight to their subordinates, which caused confusion and misdirection in the first couple of days before the battle occurred.
Fighting began in earnest on the morning of September 19. Bragg's men strongly assaulted but could not break the US line. The next day, Bragg resumed his assault. In late morning, Rosecrans was misinformed that he had a gap in his line. In moving units to shore up the supposed gap, Rosecrans accidentally created an actual gap directly in the path of an eight-brigade assault on a narrow front by Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, whose corps had been detached from the Army of Northern Virginia. In the resulting rout, Longstreet's attack drove one-third of the Army of the Cumberland, including Rosecrans himself, from the field.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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