Chickamauga was a Civil War engagement fought in Georgia, 1863. It was a Confederate victory.
After the Tullahoma Campaign, Rosecrans renewed his offensive, aiming to force the Confederates out of Chattanooga. The three army corps comprising Rosecrans' s army split and set out for Chattanooga by separate routes. 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' Cross Roads. Bragg was determined to reoccupy Chattanooga and decided to meet a part of Rosecrans's army, defeat them, and then move back into the city. On the 17th he headed north, intending to meet and beat the XXI Army Corps. As Bragg marched north on the 18th, his cavalry and infantry fought with Union cavalry and mounted infantry which were armed with Spencer repeating rifles. Fighting began in earnest on the morning of the 19th, and Bragg's men hammered but did not break the Union line. The next day, Bragg continued his assault on the Union line on the left, and in late morning, Rosecrans was informed that he had a gap in his line. In moving units to shore up the supposed gap, Rosencrans created one, and James Longstreet's men promptly exploited it, driving one-third of the Union army, including Rosecrans himself, from the field. George H. Thomas took over command and began consolidating forces on Horseshoe Ridge and Snodgrass Hill. Although the Rebels launched determined assaults on these forces, they held until after dark. Thomas then led these men from the field leaving it to the Confederates. The Union retired to Chattanooga while the Rebels occupied the surrounding heights.
Fought over three days, September 18 through 20 in 1863, Chickamauga pitted the Union Army against Confederate forces during the Civil War and brought a close to the Chickamauga Campaign, an offensive the U.S. Army had launched across southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. It stands as the earliest large-scale engagement of the conflict to take place on Georgia soil, and among Western Theater battles it dealt the Union its worst setback. Only Gettysburg produced more casualties.
Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans led the Army of the Cumberland against Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee, and the clash took its name from the nearby creek. West Chickamauga Creek winds close to, and defines, the southeastern edge of both the battlefield and the park that now preserves it in northwest Georgia. Eventually the South Chickamauga empties into the Tennessee River roughly 3.5 miles, or 5.6 kilometers, northeast of Chattanooga's center.
Having triumphed in the Tullahoma Campaign, Rosecrans pushed forward again, this time seeking to dr
During the summer of 1863, Rosecrans achieved a decisive victory in the Tullahoma Campaign, pushing southeast from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His skillful maneuvering outflanked Bragg, compelling the Confederate commander to give up Middle Tennessee entirely and pull back toward Chattanooga. Remarkably, Union losses throughout this operation totaled just 569 men. Both President Lincoln and General-in-chief Henry W. Halleck pressed Rosecrans to press his advantage and capture Chattanooga without delay. The city's fall would clear a path southward toward Atlanta and the Confederate interior. Beyond its strategic location on the navigable Tennessee River, Chattanooga functioned as a crucial railway junction, linking north to Nashville and Knoxville while connecting south to Atlanta, and served as a significant center for iron and coke production. Its natural defenses were formidable too, nestled among Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Raccoon Mountain, and Stringer's Ridge.
By late July, Bragg commanded roughly 52,000 troops within his Army of Tennessee. Confederate authorities then folded Simon B. Buckner's Department of East Tennessee into Bragg's command structure, adding 17,800 soldiers and bringing his total force to 69,800 men. This expansion, however, stretched his responsibilities all the way north to Knoxville and introduced yet another subordinate commander harboring little respect for him. Already, animosity simmered between Leonidas Polk and William J. Hardee within Bragg's ranks. Buckner nursed his own grievances, still smarting from Bragg's failed 1862 invasion of Kentucky, his home state, and now resentful over losing independent command through the merger. On a brighter note for Bragg, Hardee requested transfer to Mississippi that July; his replacement, D.H. Hill, arrived carrying baggage of his own, having previously clashed with Robert E. Lee in Virginia.
Early August brought an inquiry from Confederate War Department officials asking whether Bragg might launch an offensive against Rosecrans given reinforcements from Mississippi. Bragg hesitated, wary of the punishing terrain and supply difficulties such a campaign would demand, and instead chose to let Rosecrans exhaust himself against those same obstacles first. Adding to his caution was the threat posed by Ambrose E. Burnside's substantial Union force menacing Knoxville. Bragg subsequently pulled his troops back from forward positions near Bridgeport, effectively ceding Rosecrans room to operate along the northern bank of the Tennessee River. Concentrating his infantry, organized into two corps, around Chattanooga itself, he entrusted cavalry with guarding his flanks across a wide stretch reaching from northern Alabama nearly to Knoxville.
Confederate leadership then gambled on a strategic shift in the western theater, dispatching reinforcements to Bragg not only from Mississippi but also from Virginia, namely James Longstreet with two divisions drawn from his First Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia. This marked the first major instance during the war of Confederate forces shifting between theaters on such a scale, undertaken specifically to create a temporary numerical edge capable of producing a decisive outcome. Encouraged by these reinforcements, Bragg began planning to strike the Union army the moment his buildup reached sufficient strength.
The battle and the broader campaign derive their name from West Chickamauga Creek. Popular accounts frequently claim that the word "Chickamauga" translates from Cherokee as "river of death," though Peter Cozzens, in his book This Terrible Sound, characterizes this rendering as merely a "loose translation." Glenn Tucker offers competing interpretations: "stagnant water" from what he calls the lower Cherokee dialect, "good country" from Chickasaw, and "river of death" from an upcountry Cherokee dialect. According to Tucker, the death-related meaning traces not to combat but to a location where Cherokee people contracted smallpox. James Mooney, writing in Myths of the Cherokee, identified "Chickamauga" as the common spelling of Tsïkäma'gï, a term he said carries no meaning within the Cherokee language itself, suggesting instead it likely stems from an Algonquian word describing a fish-spearing site, and if not Sh
Moving his army forward posed serious logistical problems for Rosecrans. Between the two armies lay the Cumberland Plateau, a harsh and largely empty stretch of terrain stretching more than 30 miles, marked by bad roads and scant forage. Should Bragg strike while the Federals were crossing this ground, Rosecrans would find himself fighting with the mountains at his back and his supply lines stretched thin. Yet standing still was not an option, since Washington was pressing him hard to advance in coordination with Burnside's push into East Tennessee. Halleck's patience ran out by early August, and he ordered Rosecrans to begin moving at once and to send word every day on the position of each corps until the Tennessee River had been crossed. Rosecrans bristled at what he called the "recklessness, conceit and malice" in Halleck's directive, arguing that starting the advance before August 17 would invite catastrophe.
Rosecrans understood that supplying his troops from his existing base would grow difficult once they crossed the Tennessee, so he believed it essential to stockpile provisions and wagons first, enough to sustain the army over long stretches without dependable communication lines. Most of his generals agreed that delay was wise. The lone exception was his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. James A. Garfield, a man with political instincts who gras
Confusion over the route out of Ringgold sent Bushrod Johnson's division astray before it finally turned onto the Reed's Bridge Road heading west. Around seven in the morning, his troops ran into mounted pickets from Col. Robert Minty's brigade, posted there to guard the approach to the bridge. Facing a five-to-one disadvantage and pressed by elements of Forrest's cavalry, Minty's horsemen fell back over the span, yet they never managed to burn it, leaving the crossing open for Johnson's advance. By 4:30 that afternoon, with Johnson's column at Jay's Mill, Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood rode in from the rail depot at Catoosa, representing Longstreet's Corps, and assumed command of the force there. Rather than follow the Brotherton Road as Johnson intended, Hood directed the march onto the Jay's Mill Road instead.
Farther south, at Alexander's Bridge, Col. John T. Wilder's brigade of mounted infantry stood in the way of Walker's Corps. With Spencer repeating rifles in hand and the support of four cannon from Capt. Lilly's 18th Indiana Battery, Wilder's men checked a brigade belonging to Brig. Gen. St. John Liddell's division, inflicting 105 casualties thanks to their firepower advantage. Unable to force the crossing directly, Walker shifted his column a mile downstream to the undefended ford at Lambert's, finally getting his men over around 4:30 p.m., well behind the schedule Bragg had wanted. Once word reached Wilder that Minty had lost Reed's Bridge, worry over his exposed left flank led him to pull back and form a new defensive line east of the Lafayette Road, close to the Viniard farm.
As night fell, Johnson's division came to a stop facing Wilder's new position. Walker's men, though across the creek, remained strung out along the
Thomas's shift of the XIV Corps on the prior day left the Army of the Cumberland's left flank positioned farther north than Bragg had anticipated when drawing up his September 20 attack plans. Bragg believed Crittenden's XXI Corps, massed near Lee and Gordon's Mill, marked that flank, but in fact Thomas stretched behind him across a broad front, from Negley's division at Crawfish Springs, through Reynolds at the Widow Glenn's house and Baird at Kelly field, to Brannan near the McDonald farm. Granger's Reserve Corps occupied the battlefield's northern edge between Rossville and McAfee's Church.
Bragg intended to strike what he thought was the Union left using the corps of Buckner, Hood, and Walker, with Forrest's cavalry screening to the north. Cheatham's division waited in reserve at the center, and Cleburne's sat in reserve at Thedford's Ford. Hindman's division stood opposite Crittenden at the mill, while Breckinridge's faced Negley.
Chickamauga began almost by chance. Pickets from Col. Daniel McCook's brigade, part of Granger's command, wandered toward Jay's Mill looking for water. McCook had come up from Rossville on September 18 to support Col. Robert Minty's brigade, and his men had dug in several hundred yards northwest of the mill, roughly as far from it as the 1st Georgia Cavalry, which had waited through the night to the south. Just as McCook dispatched a regiment to destroy Reed's Bridge (it would survive this second attempt within two days), Brig. Gen. Henry Davidson of Forrest's cavalry pushed the 1st Georgia forward, and the two forces collided near the mill. Granger ordered McCook to fall back toward Rossville, with Davidson's horsemen in pursuit. McCook, having just completed an all-night march from Crawfish Springs, ran into Thomas along the LaFayette Road and told him that a lone Confederate brigade was cut off west of Chickamauga Creek. Thomas ordered Brannan to move in and destroy it.
Brannan answered with three brigades. Van Derveer's moved southeast along Reed's Bridge Road with Croxton's on his right, while Connell's brigade trailed behind in reserve. Croxton pushed Davidson's cavalry back until Forrest dismounted his troopers into a defensive line, at which point Croxton, uncertain of the strength facing him, called a halt. Forrest asked Bragg and Walker near Alexander's Bridge for help, and around 9 a.m. Walker sent Col. Claudius Wilson's brigade into Croxton's right flank. Forrest, meanwhile, guarded his own right by putting in Col. George Dibrell's brigade, which collided with Van Derveer and stalled under fire. Without informing Walker, Forrest also called up Brig. Gen. Matthew Ector's brigade from Walker's reserve; Ector took Dibrell's place in the line but fared no better against Van Derveer.
Brannan's men kept their ground against Forrest's infantry but began running short of ammunition. Thomas sent in Baird's division to help, two brigades forward and one held back. Brig. Gen. John King's regulars took over from Croxton, Col. Benjamin Scribner's brigade fell in on King's right, and Col. John Starkweather stayed in reserve. Outnumbering and outgunning the Confederates before them, Scribner and King began forcing Wilson and Ector rearward.
Bragg answered by feeding in Brig. Gen. St. John Liddell's division. The brigades of Col. Daniel Govan and Brig. Gen. Edward Walthall drove up the Alexander's Bridge Road and shattered Baird's right. Scribner's and Starkweather's men broke and ran, and King's regulars soon followed, streaming to the rear straight through Van Derveer's ranks. Van Derveer's brigade stopped the Confederate surge with a close vol
A collection of images depicts the fighting at Chickamauga, drawn from the atlas that accompanies the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.
Once night fell, Thomas pulled his remaining units back to positions near Rossville Gap. His refusal to abandon the Union line until given the order to withdraw, even as his commander and fellow officers fled, gave him a lasting nickname, Rock of Chickamauga. The name traced back to words Garfield sent to Rosecrans describing Thomas as standing "like a rock." That night Garfield found Thomas at Rossville and telegraphed Rosecrans that the men had not merely held their line but had in many spots pushed the enemy back with real force, adding that Longstreet's Virginians had taken all they could handle. Despite exhaustion, hunger, and dwindling ammunition among the troops, Garfield went on to say he thought they could beat the Confederates the next day and turn the whole engagement into a victory. He pressed Rosecrans to return to the army and take command again, but Rosecrans, drained in body and broken in spirit, stayed behind in Chattanooga. Lincoln tried to bolster his general's confidence by wiring him words of encouragement, telling him that his soldiers and officers retained full trust, that Rosecrans himself was best positioned to judge the next move, and suggesting that if pressed for advice, he would recommend holding strong ground until Burnside's forces arrived. Away from official channels, Lincoln confided to John Hay that Rosecrans appeared dazed, comparing him to a duck struck on the head.
Meanwhile the Army of Tennessee bivouacked for the night, not realizing the Union force had escaped their reach. Bragg lacked the means to launch a pursuit forceful enough to inflict further serious harm on Rosecrans. Many of his soldiers had reached Chickamauga hastily by train without their supply wagons, and numerous artillery horses had been killed or wounded in the fighting. The Tennessee River now blocked the Confederates' path, and without pontoon bridges Bragg could not cross it. His army halted at Chickamauga instead to regroup and collect equipment abandoned by the retreating Federals. Rosecrans managed to preserve most of his supply trains, though he left behind substantial stores of ammunition and weapons. Historian Thomas L. Connelly, who has studied the Army of Tennessee, faulted Bragg's conduct that day, arguing that during a stretch of more than four hours on the afternoon of September 20 he passed up multiple chances to trap the retreating Federals, whether by pushing up the Dry Valley Road toward McFarland's Gap or by sending a division, Cheatham's among the possibilities, around Polk's flank to seize Rossville Gap or McFarland's Gap by way of Reed's Bridge Road.
By September 21, Rosecrans had pulled his army back into Chattanooga, where his men fortified the town using earlier Confederate defenses. Yet the routes supplying the city were vulnerable, and Confederate forces soon took the high ground around Chattanooga, placing the Union troops under siege. Having failed to break free of the siege, Rosecrans was stripped of command of the Army of the Cumberland on October 19 and succeeded by Thomas. Command changes also struck McCook and Crittenden on September 28, when their XX Corps and XXI Corps were merged into a new IV Corps under Granger; neither man would lead troops in combat again. On the Confederate side, Bragg turned his frustration on subordinates he blamed for the campaign's shortcomings, singling out Hindman for inaction at McLemore's Cove and Polk for delaying his attack on September 20. Both were suspended from duty on September 29. Early October brought an attempted uprising among Bragg's subordinate officers, which ended with D.H. Hill losing his command. Longstreet, meanwhile, was sent with his corps toward the Knoxville Campaign against Ambrose Burnside, leaving Bragg's force at Chattanooga considerably weakened.
Historian and combat veteran Harold Knudsen views Chickamauga as the Confederacy's first significant attempt to shift troops between theaters using what he calls the nation's interior lines, seeking temporary numerical advantage and the initiative in hopes of a decisive western victory. According to Knudsen, the buildup the Confederates achieved there represented a chance to act within the framework
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