Davis' Cross Roads was a Civil War engagement fought in Georgia, 1863. It was a Union victory.
After the Tullahoma Campaign, Rosecrans renewed his offensive, aiming to force the Rebels out of Chattanooga. The three corps comprising Rosecrans's army split and set out for Chattanooga by separate routes. Hearing of the Union advance, Braxton Bragg concentrated troops around Chattanooga. While Col. John T. Wilder's artillery fired on Chattanooga, Rosecrans attempted to take advantage of Bragg's situation and ordered other troops into Georgia. They raced forward, seized the important gaps, and moved out into McLemore's Cove. Negley's XIV Army Corps division, supported by Brig. Gen. Absalom Baird's division, was moving across the mouth of the cove on the Dug Gap road when Negley learned that Rebels were concentrating around Dug Gap. Moving through determined resistance, he closed on the gap, withdrawing to Davis' Cross Roads in the evening of September 10 to await the supporting division. Bragg had ordered General Hindman with his division to assault Negley at Davis' Cross Roads in the flank, while Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne's division forced its way through Dug Gap to strike Negley in front. Hindman was to receive reinforcements for this movement, but most of them did not arrive. The Rebel officers, therefore, met and decided that they could not attack in their present condition. The next morning, however, fresh troops did arrive, and the Rebels began to move on the Union line. The supporting Union division had, by now, joined Negley, and, hearing of a Confederate attack, the Union forces determined that a strategic withdrawal to Stevens Gap was in order. Negley first moved his division to the ridge east of West Chickamauga Creek where it established a defensive line. The other division then moved through them to Stevens Gap and established a defensive line there. Both divisions awaited the rest of Maj. Gen. George Thomas's corps. All of this was accomplished under constant pursuit and fire from the Confederates.
In northwestern Georgia, opposing forces maneuvered and clashed briefly at Davis's Cross Roads on September 10 and 11, 1863, an episode belonging to the Chickamauga Campaign of the American Civil War. Rather than a true engagement, the affair amounted mostly to positioning and small skirmishes, and losses on both sides remained minimal.
Early in the campaign, the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, forced Gen. Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Rosecrans then split his forces into three columns, sending them along separate roads into northwestern Georgia. Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas led the XIV Corps along the middle route, crossing into Trenton, Georgia, and readying his men to push on toward Lafayette, where Bragg's army was actually stationed, in hopes of catching the retreating Confederates. Faulty reports and weak intelligence had left Rosecrans believing that Bragg's men were beaten down and pulling back toward Dalton, Georgia, further to the southeast. Bragg, however, recognized that the scattered Union columns had left themselves exposed, and he planned to strike Thomas, stop his march, and crush him before he could regroup.
Union forces under Thomas pushed ahead quickly, capturing key passes through Lookout Mountain before advancing into McLemore Cove. As Maj. Gen. James S. Negley led his division across the cove's entrance along the Dug Gap road, with Brig. Gen. Absalom Baird's division backing him up, word reached Negley that Confederate forces were gathering near Dug Gap. Despite facing stiff opposition, his troops pressed forward toward the gap before pulling back to Davis' Cross Roads on the night of September 10, where they waited for Baird's division to catch up.
Meanwhile, Bragg had devised a plan calling for Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman to strike Negley's flank at Davis's Cross Roads, coordinated with Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne pushing his division through Dug Gap to hit the Union front directly. Hindman was supposed to gain additional troops for this operation, yet the bulk of these reinforcements failed to show up in time. Faced with this shortfall, Confederate commanders conferred and concluded that launching an assault under such circumstances was not feasible.
By the following morning the situation had changed, as new troops finally reached the Confederates, prompting them to advance against the Union position. On the Union side, Baird's division had by this point linked up with Negley, and upon learning of the approaching Confederate assault, the two commanders judged it wise to pull back toward Stevens Gap rather than risk battle. Negley first repositioned his troops on the high ground east of West Chickamauga Creek, setting up a defensive position there. Baird's division then passed through Negley's line on its way to Stevens Gap, where it too dug in defensively. Both units held these positions while waiting for the remainder of Thomas's corps to arrive, all while Confederate forces kept up steady pressure and fire throughout the withdrawal.
Having failed in his effort to strike a single, isolated Union corps, Bragg shifted his focus northward toward Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden's XXI Corps. This move laid the groundwork for the costly fighting that would erupt at Chickamauga on September 19.
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