Chickamauga Campaign

• Lieutenant General D. H. HillChattanooga
• Major General Thomas C. HindmanDavis' Cross Roads
• Major General John C. BreckinridgeDavis' Cross Roads
• General Braxton BraggChickamauga
• Lieutenant General James LongstreetChickamauga

• Colonel John T. WilderChattanooga
• Major General James NegleyDavis' Cross Roads
• Major General William S. RosecransChickamauga
• Major General George H. ThomasChickamauga

Between August 21 and September 20, 1863, Union and Confederate forces clashed repeatedly across northwestern Georgia in what became known as the Chickamauga campaign, pitting the Army of the Cumberland against the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Early momentum favored Rosecrans, whose Union troops managed to seize Chattanooga, a city of considerable strategic value, while pushing the Confederate army southward into Georgia. That advantage proved short lived, however, once Confederate forces struck at Chickamauga. The assault drove Rosecrans and his army back to Chattanooga, where the Confederates then encircled and besieged them.

Opposing forces

Federal troops made up one side of this engagement, though no further particulars about them appear in the source material.

Confederate

Capt. David G. Swaim kept the intelligence journal belonging to William S. Rosecrans, and this record lays out in full detail exactly what Rosecrans understood at each stage of his decision making. Historians have long presumed that Braxton Bragg operated in the dark, lacking any real sense of federal movements when he made his choices. Yet the diary kept by Lt. Col. George Brent, Bragg's assistant adjutant general, tells a different story. That account thoroughly traces what Bragg was aware of at any given moment and shows clearly that he responded to the intelligence available to him. Espionage was a tool both sides employed.

Available technology

Both sides drew on innovations that were still fairly new to warfare. Rail travel itself had existed in North America for less than three decades, yet each army relied on single track lines to keep supplies moving through rugged, unforgiving country.

The telegraph, too, had only recently come into use, but the Army of the Cumberland had already brought the singing wire directly onto the field of combat. Under William S. Rosecrans, army engineers also constructed a number of pontoon and trestle bridges spanning the Tennessee River.

Battles

On August 21, 1863, Rosecrans directed a brigade to bombard Chattanooga from the west bank of the Tennessee River while engaging the bulk of the Confederate garrison in skirmishes, a tactic meant to draw eyes away from the column he had sent flanking southwest of the city. He also positioned additional Union forces along the river to the east. This ruse worked, and Bragg massed his troops on the eastern side of Chattanooga in response. Recognizing that he could no longer hold the city, Bragg pulled his army out on September 6 and withdrew south into northern Georgia.

Aftermath

After Chickamauga, Rosecrans pulled his forces back into Chattanooga. Troops from the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Potomac arrived to bolster his position. On September 28, Crittenden and Alexander McCook, who led the XX Corps, both lost their commands over accusations of misconduct during the battle, though each was later cleared of wrongdoing. Grant, who had just taken charge of the Military Division of the Mississippi and assumed control of Union forces around Chattanooga, chose on October 19 to remove Rosecrans and put Thomas in his place.

During the fighting at Chickamauga, the Army of Tennessee had already been struggling with insufficient food supplies and too few wagons for hauling provisions, and it had no pontoon bridges available for crossing the Tennessee River. Given these shortages, Bragg opted instead to besiege the Union army rather than press an immediate assault. His forces took up positions on Missionary Ridge and extended a line of pickets along the river's southern bank toward Alabama. Confederate sharpshooters kept up fire that blocked Union supply wagons from getting through to Chattanooga. This siege set off the Chattanooga campaign, a struggle that stretched through the rest of 1863 and eventually pushed Confederate troops out of Tennessee altogether.