This Day In U.S. Military History – September 19, 1863

The Battle of Chickamauga - Day 1

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On the morning of September 19, 1863, the woods along West Chickamauga Creek, in northwestern Georgia, were still and heavy with dust. Overnight, Union Major General George H. Thomas had marched the bulk of his XIV Corps north along the Lafayette Road, to cover the Union left and protect the army’s line of retreat toward Chattanooga. Major General William S. Rosecrans, commander of the Federal Army of the Cumberland, believed he had blocked Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s attempt to slip his Army of Tennessee between his army and the city. Bragg, for his part, still thought the Union left rested farther south – near Lee and Gordon’s Mill. Neither commander fully understood how close the two armies now stood.

Thomas received a report that an isolated Confederate brigade had crossed the creek and been cut off. He sent Brigadier General John M. Brannan’s division to push it back over the creek. Shortly after 7:30 a.m., Colonel John T. Croxton’s brigade stumbled into dismounted troopers of Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalry near Jay’s Mill. What began as a skirmish exploded. Forrest, never one to refuse a fight, called for infantry. Major General William H.T. Walker’s Reserve Corps answered. By mid-morning the fight had drawn in Brigadier General Absalom Baird’s Union division as well. In the tangled undergrowth, around Winfrey Field, lines of Blue and Gray crashed together at ranges of fifty yards or less. Visibility vanished in smoke and cedar thickets. Officers lost entire regiments in the gloom.

Bragg and Rosecrans both reacted the same way: they fed more troops into the rapidly expanding meat grinder. The battle line stretched south like a fuse. Around midday, CSA Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham’s division slammed into the Union center. Attack and counterattack rolled through the woods. Units advanced, recoiled, and advanced again over the same ground. Artillery, when it could find a clearing, fired at point-blank range. The noise was continuous and deafening.

By early afternoon the fighting reached the Brotherton and Viniard farms on the south edge of the rapidly expanding battlefield. Major General Alexander P. Stewart’s Confederate division struck Brigadier General Horatio Van Cleve’s Federals and drove them back across the Lafayette Road in disorder. Union reinforcements—portions of Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis’s (not to be confused with CSA President Jefferson Davis) and Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood’s divisions—rushed in. Colonel John T. Wilder’s mounted “Lightning Brigade,” armed with Spencer repeating rifles, poured a volume of fire that briefly checked the Confederate surge on the southern end of the field. Men fought across worm fences and through cornfields. Casualties mounted with shocking speed. One participant later wrote that the afternoon became “a vortex of hell.”

As daylight faded, another Confederate column entered the fight. Major General Patrick R. Cleburne’s division, having crossed the creek at Thedford’s Ford, formed in the gathering dusk and struck Thomas’s left near Jay’s Mill and the Kelly Field. The surprise was complete. Cleburne’s men drove the Federals nearly a mile westward, capturing guns and colors before darkness and exhaustion halted them. Union troops fell back in complete disorder, along the Lafayette Road, and began throwing up log breastworks by firelight.

Thankfully for the sweaty, worn-out soldiers, night fell on a battlefield with both sides entrenched and neither gaining enough ground to feel victorious. The Union army still held the vital road to Chattanooga, but it had been forced backward and badly bloodied. Bragg had failed to turn the Federal left or cut the army off from the city, yet his troops had gained ground and inflicted heavy losses. Both commanders spent the night shifting units and issuing new orders. Lieutenant General James Longstreet arrived after dark, having been detached from General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. His troops would represent the Left Wing of Bragg’s Army of Tennessee.

The first day of Chickamauga had been a brutal, confused slugging match in dense woods that favored neither side’s command and control. Thousands already lay dead or wounded among the dense trees. The armies would meet again at dawn, but the character of the battle had been set: close-range, relentless, and costly beyond anything yet seen in the Civil War’s Western Theater.

Neither side’s commanders had been prepared for a full-scale battle to break out in the dense woodlots of northwest Georgia on that early fall day. With a mountainous backdrop and the mighty Tennessee River at his back, Rosecrans found himself in a position where he’d have to face off against the acerbic Bragg the next morning – a commander he knew well after the Battle of Stones River. Bragg, with the arrival of Longstreet’s Corps, had to feel confident while meeting with his commanders that evening.