On the morning of September 20, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Chickamauga opened under a haze of smoke and exhaustion. The previous day’s fighting, along Chickamauga Creek in Northwest Georgia, had been ferocious but inconclusive. Union Major General William S. Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland, roughly 58,000 strong, still blocked Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s path to Chattanooga. Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, reinforced by Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s veterans from the Army of Northern Virginia, now commanded about 66,000 men and intended to destroy the Federal army before it could slip away.
Bragg ordered an attack at dawn, beginning on his right, under Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, and rolling southward. Confusion and poor coordination delayed the assault. It was not until about 9:30 a.m. that Confederate troops struck Major General George H. Thomas’s XIV Corps on the Union left. The attacks were heavy. Some Confederate brigades briefly turned Thomas’s flank and reached the Lafayette Road, threatening the Federal rear, but timely Union reinforcements threw them back. Thomas’s men held their positions around Kelly Field through the morning, buying time at a steep cost in blood.
Farther south, disaster was taking shape. Around 10:30 a.m., Rosecrans received an erroneous report that a gap existed in his line. Anxious and already strained by the campaign, he ordered Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood to shift his division immediately to close it. Wood knew the order was mistaken—no gap existed—but he had been reprimanded twice already for tardiness. He moved at once. The result was a wide opening in the Union center.
At approximately 11:30 a.m., Longstreet launched his assault straight into that opening. Eight brigades in three dense lines, led by the aggressive Major General John Bell Hood’s division, smashed through. The Confederate yell rose as they poured into the breach. Union resistance on the right and center collapsed in minutes. Entire divisions disintegrated. Rosecrans’s headquarters at the Widow Glenn house was overrun. The Union commander himself, caught in the chaos, joined the flood of fleeing soldiers streaming north toward Chattanooga. Roughly one-third of the Army of the Cumberland was routed. (Another casualty of this portion of the battle was “Sam” Hood. The aggressive commander was in the saddle, commanding his division, when a minié ball entered his right thigh. The injury would require a circular amputation near his hip. This injury, while not significantly impacting this battle, would have wide ranging ramifications later in the war.)
What remained of the Federal army now depended on George H. Thomas. As fugitives streamed past him, the Virginia-born general—calm, methodical, and immovable—began gathering scattered units on the high ground of Snodgrass Hill and the adjacent Horseshoe Ridge. He formed an improvised horseshoe-shaped line. “This hill must be held,” he told one brigade commander. The reply came back: “We will hold it or die here.”
Through the afternoon the Confederates came on again and again. Longstreet fed fresh brigades into the fight—Kershaw’s, Preston’s, and others—pressing to within yards of the Union line. Fighting was savage and close: musketry at point-blank range, bayonet charges, and hand-to-hand combat amid the trees and rocky slopes. Ammunition ran low on both sides. Thomas rode the line, steadying his men. Late in the afternoon, the Union lines were reinforced by Major General Gordon Granger’s Reserve Corps, which included Brigadier General James Steedman’s division. These fresh troops plugged gaps and launched counterattacks that blunted the Confederate momentum. Granger’s men suffered nearly 50 percent casualties in the desperate fighting.
As the sun sank, the Confederate assaults continued but could not break the position. Thomas had received orders to withdraw earlier but refused to leave while the enemy still pressed. Only when a lull finally came did he begin pulling his left wing back toward McFarland’s Gap and Rossville. He left Granger in command on Snodgrass Hill. In the gathering dusk, the last Union units slipped away in relatively good order. Some Confederate troops occupied the abandoned positions and captured stragglers, but the main Federal force escaped destruction.
Night fell on a very lopsided Confederate victory. Bragg had driven Rosecrans from the field and inflicted more than 16,000 Union casualties, including nearly 5,000 missing or captured. His own army had suffered even heavier losses—over 18,000 men. But, the Confederate cause suffered the ultimate loss as Bragg failed to pursue aggressively. The Army of the Cumberland, battered but intact, reached the defenses of Chattanooga. Thomas’s stand had saved it.
The second day of Chickamauga was one of the war’s most dramatic reversals. A single mistaken order opened the door to catastrophe; one general’s stubborn defense closed it just enough. Thomas earned the enduring nickname “The Rock of Chickamauga.” The battle remains the bloodiest engagement of the Civil War’s Western Theater, a tactical Confederate success that nevertheless left the Union army in possession of the prize both sides had sought: Chattanooga.
After battering Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, at the turn of 1863 (Battle of Stones River), a running battle southeast across Tennessee ensued. For Rosecrans, it would end up with him being badly mauled at Chickamauga – and a retreat into Chattanooga. Once there he would essentially be bottled in – with Raccoon Mountain – and its ridges blocking the path to Nashville – and the Tennessee River, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge holding Bragg’s troops in every other direction. President Lincoln, commenting to his secretary John Hay, would say Rosecrans appeared, “confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.” The siege which followed would cause immense hardship for the Army of the Cumberland. Without a secure supply line to Nashville, the Union soldiers would suffer on half rations – or less – until Major General Ulysses S. Grant was given command of the Western Theater two months later. Lincoln gave Grant the option of retaining Rosecrans, appointing Thomas as commander or taking command himself. He chose Thomas. Thus ended the Battle of Chickamauga. Watch for an upcoming narrative and analysis of the Battle of Chattanooga.
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