The second deadliest battle of the American Civil War, Chickamauga is nowhere near as well-known as other battles such as Gettysburg, Antietam, or Vicksburg. The first two were fought by the Army of the Potomac, the main Federal army fighting in the eastern theater of the war centered on Virginia. If this army had been destroyed, the Federal cause would have been defeated. Neither Gettysburg nor Antietam were large-scale Federal victories. They both were emphatic ending notes to the two invasions of the Northern States in 1862 and 1863 by General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Vicksburg meant the Confederate States were split into two as Federal control over the Mississippi came into being.
Chickamauga also was not a Federal victory, at least on a tactical scale. In fact, the defeat could have been more catastrophic for the Union cause if the Confederate army led by General Braxton Bragg possessed enough strength post-battle to continue taking the fight to the wounded Federal Army of the Cumberland tied up inside the fortifications of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
PRESERVATION
The 1890s saw a golden age in the preservation of battlefields from the Civil War era thanks to the political power and accumulated wealth acquired by many of those who served with the Union armies during the war. Former battlegrounds were purchased for preservation. The most well-known were then filled with monuments built by the monies of many of the veterans’ associations and some appreciative States. Political power in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century resided in a large part with veterans of the war. The battlefields of Chickamauga became the first to be purchased and protected at a federal level – 1890.
Two former Union officers wandered the old fields in the summer of 1888. Henry Van Ness Boynton fought as a lieutenant colonel with the 35th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment while his compatriot, Ferdinand Van Derveer served as a colonel in charge of the brigade which included the 35th. The two hoped to protect the battlefields turning them into “a western Gettysburg”. President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill from Congress 20 August 1890 (Harrison served as a brigadier general in the Army of the Cumberland, though his regiment at the time of the battle – 70th Indiana – was protecting railroads from potential raiders in both Tennessee and Kentucky.).
A NEW PARK
The park included battlefields around Chattanooga as well as the main battlefield at Chickamauga. Chattanooga was thrown in so that each side, Blue and Grey, could celebrate a victory. This was opposite to the battlefield at Gettysburg which remained a definite Federal win. Boynton wrote, “There is no other great battlefield of the war where Northern and Southern veterans could meet harmoniously and with equal satisfaction to preserve the field of their magnificent fighting.”
A three-member commission started the battlefield idea rolling. Two members were former veterans of the battle, one from each side. Joseph S. Fullerton served as a staff member serving under Major General Gordon Granger’s Reserve Corps at both battles. Alexander P. Stewart also led a Confederate division during both battles, playing a significant role in each. The third member was an active member of the military, Captain Sanford C. Kellogg, 4th US Cavalry Regiment. Kellogg had also been a Federal staff member working under Major General George H. Thomas during both battles. Stewart would actually live on site for many years serving for 18 years as park commissioner overseeing construction.
By the end of summer 1895, 212 unit, 286 location and distance, and 51 battery tablets were placed on the battlefield with 9 pyramids made from cannonballs marked mortuary sites where general officers fell. State monuments began to go up where the regiments – Federal in most cases. Iron tablets marked division and corps locations. Five observation towers were built around the park at important areas where observers – especially military, for the battlefields were preserved for study purposes, as well. Undergrowth was cut back so the battlefields appeared much as they did in 1863.
DEDICATIONS
The park dedication took place 18-20 September 1895. The first day was for State monument dedications. Eight different States dedicated memorials to their participating regiments staggered throughout the day so the crowds could move about taking them all in. The second day was a dedication for the park overall with 40-50,000 in attendance. Then, on 20 September, the part of the park devoted to Chattanooga was dedicated. More memorials would be added to the park sections over the years.
To the park’s original legislation, the military study expanded to include the fields were training grounds where entire units could conduct exercises. Quoting from Timthy B. Smith’s wonderful The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation, “One congressman remarked that study of actual battlefields, marked as they were with tablets and monuments, ‘Would be worth an entire course in textbooks on the strategy of a campaign and battle tactics.’”
Eventually the park changed after a period during the Spanish-American War when Chickamauga became a big Army Park. The commission administration changed though the park was still under the War Department. Finally, the park fell into the world of the National Park Service during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Today, the park represents a huge oasis from urbanization as surrounding towns build up to park boundaries. The park is a densely forested nature park. A significant recreation angle has been added to the park’s life with equestrian and hiker trails crisscrossing through the forests. To see the park, you need a car, or at least a horse. The battlefields cover over 5,000 acres and the battle did not always stayed attached to one area, moving around with the ebbing of the bloody tide that emerged.
BATTLE PRELUDES
The battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga are not similar tactically nor strategically. While one battle led into another, there was a lot of time between the two battles for a lot to happen flipping the table completely.
At Chickamauga, the reinforced Confederate Army of Tennessee led by one cantankerous General Braxton Bragg had opportunities to deliver a death blow to the Federal Army of the Cumberland led by General William Rosecrans. The two armies last clashed together titanically during the New Year’s battle of Stones River. “Rosie” waited until summer before easily outmaneuvering his opponent pushing the Confederates out of central Tennessee without even having to fight a major battle. Following that up, Rosecrans split his army up again crossing the Tennessee River down from Chattanooga in Napoleonic style. Bragg pulled out of Chattanooga without a fight – he did so thinking it would only be temporary – and the Federal commander imagined his Rebel counterpart pulling back upon his supply center at the railhead at Ringgold.
CONFEDERATE RIPOSTE
But Bragg was far from being beaten. The loss of Chattanooga galvanized the Confederacy. The town was a vital rail center connecting east to west and north with south. Reinforcements were gathered from across Mississippi and Alabama, as well as the dispatch of an entire corps led by General James Longstreet, to the south from Robert Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. While separate Federal columns pushed their ways through the rugged mountains south of Chattanooga, Bragg’s forces gathered to the east.
An abortive attempt at trying to pinch off one of the Federal columns at McLemore Cove about ten miles southwest of the park went to nothing. But Bragg still had a sprawled out Federal army before him which for one of the few times in the Civil War was outnumbered. Bragg’s plan was to get around the Federals to the north cutting off their line of retreat. Rosecrans’ plan, by this time, devolved into a reconcentration of his spread-out forces and fall back onto Chattanooga. What both got is known as a “meeting engagement”. These occur when a moving force, not properly deployed, engages an enemy unexpectedly. They result from poor reconnaissance leading to incomplete information – neither Rosecrans nor Bragg had any more than a very general idea of where the other’s forces were nor where they were going.
MEETING ENGAGEMENT
Meeting engagements can quickly move from beyond the Army commander’s ability to try and control. Local commanders decide to attack an enemy upon its discovery. Their commanders then feed more troops into the battle, turning a skirmish into a general battle. Gettysburg is another excellent example of a meeting engagement as compared to a planned battle such as would occur at Chattanooga, a few months later.
Gettysburg is a much easier battle to discover on the ground. Forests are not the visual impediments found at Chickamauga. The ground is much more open, and the battlefield is much more concentrated. Outside of some confusion regarding actions on the first day when that meeting engagement evolved into a general battle, the actions took place as a series of attacks upon the Federal lines drawn up in the shape of a fishhook centered upon Cemetery Ridge.
Chickamauga is not so simple. Historians split between calling the battle a three-day or two-day affair. The first day – 18 September 1863 – was more about the two armies coming onto the scene with delays at some water crossings leading to more concentrations. The second day was when the meeting engagement turned serious. Divisions from both sides were fed one or two at a time until more than one corps was involved. Strategy devolved into simply trying to find the other’s flank to try and turn. The battle enlarged to the south as the day went on. Morning battles off the Brotherton Road roiled to the south through the woods near Brotherton Cabin, then fixating in the late afternoon on the open grasses of Viniard Field.
“CLOSE UP AND SUPPORT REYNOLDS”
The Federals consolidated their positions paralleling the LaFayette Road into their own fishhook, though question mark is probably the better description for their line which would truly be the case on the 20 September. Bragg inserted a touch of “grand strategy” planning a series of attacks on the Federal positions to occur first in the north and then rolling to the south. Those attacks were to begin at daybreak, but on a day full of mistakes, the attacks did not begin until 0930.
In charge of the left – north flank of the Union line, George H. Thomas called out for reinforcements throughout the morning as he dealt with the early attempts of the Confederates to envelop his left. Troops from the Union reserves lying behind the center shifted northwards to lend aid. The Confederate attacks were bloodily blunted throughout the morning when an incredible mix-up in orders led to the withdrawal from the Federal right the corps of Thomas Wood just as a massive attack led by Longstreet crashed into that part of the Union line. Most of that part of the Federal position collapsed taking with them generals, reserves and supplies in their wake. One of the generals washed away was Rosecrans, himself. Only Thomas’ men were left plus a few reserves he gathered atop Snodgrass Hill.
“WE WILL HOLD IT OR DIE HERE”
As it looked possible a potentially decisive victory was at hand for Bragg, Confederate command control, itself slipped. John Hood, Longstreet’s main lieutenant leading his attacks from the front of the battle, went down seriously wounded. Longstreet was not actively forward – unlike Thomas who was – and control over his various victorious units ebbed away. Confederate attacks continued the rest of the afternoon, now on the positions Thomas pushed out from Snodgrass Hill onto Horseshoe Ridge. They met stiff resistance that held out until the Federals finally withdrew out of ammunition.
Battle units routed one day were often back together the next, ready to fight again. So was the case as the Federals moved back first to Missionary Ridge and later into the fortifications of Chattanooga itself. Bragg’s forces did not press the issue, content to occupy positions from which the Union forces vacated. This would lead to the “siege of Chattanooga”, another campaign and another series of battles.
aftermath
Chickamauga was a Confederate victory of large scale. They dealt a stiff blow to the Army of the Cumberland, eventually penning them into the city of Chattanooga. The cost was great, however. The Federals lost over 16,000 men during the battle while the Confederates suffered almost 18,500 casualties. This was the highest losses from any battle in the West and the second highest of the war after Gettysburg. Four generals fell, three from the Confederate side. But, at the end of the day, the Army of the Cumberland persevered. Federal control remained over central and eastern Tennessee. Threats to both re-election chances for Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and control over Atlanta became curtailed in the first case and renewed in the second at the end of November by events at Chattanooga.
VISITING THE PARK
The park is festooned with monuments to just about every Federal regiment which took place in the battle – some even doing so only in a peripheral manner. Chickamauga is the Army of the Cumberland’s answer to the Granite Forest of Gettysburg. Not even a Federal victory, the fight closely fought until the midday mistake to pull troops from the Union center in the face of a massive Confederate attack. The last stand on Horseshoe Ridge, the making of the sobriquet for George H. Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga”, the survival of the Federal army and the retention of Chattanooga all helped turn a Confederate tactical victory into a strategical stalemate.
By the 1890’s, again, the money and political power of the veteran groups led to the plethora of memorials found on Civil War battlefields. Those units of the Army of the Potomac finding themselves at Gettysburg elected to place their memorials there. A host of other units of that army not at Gettysburg had to settle for second-best putting their regimental monuments on other fields – Antietam, Manassas, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, among others. Apart from maybe Antietam, no other eastern battlefield came close to the amount of granite found at Gettysburg.
MONUMENTS TO TELL THE STORIES
Monuments became excellent devices for veterans to tell their stories through. At the battlefield here and at Shiloh, different States came together to put up monuments, at State cost, to the men of regiments from their States. Shiloh memorialized mostly for units of the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio. Chickamauga became ground center for the regiments of the Army of the Cumberland. Later reinforcements to the Union cause at Chattanooga put up their monuments at Lookout Mountain, on Missionary Ridge and on Tunnel Hill.
Even though monies for the monuments came mostly from the States, there is a remarkable diversity to the monuments on the ground, Illinois being the exception.
Many States used more than one firm to create the different monuments, united only by the possible inclusion of a state’s seal on each regimental monument. The placement of the monuments, with approval from the park authorities, sited where the veterans thought their most valuable contributions to the battle occurred. From the monuments – and the nearby park tablets, one can experience ebbs and flows of the battle.
OTHER TOUR GUIDES
With so many, however, the purchase of a map Chickamauga: Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Georgia from Trailhead Graphics, Inc is invaluable. Even at that, an Order of Battle to remember to which units individual regiments belonged, helps in making sense of the where and which monuments occur in specific locations. Another great orientation found with the American Battlefield Trust production of a YouTube driving tour of the park. The tour narrated by David Powell, one of the leading scholars regarding the events which took place here.
Those with cars can take part in weekend ranger-led caravan tours taking in basic overviews of the battlefield lasting about two hours – Saturday and Sundays 1000 and 1400. You need to check in at the visitor center first to make sure there are at least four people ready to go out on the tour. There are other special programs offered during the year to further explore the battlefields and their significance. Again, check with the visitor center and their website for a calendar of upcoming events.
Also, a free cell phone tour offers illumination for each of eight highlighted tour stops – 585-672-2619 and follow the prompts to listen to a narration for each stop.
BEYOND THE CAR
With time on your side, you can also walk the many trails within the park taking you to some of the more isolated tablets and monuments hidden away among the woods. The trails maybe better left to those with a good understanding of the battle or those needing a bit of exercise.
The park roads can be ridden on bicycles if you bring one. All paved roads – care should be taken on busy Lafayette Road – and a few trails are open to bicyclists. If you own a horse and a trailer, you can unload and park on the west side of the park and ride one of the marked red, white or blue trails through the park. Unlike Gettysburg, there is no equestrian tour option, just like there are no Segway tour options.
FOR ARMCHAIR GENERALS
Chickamauga has so many stories to tell. Several books tell different aspects of the battle and of the park. The one volume book by Peter Cozzens, This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga is a good place to start. For anyone wanting more, the three volumes by David Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign combined with his co-authored The Maps of Chickamauga go a long way in making the confusion seem in the forests of the Military Park much clearer.
Also, like Gettysburg, Chickamauga was but a point in the long bloody war. Plenty more battles would come before the war ended a year and a half later. Both important in that highwater marks for the Confederate armies gained but quickly lost. Confederate General Daniel Harvey Hill – better known as D.H. Hill – one of Bragg’s corps commanders at Chickamauga (one who among the many calling for Bragg’s replacement after the failure to exploit the victory) noted later, “It seems to me that the elan of the Southern soldier was never seen after Chickamauga … He fought stoutly to the last, but, after Chickamauga, with the sullenness of despair and without the enthusiasm of hope. That ‘barren victory’ sealed the fate of the Confederacy.”