determined to turn this one around.
Bragg withdrew to northern Georgia,
where he received two divisions from
Joseph E. Johnston’s inactive army,
bringing the strength of the Army of
Tennessee almost on par with
Rosecrans’s force. To provide Bragg
with the numerical superiority that
might bring victory, Davis also sent
him the bulk of Longstreet’s corps
from the Army of Northern Virginia.R
eactivated to command the Army
of the Ohio, General Ambrose
Burnside marched on Knoxville,
the “capital” of East Tennessee. On
September 3, 1863, he was greeted
with joy by most of its citizens, who
were Union sympathizers. Meanwhile,
Rosecrans had been on the move since
mid-August, advancing virtuallyBEFORE
After the near defeat at Stones River
❮❮ 146–47, Rosecrans spent the spring and
early summer of 1863 rebuilding his
strength, much to Lincoln’s exasperation.THE TULLAHOMA CAMPAIGN
When Rosecrans finally moved in late June and
early July, he succeeded in driving Bragg out
of south-central Tennessee, leaving the
major railroad junction of Chattanooga
vulnerable to capture.
In one week, Union troops pushed their
foes back almost 80 miles (129km) at the cost
of only 570 casualties—an advance known as the
Tullahoma Campaign. But then Rosecrans
stalled, waiting for repairs to railroads and more
supplies, before he moved forward again.Lee protested, claiming that he needed
Longstreet and his divisions for a new
offensive against General Meade, but
Davis rightly understood that the
decisive theater of war was, for now,
in the West.Tension mounts
On September 9, the
first of Longstreet’s
seasoned troops
boarded trains for a
550-mile (885-km)
journey through
Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia.
The direct route from Virginia to
Tennessee no longer existed because
of the fall of Chattanooga to the Union.
It would take nine days for these
reinforcements—12,000 strong—to
reach Bragg from the East, but they
would arrive just in time.
In early September, Bragg made a
series of attempts to bait Rosecrans
into advancing his army corps. On
three occasions the Union commander
took the bait, and could have been
badly mauled. But in each instance
one or other of Bragg’s subordinates
failed to follow his orders sufficiently.The Chickamauga Campaign
Spurred by Washington to duplicate the successes of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Major
General William S. Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland moved to drive the Rebels
out of Tennessee and further divide the Confederacy.
The Confederate advance
In Alfred Waud’s drawing, the Confederate line is
shown advancing uphill through forest toward the Union
line on the second day of the Battle of Chickamauga.
British-born Waud worked as an artist-correspondent
for Harper’s Weekly magazine.Crossing the Tennessee
Rosecrans’s troops cross the Tennessee River west of
Chattanooga, in early September 1863, as depicted
in William Travis’s epic panorama on the exploits of
the Army of the Cumberland.unopposed the last few miles to
Chattanooga, thanks to various feints
and deceptions that fooled General
Braxton Bragg about his final objective.
On September 8, the Confederates
evacuated Chattanooga, to the great
dismay of Jefferson Davis, who wrote,
“We are now in the darkest hour of
our political existence.” But Davis
had weathered similar military
disappointments before and was