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1863 Battle of Chickamauga (Revamped)

The small city of Chattanooga, with 2,500 inhabitants, lay on the banks of the Tennessee River where it cut through the Appalachian Mountains. It was the crossroads for four major railroads. President Abraham Lincoln knew that if his army could capture Chattanooga, vital Confederate supply lines would be severed, and the war would be closer to an end.

In the summer of 1863, the Confederate army was reeling from a string of losses in the Western Theater, while the success of the Tullahoma Campaign bolstered the confidence of Union Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans. Targeting Chattanooga, Rosecrans outmaneuvered the Rebel army and forced Confederate general Braxton Bragg to relinquish control of the critical transportation hub without a fight.

Rosecrans assumed that Bragg’s demoralized army would retreat further south into Rome, Georgia. He divided his army into three corps and scattered them throughout Tennessee and Georgia. But Rosecrans made a mistake—Bragg had in fact concentrated his men at LaFayette, Georgia, where he was expecting reinforcements and was close to a vulnerable corps of Rosecrans’s army. When Bragg’s troops crossed Chickamauga Creek, the Federals had a fight on their hands.

Although Bragg’s original plan was the destruction of the Army of the Cumberland and the recapture of Chattanooga, the results of two days of bitter fighting at Chickamauga stalled him. He decided to occupy the heights surrounding Chattanooga and lay siege to the city instead. Just two months later, the reinforced Federals drove the Army of Tennessee from their positions around Chattanooga, permanently securing Northern control of the city. With that loss, the Southern victory at Chickamauga was turned into a strategic defeat.

Library of congress (photographs) https://www.loc.gov/search/?q=1863+Battle+of+Chickamauga&sp=1
War of Rebellion (Documents) https://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/moawar.html