Chickamauga 1863: Rosecrans's Phantom Gap and Thomas on Horseshoe Ridge

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The Battle of Chickamauga in north Georgia, fought on September 19 and 20, 1863, followed one of the most efficient Union campaigns of the war. General William Rosecrans had pushed Braxton Bragg's Confederates out of Middle Tennessee in the Tullahoma Campaign at a cost of 569 casualties, then took Chattanooga without a fight after a brigade north of the city banged tubs, sawed boards and floated scrap wood downstream to fake a river crossing. Convinced Bragg was fleeing, Rosecrans split his army into three corps spread across about 40 miles of mountains, while the Confederacy rushed James Longstreet's corps west from Virginia by rail.

Bragg's feuding command repeatedly failed to spring his traps, first at McLemore's Cove, where D. H. Hill and Thomas C. Hindman held back, and again when Leonidas Polk did not attack at dawn. The battle itself began when Union soldiers looking for water near Jay's Mill met Confederate cavalry, and it became a soldiers' battle in smoke-filled woods. On the second morning, a mistaken report of a gap led Rosecrans to order Thomas J. Wood to close up on and support Reynolds. Wood, recently berated by Rosecrans, pulled his division out of line just as Longstreet's column of eight brigades struck the same spot, splitting the Union army.

• A popular claim says Chickamauga means River of Death in Cherokee, but it likely comes from a Chickasaw word meaning to be good.
• John T. Wilder's Lightning Brigade carried Spencer repeating rifles holding seven cartridges, against muskets firing about three shots a minute.
• George H. Thomas held Snodgrass Hill, also called Horseshoe Ridge, against 25 assaults, earning the name the Rock of Chickamauga.
• Bragg refused Longstreet's request for reserves and ordered no real pursuit, and the battle cost more than 34,000 men killed, wounded or captured.
• Lincoln said Rosecrans acted like a duck hit on the head, and Thomas replaced him before Grant arrived to break the siege of Chattanooga.