270 
Indiana University 
On June 24, 1863, Rosecrans, who was at Murfreesboro 
on the last-mentioned line, started his campaign against Chat- 
tanooga and manoeuvred Bragg out of the city without having 
to fight a battle. He moved forward in pursuit of what he 
supposed to be a beaten foe but soon had to concentrate his 
forces and fight the almost disastrous battle of Chickamauga 
since the railroads had rushed reinforcements to Bragg. 
Buckner’s corps had come from Knoxville, a part of Joseph E. 
Johnston’s forces came from the vicinity of Vicksburg, and 
Longstreet had brought his corps all the way from the Army 
of Northern Virginia.^^ Longstreet had been urging the ad- 
visability of the movement of troops from Virginia and es- 
timated that he could carry his corps to Chattanooga via 
Lynchburg and Knoxville in two days, for the distance was 
only a little over 500 miles. The success of the plan depended 
on quick action, but the Richmond authorities did not act 
promptly, and before Longstreet could move from Virginia, 
Knoxville and Cumberland Gap had been taken by Burnside.®^ 
This forced Longstreet to go thru the Carolinas to Augusta, 
and on to Atlanta and Ringgold, a distance of 925 miles, which 
consumed sixteen days instead of two.®- Bragg made his first 
attack on Rosecrans on September 19. Up to September 18, 
the latter had his forces greatly scattered, and they might 
have been destroyed in detail had Bragg and his government 
displayed a little more energy and decision. Bragg did not 
accomplish this, yet drove the Union army back into Chat- 
tanooga and closely invested the town. A glance at a railroad 
map of the time shows that Rosecrans’ supplies, if shipped by 
rail, had to come from the north to Stevenson and thence east 
over the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, which enters 
Chattanooga from the south side of the Tennessee River along 
the foot of Lookout Mountain. By seizing the latter point 
Bragg broke Rosecrans’ railroad communications with Steven- 
son and sent Wheeler to seize the lines to Nashville, but Crook 
was able to drive Wheeler back.®® Under such conditions 
sufficient supplies could be conveyed to Stevenson, but had to 
be hauled by wagon a distance of sixty miles.®^ When the fall 
Rhodes, History of the Civil War, 1861-1865, 293, 294. 
Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 434-437, and Alexander, Military 
Memoirs of a Confederate, a Critical Narrative, 447. 
61 Ibid. 
62 Ibid. 
62 Fitch, The Chattanooga Campaign, 160, 161. 
61 Ibid., 155, 156. See also Davis, Short History of the Confederate States of America, 
346 . 
