The Civil War in 1863: The Decisive Year There was little fighting early in 1863 as both sides sought to shore up their forces from the heavy losses of the previous year. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1 but had no immediate impact on the progress of the war. Ironically, the Emancipation Proclamation technically freed no slaves at all—only those under control of the Confederacy, although those who were able took advantage of Lincoln’s declaration. But the proclamation eventually started a flood of runaways that led to thousands of former slaves joining the Union armies starting in 1863. On March 3 the Union put into effect the first national Conscription Act. Men between the ages of 20 and 45 were eligible for the draft, but any male who could hire a substitute or pay a $300 fee could be exempted. That provision angered many in the North, especially working-class people, who now saw the conflict as a “rich man's war and a poor man's fight.” The draft would lead to trouble later in the year. Following the Battle of Fredericksburg Lincoln appointed General Joseph Hooker to command the Army of the Potomac. Hooker, like McClellan, had many good qualities. Some of his innovations, such as distinctive unit patches of the kind soldiers still wear on their sleeves, were created to increase unit cohesion and morale. But Hooker, known as “Fighting Joe,” was something of a blowhard. Officers, including Confederates, who had played poker with him in the old days, suspected that Hooker could be bluffed when all the chips were on the table. An excellent corps commander, Hooker proved inadequate to the demands of top command of the Army of the Potomac. Chancellorsville: May 2-4 1863. On May 4 the Battle of Chancellorsville turned out to be what is known as Lee’s “greatest victory.” Lee was in Fredericksburg, and Hooker decided to move against him, but then lost his nerve and retreated across the Rappahannock River. Lee attacked. He had divided his army in the face of his numerically superior opponent, but the speed of Jackson's advance caught Hooker’s army by surprise. The Confederates rolled up the With two large and significant victories behind him, Lee once again decided to invade the North through Maryland in hope of bringing the war to a conclusion. Before they set off, however, General Jeb Stuart requested a review to show off the skill and flash of his cavalry. For most of the early part of the war Confederate cavalry had been unquestionably superior to the Union horsemen. But following Stuart's impressive review, the largest cavalry battle of the war was fought at Brandy Station, with a disappointing outcome. On June 9 at 4:30 a.m. Union Major General Alfred Pleasanton attacked Stuart’s cavalry. The battle lasted ten hours, and Stuart’s cavalry was fought to a draw by Pleasanton’s horse soldiers. Stuart was saved from an embarrassing defeat by the actions of Brigadier General W.H.F. “Rooney” Lee. For the remainder of the war, Union cavalry more than held its own against their Confederate counterparts. Late in June Lee crossed into Maryland and was nearing the Pennsylvania border. Lee was being tracked by the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George Gordon Meade. Part of Lee’s army was heading in the direction of Harrisburg, while the bulk of his forces were west of the little town of Gettysburg. Lee had sent Jeb Stuart out to keep an eye on the Union Army, giving his cavalry commander what might have seemed to be ambiguous orders. Stuart, wishing to redeem himself from his embarrassing performance at Brandy Station, traveled across the Potomac toward Rockville, Maryland. There he harassed Union support units. He seized a number of Union supply wagons, thinking the captured material would be welcomed by General Lee. What his commander needed, however, was not so much extra supplies as knowledge of the Union Army’s whereabouts. Union cavalry under the command of General John Buford was, by contrast, keeping a much closer eye on Lee’s movements and reporting information back to Union commanders. Gettysburg: The Second Turning Point Following Gettysburg here was no more major fighting in eastern sector in 1863. The destiny of the South was still being played out in Tennessee. Vicksburg: The Decisive Turning Point The New York City Draft Riots. Despite the victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg President Lincoln could not rest easy throughout the summer and fall of 1863. The combination of the Emancipation Proclamation and the draft system, which placed the burden of the continued fighting mostly on working-class men who could not afford a substitute, led to discontent, especially among the Irish working-class people in New York City. Fearing that liberated slaves might threaten their economic well-being, and disgruntled over the implications of the draft, workers fomented a riot in New York City to show their discontent with the war and emancipation. Rampaging through black neighborhoods they set fires and beat or terrorized African-Americans. Eleven men were murdered by lynch mobs, and the riots were only quelled when federal troops were sent from Pennsylvania to the city. Although the naval bombardment depicted in the recent film Gangs of New York did not occur, federal troops used artillery against the rioters, who numbered in the thousands. The Copperheads. Lincoln’s problems did not end with the suppression of the New York race riot. Political opposition to Lincoln's wartime policies were headed by a group of disgruntled Democrats, called copperheads by their Republican opponents. Although members of the movement did not have a unified agenda, they were opposed to the war, and many of them thought it was being fought to free the slaves and destroy the South. Some of the same motives that propelled the New York rioters were present among the copperheads, who were politically very active. The most famous copperhead was Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio politician who made speeches openly critical of Lincoln and his policies. Accused of disloyalty in time of war, Vallandigham was court-martialed, convicted and eventually given free passage through Confederate lines and made his way to Canada, from where he ran for governor of Ohio. He was defeated in a pro-war landslide, but his Democratic supporters managed to get a copperhead platform accepted during the 1864 presidential election. The Democratic nominee, George B. McClellan, did not accept the copperhead agenda and was pro-war, though Lincoln feared the ultimate result if McClellan were elected. Chickamauga. In September 1863 the battleground shifted to southeast Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. General Longstreet, whose Corps had been detached from Lee's army, joined forces with General Bragg and attacked Union forces south of Chattanooga along Chickamauga Creek. The Union army was spared a disastrous defeat by the bravery of General George H. Thomas and his brigade, who stood their ground long enough to allow the Union Army to make an orderly retreat into Chattanooga. For his performance Thomas became known as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” and his brave soldiers the Chickamauga brigade. A statue of General Thomas is located on the circle bearing his name in Washington, DC. As the Federal troops in Chattanooga suffered from supply shortages and poor morale, General Grant was directed to proceed to Chattanooga to take charge. Grant arrived inauspiciously, purchased a horse from a local stable, and rode out to the Union headquarters. Calling the commanders together, he asked each to outline for him the disposition and condition of his troops. He sat listening quietly and when he had heard enough, he began writing out orders for each commander on a notepad. Distributing the written instructions, he told his officers that they had their orders and sent them on their way. Within a few days supply lines had been opened and troop morale began to return. Chattanooga. In November 1863 the last major battle of that decisive year was fought at Chattanooga. Grant’s corps commanders, Generals Hooker, Sherman and Thomas, engaged Bragg’s troops while Longstreet was carrying out a siege of Knoxville. Once again a corps commander, General Hooker took his men to the heights of Lookout Mountain which overlooks the city of Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley. In an action that became known as the “battle above the clouds,” Hooker drove the Confederates off the mountain and raised the national flag at the summit, encouraging the troops below. Although Grant had ordered that there be no frontal assaults against well-defended Confederate positions, troops under Sherman and Thomas approaching Confederate defenses along Missionary Ridge took it upon themselves to assaults the Confederate lines, feeling that they were vulnerable in the position they held at the base of the ridge. The assault was successful, and the battle resulted in Chattanooga, the “gateway to the South,” being fully in Union hands. One of the two major Confederate armies still in operation had been routed. Summary of 1863. The three great Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga shifted the tide dramatically in favor of the Union, but the South was not yet defeated nor ready to surrender; soldiers on both sides prepared for another year of warfare. President Lincoln weathered political storms but was concerned about his reelection if the war had not been settled by then. By 1863 both sides were irrevocably committed to their respective causes, though the nature of each of those causes was shifting. The men of the North were fighting to save the Union, only now it was to be a Union without slavery. The South was fighting to get out of the Union, even, perhaps, at the cost of maintaining slavery. That shift would continue even as the war went on. The changes were not uniform, however; some Union soldiers were disgusted with the idea of fighting for emancipation, while others saw it as a sacred cause. On the Southern side, many were still wedded to the idea of of a nation separated by race; at the end of the war, some Confederates would leave the South, taking their slaves with them to Brazil, where slavery was still legal. (To this day, Jefferson Davis's birthday is still celebrated there.) One thing was certain: after two years of hard fighting, it was now clear that there would be no settlement, no compromise. The war would end with two separate nations where one had existed, with the futures of both still uncertain. Or the Union would be restored as a free nation. Whatever the outcome, 1863 was destined to be a year of decision with two more major turning points: Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Gettysburg: The Second Turning Point, July 1-3, 1863 The Battle: Day 1, July 1 The Battle of Gettysburg occurred more or less by accident. Neither General Lee nor General Meade, who replaced Hooker in command only a few days before the battle, had planned to fight there. General Ewell, now commanding Jackson’s corps, was headed toward Harrisburg. But some of Lee’s troops commanded by A.P. Hill, always on the lookout for provisions, sent a detachment toward Gettysburg. The town was small, but a dozen roads crisscrossed the landscape, and a railroad was under construction. Ever since Stuart had departed days earlier, Lee had been without his eyes and ears. Thus Lee did not know exactly where the Federals were. He was unaware that the Union 1st Corps under General John Reynolds was approaching Gettysburg from the southeast direction. The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia were about to clash in the largest battle ever fought in America. When a scout reported that the Union army had crossed the Potomac, Lee began concentrating his army. Union cavalry in the capable hands of General Buford was reconnoitering Southern Pennsylvania in advance of the Union Army, which was making its way along the Baltimore Turnpike. On the morning of July 1 Buford's troopers were passing through Gettysburg when the general discovered a division of A. P. Hill’s Corps under the command of Henry Heth just west of the town. Buford sent word back to Reynolds of the enemy approach. Buford judged that the high ground around Gettysburg would be good ground on which to fight and decided to take Heth’s men under attack. Heavily outnumbered, Buford sent further word back to Reynolds, urging him to hurry his corps forward. Reynolds’s 1st Corps and Hill’s Corps soon clashed on the northwestern outskirts of the village, while General Ewell was called from his advance towards Harrisburg to join the action at Gettysburg. The arrival of Union General Oliver O. Howard’s 11th Corps helped to shift the balance toward the Union, which was outnumbered for much of the day. (The Confederate Corps were larger than those of the Union.) The Union men were driven back through the town of Gettysburg and onto some high ground to the south and east of the town—Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Ridge. That's where the fighting ended the first day. For the time being Lee appeared to have the upper hand. The battle, however, was far from over.
Longstreet and Lee On the south end of the battlefield, General Longstreet was directed to advance on the left flank of the Union line on the southern portion of Cemetery Ridge. A crucial piece of ground, Little Round Top, was unoccupied for most of the day, but Longstreet felt that a move around to the rear of the Union line behind Round Top and Little Round Top would be more effective. The details of the fighting on the second day are readily available from multiple sources. Most critical for the outcome of the battle, a Union officer had discovered that the high ground on Little Round Top was uncovered, and quickly dispatched Union troops to protect it. The famous 20th Maine regiment under Colonel Joshua Chamberlain held off attacks from three Alabama regiments. At the end of the day the Union line stretched from Culp's hill to Little Round Top, with its seven corps arrayed in the famous fishhook formation. The three Corps of Lee’s army were arrayed from the northwest facing Culp’s Hill to the south along Seminary Ridge facing the Union line across a mile or so of open ground. Suffice it to say that neither Ewell nor Longstreet accomplished what General Lee had in mind. After the war, there was much criticism of Longstreet's behavior on the second day of Gettysburg. Following the war the reputation of Robert E. Lee grew to almost godlike proportions. Unwilling to believe that Lee could have been defeated if all of his generals had obeyed his counsel, Southern writers made Longstreet the scapegoat for the defeat at Gettysburg, second in importance only to the fact that Stonewall Jackson had been killed at Chancellorsville. As Lee's reputation grew after his death, Southern writers "rode Longstreet unmercifully for decades"; he became an "object of hatred for that generation of Confederate writers." (Thomas L. Connolly and Barbara L. Bellows, God and general Longstreet: a lost cause and the Southern mind, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University press, 1982, 32ff.) His reputation was later restored as historians reevaluated Lee's strategy. The Third Day: July 3 The third day of Gettysburg was the turning point of the war in the East. Jeb Stuart had arrived late in the evening of the second day, pleased to report that he had captured a train of Union supplies. General Lee was not impressed: Union supplies were of little use to him at that point. Because the inevitable confrontation between Lee and Stuart took place in private, it is not known exactly what was said. What is known is that Lee, despite the feelings of some of his generals that Stuart should be court-martialed, knew that his bold cavalry commander was too valuable to lose. Perhaps realizing that so far he had committed much and gained little in this campaign, and that Confederate forces were beginning to run out of resources, Lee decided to gamble on one great, bold stroke. He would attack directly into the center of the Union line, using George Pickett’s fresh division supported by a division from Ewell’s corps. General Meade, a thoughtful if not in brilliant general, concluded that Lee, having tried the flanks unsuccessfully, would attack the center. With Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps in the center of the Union line, Meade was confident.
When the smoke finally cleared General Pickett’s division, some 15,000 strong, marched out of the woods to the music of regimental bands, with bayonets glistening, and arrayed themselves in an impressive line stretching along the front edge of Seminary Ridge. Union troops on Cemetery Hill were awed by the spectacle, but they were determined to redeem their losses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The men of the Army of the Potomac were not intimidated. Union artillery, stocked with canister, moved their guns into position to fire directly into the advancing troops. The objective of Pickett’s men was a copse of trees, still very prominent on the Gettysburg battlefield to this day. As his troops began to march, converging on that objective, they passed through a relatively low area, across a road and a wooden fence and then advanced up the slope toward the Union lines. When they were within range, Union riflemen and artillery let loose a furious volley of shot that tore great holes in the Confederate line. Nevertheless, the courageous Southern soldiers pressed forward until a small group of them, perhaps a few hundred, reached a stone wall at the front of the Union line. Scrambling over the wall, they engaged the Yankees hand-to-hand, using rifle butts, bayonets, fists—anything that might bring an enemy down—in a few minutes of furious combat. But the damage had been too great, and the Confederate soldiers inside the Union lines who were not killed or wounded were soon captured. The remnants of Pickett's division stumbled back toward Seminary Ridge. It is reported that General Lee rode out on his horse and confronted General Pickett, feeling that his division commander should try to organize an orderly retreat. “General Pickett,” he is supposed to have said, “you must see to your division.” The shattered General Pickett replied, “General Lee, I have no division.” Thus ended three days of fighting that produced over 50,000 casualties on both sides. There was no fighting on July 4; both sides needed to recover. Lee began a painful evacuation back to Virginia with wagon trains of wounded soldiers moaning in their pain. President Lincoln, feeling that another opportunity had been lost to crush Lee's army once and for all, wrote an angry note to General Meade deploring his failure to pursue Lee. Rather than sending the note, however, the president held it and later concluded, “How can I criticize a man who has done so much for doing too little?” There was no more major fighting in eastern sector in 1863. The destiny of the South was still being played out in Mississippi and Tennessee. Vicksburg: The Decisive Turning Point The City of Vicksburg occupies a steep bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. In 1863 the city was well fortified by state-of-the-art fortifications and heavy cannon. Sometimes known as fortress Vicksburg, the city stood across the Mississippi from the terminus of a railroad line that brought Texas beef and other supplies as well as military equipment smuggled into Texas from Mexico. Mexican ports were not affected by the American blockade. Another railroad line left Vicksburg and stretched through Jackson, Mississippi, and back to the Eastern theater. The Vicksburg fortifications kept the Mississippi essentially closed to Union traffic north and south of the city.
The Vicksburg garrison numbered about 35,000 men under the command of Confederate General John C. Pemberton, a Pennsylvanian who was married to a woman from Virginia. To the north of the city stood Chickasaw bluffs, a steep, wooded approach that could be accessed only by going through the messy Chickasaw Bayou. To the south were more steep cliffs, also well protected. Approaching the city from the river side would have been well nigh impossible. Starting in the fall of 1862, Grant began trying various strategies to capture Vicksburg. From his base in Memphis Grant set out to approach Vicksburg by an inland route through a supply base which he established at Holly Springs in northern Mississippi. But cavalry raids by Nathan Bedford Forrest and Earl Van Dorn repeatedly disrupted Grant’s supply lines, and he was forced to withdraw. Grant then tried sending gunboats and transports through the swamps and bayous on both sides of the Mississippi, but often found the waterways thick with overhanging branches and channeled through swampy ground. Progress was slow, and Confederate sharpshooters could easily harass attempts to cut a path through the natural barriers. In early 1863 Grant even had General Sherman’s men try to reroute the Mississippi River though “Grant’s canal,” a ditch across a neck of land in a bend in the Mississippi opposite Vicksburg. None of those approaches worked, and Grant knew he had to find a way to get at the fortress city from the eastern land side. The result of Grant’s planning was what Civil War historians have accurately called the most brilliant campaign of the Civil War. Grant had Flag Officer Foote float his gunboats and transports down the Mississippi without power during a dark night; most of them made it. Then Grant marched his entire army South along the west bank of the Mississippi past Vicksburg, crossed the river at Bruinsburg, and set out for Jackson, about 40 miles to the east. Grant commandeered all the wagons he could find and took his supplies with him, cutting off communication with the river (and with Washington) as he headed northeast. In the meantime Grant had directed Colonel Benjamin Grierson to take a cavalry force from Holly Springs through the area around Jackson and down to Baton Rouge. Grierson led three regiments of cavalry, about 1,700 troops, 600 miles in a little over two weeks. They tore up railroad tracks, cut telegraph wires, destroyed bridges, warehouses and railroad equipment and generally raised hell, occasionally making feints to distract Confederate pursuers. (A few of the more adventurous of Grierson’s men also “liberated” a quantity of Southern whiskey while en route; some of them had to be tied onto their saddles.) Grant fought his way to Jackson, rolling over outnumbered defenders, as Pemberton could not send the entire Vicksburg garrison in pursuit of Grant. Securing his rear at Jackson, Grant then turned toward Vicksburg’s defenders, who had come out to meet him. After winning a battle at Champion’s Hill, he drove the Confederates relentlessly back into the city. His attempts to storm the garrison, however, failed, and Grant settled into a siege which lasted 45 days. When Pemberton found his men, as well as the inhabitants of the city, desperately short of supplies and under constant bombardment from Grant’s artillery, he had no choice but to surrender. Pemberton turned over the city and its garrison on July 4, 1863, one day after Lee’s troops were turned back in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. President Lincoln, who had grown up in the Mississippi Valley and understood the significance of the capture of Vicksburg, sent a telegram of congratulations to Grant. He is said to have remarked, “Once again the father of waters flows unvexed to the sea.” The double blow of Gettysburg and Vicksburg crippled the South and set the stage for the final phase of the war. The New York City Draft Riots. Despite the victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg President Lincoln could not rest easy throughout the summer and fall of 1863. The combination of the Emancipation Proclamation and the draft system, which placed the burden of the continued fighting mostly on working-class men, led to discontent, especially among the Irish working-class people in New York City. Fearing that liberated slaves might threaten their economic well-being, and disgruntled over the implications of the draft, workers fomented a riot in New York City to show their discontent with the war and emancipation. Rampaging through black neighborhoods they set fires and beat or terrorized African-Americans. Eleven men were murdered by lynch mobs, and the riots were only quelled when federal troops were sent from Pennsylvania to the city. Although the naval bombardment depicted in the recent film Gangs of New York did not occur, federal troops used artillery against the rioters, who numbered in the thousands. The Copperheads. Lincoln’s problems did not end with the suppression of the New York race riot. Political opposition to Lincoln's wartime policies was headed by a group of disgruntled Democrats, called Copperheads by their Republican opponents. Although members of the movement did not have a unified agenda, they were opposed to the war, and many of them thought it was being fought to free the slaves and destroy the South. Some of the same motives that propelled the New York rioters were present among the Copperheads, who were politically very active. Lincoln did not hesitate to deal forcefully with dissenters whom he felt were hurting the Union cause. He suspended habeas corpus and had thousands of dissenters jailed under martial law. He placed saving the Union above scrupulous adherence to constitutionally guaranteed liberties, an act for which he has been criticized. The most famous copperhead was Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio politician who made speeches openly critical of Lincoln and his policies. Accused of disloyalty in time of war, Vallandigham was court-martialed, convicted and eventually given free passage through Confederate lines to Canada, whence he ran for governor of Ohio. He was defeated in a pro-war landslide, but his Democratic supporters managed to get a Copperhead platform accepted during the 1864 presidential election. General George B. McClellan, the Democratic nominee for president, did not accept the Copperhead agenda and was pro-war, though Lincoln feared the ultimate result if McClellan were elected, as the Copperhead movement was a serious threat to the Union cause. Chickamauga. In September 1863 the battleground shifted to southeast Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. General Longstreet, whose Corps had been detached from Lee's army, joined forces with General Bragg and attacked Union forces south of Chattanooga along Chickamauga Creek. The Union Army was spared a disastrous defeat by the bravery of General George H. Thomas and his brigade, who stood their ground long Since the Federal troops in Chattanooga suffered from supply shortages and poor morale, General Grant was directed to proceed to Chattanooga to take charge. Grant arrived inauspiciously, purchased a horse from a local stable, and rode out to the Union headquarters. Calling the commanders together, he asked each to outline for him the disposition and condition of his troops. He sat listening quietly and when he had heard enough, he began writing out orders for each commander on a note pad. Distributing the written instructions, he told his officers that they had their orders and sent them on their way. Within two days supply lines had been opened and troop morale began to return. Chattanooga. In November 1863 the last major battle of that decisive year was fought at Chattanooga. The situation of the Union army in Chattanooga was perilous. Supply lines were unreliable and the Union Army found itself running low on food and even fodder for horses, and troop morale was deteriorating badly. Grant was ordered to Chattanooga to take command of the Army of the Tennessee. He quickly gathered his officers and gave orders to all the commanders; the supply lines were opened and the Union Army was again prepared to engage the enemy. Grant’s corps commanders, Generals Hooker, Sherman and Thomas, engaged Bragg’s troops while Longstreet was carrying out a siege of Knoxville. Once again a corps commander, General Hooker took his men to the heights of Lookout Mountain which overlooks the city of Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley. In an action that became known as the “battle above the clouds,” Hooker drove the Confederates off the mountain. He then raised the national flag at the summit, encouraging the troops below. (The cable car that takes visitors to the top of Lookout Mountain is the steepest in the world. The view from the summit is spectacular, especially when clouds lie in the valley and only the mountaintops are visible.) Although Grant had ordered that there be no frontal assaults against well-defended Confederate positions, troops under Sherman and Thomas approaching Confederate defenses along Missionary Ridge took it upon themselves to assault the Confederate lines, feeling that they were vulnerable in the position they held at the base of the ridge. The assault was successful, and the battle resulted in Chattanooga, the “gateway to the South,” being fully in Union hands. One of the two major Confederate armies still in operation had been routed. Thus ended the major fighting in 1863. Summary of 1863. The three great Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga shifted the tide dramatically in favor of the Union, but the South was not yet defeated nor ready to surrender; soldiers on both sides prepared for another year of warfare. President Lincoln weathered political storms but was concerned about his reelection if the war did not become settled by the fall. Most important, Lincoln now knew he had a general who could fight, and he would soon appoint Grant to overall command of the Union armies. While Confederate General Lee still commanded great respect, dissension was rising among other top Confederate commanders. Gettysburg and Vicksburg Turning Points
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Federal flank. General Hooker, stunned by a cannonball that struck near him, became confused and pulled his army back, leaving the field to Lee. While the victory was indeed one of Lee’s greatest achievements, it was an extremely costly victory. His most trusted commander, General Stonewall Jackson, was accidentally shot by his own men and died a few days later. Lee, devastated, said, “I have lost my right arm.” Historians who have examined the battle place substantial blame for the loss on Hooker while still giving well-deserved credit to Lee. But it may be noted that Chancellorsville was Lee’s last victory. Stonewall Jackson could not be replaced.
Shortly after noon on July 3rd General Lee’s artillery opened up a furious barrage designed to weaken the Union defenses along Cemetery Ridge. Thus began the greatest artillery duel ever conducted in the Western Hemisphere. It is reported that as the wind shifted during the afternoon, the rumbling of the cannon could be heard as far away as both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Whether that is true or not, the smoke, fire and noise that erupted were never forgotten by the troops who were present that day. Because of the smoke raised, it was difficult for the gunners to determine the effectiveness of their artillery fire upon the enemy. Thus Lee’s artillerymen were unaware that much of their shot was passing over the Union lines and landing in the rear, where it did considerable damage to supplies and other rear echelon elements, but had little impact on the troops who were preparing to defend against the assault. Union artillery, meanwhile, ceased firing to replace round shot with canister, turning their artillery pieces into what might be called overgrown shotguns in anticipation of the infantry charge.
enough to allow the Union Army to make an orderly retreat into Chattanooga. For his performance Thomas became known as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” and his brave soldiers the Chickamauga brigade. (Thomas Circle in Washington, DC, is the location of General Thomas's statue.)