The Fall of Chattanooga

Abstract

This chapter describes William Rosecrans’s discovery that Braxton Bragg and the Army of Tennessee had left Chattanooga unoccupied and his frantic efforts to occupy the city with elements of the Army of the Cumberland. Meanwhile Bragg concentrated his army between Lee & Gordon’s Mill and LaFayette, Georgia. There he saw a fleeting opportunity for a counterstroke and that night issued orders to Thomas Hindman and Daniel Hill to implement a bold plan to destroy Rosecrans’s forces in detail. At the same time, elements of the Army of the Cumberland settled into occupation of Chattanooga, the original objective of the campaign.