In the fall of 1863 the nation’s attention was focused on the Western Theater. The dual Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg that summer had left the Federals poised to advance deep into a Confederate heartland already “halved by Grant and being quartered by Burnside and Rosecrans,” according to Boston’s Liberator. But then the unanticipated Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia shocked the prevailing prognosticators. Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, fresh from that impressive victory, held the high ground, and the starving Union army was under siege at Chattanooga.
Once the defeated Federals retreated into Chattanooga, their plight took top military priority. Suddenly, reinforcements arrived in droves, and four major armies, commanded by some of the Civil War’s most noted officers — Maj. Gens. Joseph Hooker, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman for the Union, and Lt. Gens. James Longstreet and John Bell Hood for the Confederacy — were converging on the region. The victory at Chickamauga reinvigorated the Confederate military outlook for a few optimistic weeks before all resultant advantage was wasted. How could Bragg fail to follow up on so spectacular a victory? How could Jefferson Davis suggest a reduction in the Confederates’ strength at that critical juncture? Why were Longstreet and more than 17,000 troops sent to Knoxville?
