Battle of Chickamauga and Gordon Granger’s Reserve Corps

Gracie attacked uphill across the Vittetoe Road in a single line of battle against the entrenched remnants of Harker’s brigade, some of the original defenders of Horseshoe Ridge. On a low slope of the ridge, Gracie’s line splintered. Some regiments halted while others advanced, but all suffered significant casualties. James Henry Haynie’s memoir of the 19th Illinois recalled: “[T]hey come so swiftly that we can hardly count their volleying….Through the thick smoke suddenly we see a swarm of men in gray, not in battle-line, but an on-coming mass of soldiers bent on burying their bullets in resisting flesh.” Gradually the Union defenders fell back, but Gracie’s bloodied regiments were too low on ammunition to press home their attack.

Johnson, however, was still determined to seize the ridges on which so much blood had been spilled. About 4:30 p.m. he ordered a third assault by the splintered brigades of Fulton, Suggs and Manigault, now numbering only about 800 men. Most of the Union defenders were almost out of ammunition, and John Batchelor of the 78th Illinois later confided in his diary, “We were fighting Indian fashion—every one doing the best he could under the circumstances, without regard to tactics or alignment.”

Yet another hour of savage fighting would finally force the Reserve Corps to withdraw. Steedman’s regiments were hopelessly intermixed, and since the Reserve Corps had no stretcher-bearers, many able-bodied men helped wounded comrades to safety, never to return to the line.

The redoubtable Battery M of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery covered the withdrawal with volleys of double-shotted canister. According to the unit’s official history: “Our fire was reserved until they were so close as to be able to recognize an acquaintance, had there been one there, when our battery opened on them at short range, throwing them into disorder….We then fell back to a high hill a short distance to the rear.” Before it pulled all six of its guns off the field sometime after 6 p.m., Battery M had poured out 360 rounds of canister and 276 of spherical case.

By 6 p.m., 23-year-old Colonel John Kelley and his motley collection of Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia men, now reinforced by Colonel Robert C. Trigg’s small brigade of three Florida regiments plus the 54th Virginia, began to secure a foothold on the lower slopes of Horseshoe Ridge. But General Thomas had decided to abandon it.

While Johnson was urging his weary soldiers to summon their courage once more, Rosecrans’ chief of staff, Brig. Gen. James Garfield, after riding through Dan McCook’s skirmish line, arrived on the field. He made Thomas aware for the first time of the disaster that had befallen the rest of the Army of the Cumberland. Nearly one-third of the army had already fled the field northward to Chattanooga. A telegram from Rosecrans, then in Chattanooga, arrived between 4:30 and 5 p.m., ordering Thomas to assume command of all remaining forces and “take a strong position and assume a threatening attitude at Rossville.”

Thomas was not a man to countenance defeat. He had at first intended to hold his position and withdraw toward Chattanooga only under the cover of night—still several hours away. He began to organize the final phase of the Battle of Chickamauga, a fighting withdrawal in which the Reserve Corps would lose, perhaps unnecessarily, a large portion of two regiments.

With still two hours before dark, Thomas decided to begin withdrawing the divisions facing the Kelley farm field first. He sent Captain John D. Barker of the 1st Ohio Cavalry, the commander of his escort, with orders for General Reynolds to begin. Then Thomas turned over command of the forces on Horseshoe Ridge to Granger and rode off toward the La Fayette Road so he could personally position Reynolds’ division to cover the retirement of the rest of the army.