At about 7 p.m., with the only noise coming from the crackling of burning brush and leaves, the men of Trigg’s Brigade crept up yet another ridge toward the remnants of the 21st Ohio. Lieutenant Wilson Vance later wrote, “Wrapped in the fog, they looked like so many phantoms on a ghostly brigade drill, and it gave one a creepy sensation to look at them.” When challenged, the gray wraiths replied, “We’re Jeff Davis’ boys.” Thinking that their relief had finally arrived, since Jefferson C. Davis was a Union general, the beleaguered defenders rose up only to find their “benefactors” belonged to the 7th Florida. After six hours of continuous fighting, the valiant remnants of the 21st Ohio downed their muskets and surrendered. To their right, the men of the Reserve Corps’ 89th Ohio quickly followed the example of their Buckeye brethren.

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On another ridge Lieutenant William Hamilton of the 22nd Michigan, the first Reserve Corps regiment to come under fire, was crouched behind his men. Out of the gloom came a heavy line of troops, and Williams would later write: “It was now so dark we could not distinguish the color of their uniforms. They marched towards us, guns at charge and when within two or three rods of us began to call on us to surrender.” Outnumbered and out of ammunition, “the men sprang to their feet and became prisoners.” The men of the 54th Virginia captured almost 250 of the Wolverines.

Misery had been the order of the day for the Union Army. The dead were left unburied, and many of the severely wounded lay under the stars, each man enduring his suffering and thirst alone. Charles Partridge wrote, “[T]he survivors still recall it as a hideous nightmare.”

It was not much better for the dazed and wounded survivors as they stumbled through the cold night, heading as best they could toward Rossville. Partridge remembered wounded horses carrying wounded men and “ammunition wagons were halted and filled with human wrecks…men were carried in blankets for miles…toiling on wearily through the hours, and along the road that was at once so strange and so long.”

Even though it missed the savage fighting on Horseshoe Ridge, McCook’s brigade achieved a historical footnote. Its men had been successfully keeping the Confederate cavalry occupied, perhaps preventing it from closing the McFarland and Rossville gaps. His men were the last Union forces to leave the field when they limbered up their guns and, at about 10 p.m., filed off the low ridge near the McDonald farm.

Chickamauga had lived up to its Indian name, “river of death.” The casualty lists for the Reserve Corps of the Army of the Cumberland reflect the ferocity of the fight. Granger and Steedman took 3,700 men to Horseshoe Ridge. In just over five hours of combat, they lost 16 officers and 200 enlisted men killed, 66 officers and 910 enlisted men wounded, and 35 officers and almost 600 enlisted men missing and captured.

As much as any battle in the Civil War, Chickamauga was a soldier’s battle. Charles Partridge said the men of the 96th Illinois were “lions while the battle lasted.” He easily could have been speaking about all the men of the Reserve Corps.

This article was written by Gordon Berg and published in the January 2007 issue of America’s Civil War magazine.For more great articles be sure to subscribe to America’s Civil War magazine today!

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