Tullahoma Campaign - Campaign

Campaign

The first movements of the campaign had actually begun on June 23 when elements of the Reserve Corps under Granger, with a cavalry division under Mitchell, moved due west from Murfreesboro to Triune to begin an elaborate feint. This was designed to play into Bragg's assumption that the main attack would come on his left flank in the direction of Shelbyville. At the same time, the XXI Corps division of John Palmer moved to Bradyville, well beyond the Confederate right flank, where he could push back Confederate cavalry and move in the direction of Manchester, getting into the Confederate rear. It was only after these movements were under way that Rosecrans brought his corps commanders together to hear the detailed orders for the upcoming campaign.

Rosecrans's elaborate plan, which would test the extensive training program he had spent the six months conducting, was to slide Granger's corps to the left, covering the Shelbyville approaches, and perform a giant right wheel of the army. While Bragg's attention was focused on the strongly fortified Shelbyville, Thomas's corps would march southeast on the Manchester Pike, headed for Hoover's Gap on Hardee's right flank. Since the gap was lightly manned, speed was of the essence to Rosecrans's plan.

During the spring, Rosecrans had repeatedly asked for more cavalry resources, which were denied by Washington, but he did receive permission to outfit an infantry brigade as a mounted unit. Col. John T. Wilder's brigade of Reynolds's division—1,500 men of the 17th and 72nd Indiana regiments and the 98th and 123rd Illinois—found horses and mules in the countryside and armed themselves with long handled hatchets for hand-to-hand combat, which caused their unit to be derisively nicknamed the "Hatchet Brigade". Their more lethal armament were the seven-shot Spencer repeating rifles carried by all the men. Wilder's brigade had the mobility and firepower, but also the high unit morale, necessary to lead the surprise advance on Hoover's Gap before it could be reinforced.

Our regiment lay on the hill side in mud and water, the rain pouring down in torrents, while each shell screamed so close to us as to make it seem that the next would tear us to pieces. Presently the enemy got near enough to us to make a charge on our battery, and on they came; our men are on their feet in an instant and a terrible fire from the "Spencers" causes the advancing regiment to reel and its colors fall to the ground, but in an instant their colors are up again and on they come, thinking to reach the battery before our guns can be reloaded, but they "reckoned without their host," they didn't know we had the "Spencers," and their charging yell was answered by another terrible volley, and another and another without cessation, until the poor regiment was literally cut to pieces, and but few men of that 20th Tennessee that attempted the charge will ever charge again.

Wilder's brigade was successful in racing toward Hoover's Gap and capturing it on the first day of battle, which led to his unit's subsequent nickname, the Lightning Brigade. Their opponents, the 1st Kentucky Cavalry, skirmished briefly and withdrew under pressure, but were unable to reach the gap before the better-fed horses of the Lightning Brigade. The Kentuckians fell apart as a unit and, unluckily for the Confederates, failed in their cavalry mission to provide intelligence of the Union movement to their higher headquarters. Although Wilder's main infantry support was well behind his mounted brigade, he determined to continue pushing through the Gap and hold it before the Confederate reinforcements could arrive. The Confederate brigade of Brig. Gen. William B. Bate, supported by Brig. Gen. Bushrod Johnson's brigade and some artillery, assaulted Wilder's position, but was driven back by the concentrated fire of the Spencers, losing 146 killed and wounded (almost a quarter of his force) to Wilder's 61. Wilder's brigade held the Gap until the main infantry units of the XIV Corps arrived to secure the position against any further assaults. The corps commander, General Thomas, shook Wilder's hand and told him, "You have saved the lives of a thousand men by your gallant conduct today. I didn't expect to get to this gap for three days."

At Liberty Gap, 6 miles to the west, a similar battle occurred. The leading elements of McCook's advance was the 39th Indiana, commanded by Col. Thomas J. Harrison, which was also mounted and armed with Spencer rifles. Taking a few prisoners of the Confederate pickets that opposed them, they found that there were only two Confederate regiments in the Gap. Not waiting for the main infantry support to arrive, McCook ordered the brigade of Brig. Gen. August Willich to move forward as quickly as possible. Deploying a regiment on each side of the road, Willich's men drove up the slope. A frontal assault against the breastworks was not feasible, so a fierce battle of flanking maneuvers resulted against the Confederate brigades of Brig. Gens. St. John R. Liddell and Patrick R. Cleburne. As a second Union brigade arrived in the evening to support Willich, the Union troops had pushed a half mile beyond the southern entrance to the Gap.

The first day of the campaign had been conducted in heavy rain, a weather pattern that would persist for 17 days. (Union soldiers spread the humorous rumor during the campaign that the name Tullahoma was a combination of the Greek words "tulla", meaning "mud", and "homa", meaning "more mud".) This slowed the Union advances, but the day was marked by the Army of the Cumberland's "absolutely flawless execution of Rosecrans's plan." The Union army possessed two key passes in the Highland Rim and was in position to turn Bragg's right flank.

On June 25, Bate and Johnson renewed their attempts to drive the Union men out of Hoover's Gap, while Cleburne did the same at Liberty Gap. Both were unsuccessful, although Cleburne pushed back Willich for a time, causing 20% casualties in the 77th Pennsylvania, until reinforcements arrived. Rosecrans brought the forward movement of the Army of the Cumberland to a halt as the roads had become quagmires. But during this lull, Bragg took no effective action to counter Rosecrans because his cavalry commanders were not relaying intelligence to him reliably—Forrest was not informing of the weak nature of the Union right flank attack and Wheeler failed to report the movement of Crittenden's corps through Bradyville and toward Bragg's rear.

Bragg became aware on June 26 of the significant fighting on his right flank and that the actions on his left were a feint. He ordered Polk to take his corps on a night march toward Murfreesboro through Guy's Gap and attack the Union force at Liberty Gap from the rear, while Hardee pressed them in front. Polk objected to the difficulty of the assignment and Bragg eventually called off the attack as he came to realize the threat from Thomas. Meanwhile, Rosecrans ordered McCook to withdraw from Liberty Gap to the north, skirt around the upper reaches of the Highland Rim, and exploit Thomas's breakout at Hoover's Gap.

Hardee also contributed to Bragg's difficulties. The mistrust among the general officers of the Army of Tennessee for the past months led to little direct communication about strategy and neither Polk nor Hardee had a firm understanding of Bragg's plans. Hardee complained about the unsuitability of the Tullahoma position, but rather than assuming that Bragg and Joseph E. Johnston understood the strategic situation and that he had insufficient knowledge of their plans, as historian Steven E. Woodworth described it, "He simply took the situation as further proof of his long-held notion that Bragg was an idiot" and pursued the course "he deemed best for saving an army whose commander was an idiot." That course was to order his force under Maj. Gen Alexander P. Stewart at Hoover's Gap to retreat towards Wartrace. If he had withdrawn in the direction of Manchester, he might have used the successive defensive positions along that route to delay Rosecrans enough for Bragg to implement a successful counterattack, but he simply made Thomas's breakout more effective, leaving Bragg with no alternatives than to order Polk and Hardee to withdraw to Tullahoma on June 27.

Wilder's Brigade reached Manchester at 8 a.m. on June 27 and his division occupied the town by noon. Rousseau and Brannon pushed their divisions toward Wartrace as Stewart withdrew. In the west, Granger and Stanley, still demonstrating before Guy's Gap, received orders to attempt to move forward. Stanley's cavalry easily pushed aside their Confederate counterparts and approached the breastworks at Shelbyville, now mostly abandoned after Polk's withdrawal. Some resistance remained and Col. Robert H. G. Minty personally led his "Saber Brigade" of Michigan cavalrymen in a mounted charge over the breastworks after the retreating Confederates.

On June 28, Wilder's brigade left on a raid to damage the railroad infrastructure in Bragg's rear, heading south toward Decherd, a small town on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. The rainswollen Elk River proved a significant obstacle, but they disassembled a nearby mill and constructed a raft to float their howitzers across. They defeated a small garrison of Confederates in Decherd, tore up 300 yards of track and a burned the railroad depot filled with Confederate rations. The next morning they rode into the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, reaching the town of Sewanee, the place Leonidas Polk had selected a few years before as the future site of the University of the South, where they destroyed a branch rail line. Although pursued by a larger Confederate force, the Lightning Brigade was back in Manchester by noon, June 30. They had not lost a single man on their raid.

Bragg was not overly concerned by the raid in his rear area and the damage to the railroad was repaired quickly. His men waited in their Tullahoma fortifications for a frontal assault that Rosecrans planned for July 1. However, Polk was overly concerned about the fate of the army with its communications cut off—even temporarily—and counseled Bragg to retreat. Hardee, who had no faith in Bragg, refused to specifically recommend a retreat, but offered no encouragement to stay and fight. A day later, at 3 p.m. on June 30, Bragg issued orders for a nighttime withdrawal across the Elk. By leaving before the Union assault, Bragg gave up an opportunity to inflict potentially serious damage on the Army of the Cumberland.

The Army of Tennessee took up positions below the Elk River, but Hardee and Polk convinced Bragg to move farther south, to the town of Cowan. Steven Woodworth wrote that "The resolute and well-conceived Union advance and the constant carping and noncooperation of his generals seemed to have broken Bragg down physically and emotionally" and he suffered from a collection of physical ailments, including a painful case of boils that prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battle lines. The Cowan position was not well defensible and the army remained there only until the evening of July 2. Without consulting his corps commanders, on July 3 Bragg ordered a retreat to Chattanooga. The army crossed the Tennessee River on July 4; a cavalry pursuit under Phil Sheridan was not successful in trapping the rear guard of Bragg's army before they crossed the river. All the Confederate units had encamped near Lookout Mountain by July 7.