Two months after the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the Union Army of the Cumberland under the command of Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans and the Confederate Army of the Tennessee under Gen. Braxton Bragg clashed near Chickamauga Creek in northern Georgia, just across the border from Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War — two days of ferocious fighting (September 19–20, 1863) that resulted in more than 34,600 total casualties (dead, wounded, captured, missing). When the fighting stopped, the Confederates controlled the field but failed to destroy the Union Army due to the courage of the Union troops and the leadership of Gen. George H. Thomas on Snodgrass Hill.
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The battlefield lay on both sides of LaFayette Road, with Union forces positioned west of the road and Confederate troops east. Behind the Confederate line was Chickamauga Creek. After crossing the creek against minor opposition from Union forces on Sept. 18, Bragg’s troops attacked at dawn the next morning, gaining ground but unable to break the Union line. The fighting was fierce, confused, and costly. In the evening, troops under the command of Gen. James Longstreet arrived. The next morning, Longstreet’s troops attacked just as Rosecrans created a gap in the Union line by ordering a brigade of men to move north. Longstreet’s men poured through the gap, creating havoc along the center and right wing of the Union Army. The Union Army of the Cumberland was in danger of being routed and possibly destroyed.
As Union forces moved north, they came under the immediate command of Thomas, who was situated atop Snodgrass Hill, named for George Washington Snodgrass, an early pioneer who settled in northern Georgia. The hill is about 900 feet in elevation, and Thomas used its natural defensive position to repel repeated Confederate assaults. The assaults began at about 1:00 p.m. and lasted until early evening. One Union survivor wrote:
Our assailants seemed to understand that our frail line was all they had to overcome to reach the rear and very heart of the horseshoe formation. There was that peculiar fierceness in the manner of the assault that men show when they realize that the supreme opportunity has presented itself, and are determined not to let it slip. And our boys could do nothing but set their teeth and fight, as for their lives.
Thomas and his troops saved the Union Army of the Cumberland that day on Snodgrass Hill. The stout defense enabled the army to retreat safely to Chattanooga, where two months later troops commanded by Thomas (including a young Wisconsin officer named Arthur MacArthur, who would win the Medal of Honor for his heroics and whose son Douglas would command American forces in three major wars of the 20th century) would storm Missionary Ridge to defeat Confederate forces on that seemingly impregnable position. A year later, Thomas’ troops would destroy the remnants of the Confederate Army at the Battle of Nashville. (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Missionary Ridge and Generational Courage)
George Thomas was a Virginian who “disgraced” his family by remaining loyal to the Union when Virginia seceded. He never achieved the fame of Gens. Grant and Sherman, but, as historian Mark Grimsley pointed out, “[H]e was almost alone among Union generals in never losing a battle.” Today, Thomas’ statue is located at the intersection of 14th Street, M Street, Massachusetts Avenue, and Vermont Avenue NW in “Thomas Circle.” But the real monument to his greatness is the ground at Snodgrass Hill — part of the National Park Service’s Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. It was there that Thomas earned the sobriquet “the Rock of Chickamauga.”
