Ghosts of Chickamauga

(After living 1 mile from Chickamauga Battlefield for 19 yrs and making a detailed study of the battle I recently found out that I had both a great, great, great grandfather and a great, great, great, great grandfather who fought there - in the same company. Below is my synopsis of their regiment posted here for the convenience of my family.)

The 24th South Carolina Volunteers at Chickamauga

Within one week of arriving in Chattanooga from Mississippi in August 1863 to bolster the Army of Tennessee, the 24th South Carolina, Gist’s Brigade, Walker’s Division evacuated south with the army in order to fend off Union commander George Rosecrans attempt to flank them thus severing their communications with Atlanta and points south.
While most of the Army concentrated mainly around Lafayette, Georgia, 30 miles south of Chattanooga, Gist’s brigade was sent further south to Rome to check any possible Union advance in that area. Therefore, when it became obvious that a battle was imminent near Lafayette, Gist’s brigade was urgently ordered back to the north.
When the battle of Chickamauga opened in earnest on September 19th, the 24th South Carolina was still en route via rail from Rome to Catoosa Station – about 8 miles from the battlefield. As it happened it's return intersected the arrival of the last of General James Longstreet’s corps from Virginia. The transfer of Longstreet’s detachment from Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia came just 2 months after the defeat at Gettysburg and was the most massive wartime movement of men and material up to that time. Gist’s division’s train was shunted to a railroad siding while Longstreet’s passed.
Sometime during the night Gist’s division, less the 16th South Carolina which had not yet entrained in Rome, arrived at Catoosa Station (near Ringgold, Georgia), detrained, and set off for the field 8 miles distant.
Though day was warm, that night the temperature plunged in to the low 30s – very abnormal for North Georgia in September. So I’m sure the march was less than pleasant. Still, at least the 24th S.C. had the physical exertion of marching to keep them warm. On the battlefield the well and wounded from both sides were suffering greatly from the cold as they passed a long, frigid night.
The brigade, having acted as guard accompanying a supply train from Ringgold, arrived at Alexander’s Bridge during the early morning hours. This was one of two bridges over the Chickamauga, and the possession of both was hotly contested two days prior on September 18th. Though the planking had been removed by Wilder's Union Infantry, the bridge had been repaired and now the immediate vicinity was the Conferderate rear eshelon area.
One can imagine that arrival at this site was pretty chaotic. Supply trains would have clogged both sides of the road, the previous days wounded (and many of the dead) would have been scattered about being tended to as well as possible under the circumstances, other troops would have been staging for the coming days battle, and everywhere there would have been destruction and disorder. Though I can find no account of the next few hours it's certain that the brigade fell out for rest and to take what rations could be provided. They wouldn't rest long.
Confederate Commander General Braxton Bragg's battle plan that morning called for the battle to open on the right and then southward by consecutive divisions. The idea was to turn the enemy’s left flank and isolate them from Chattanooga. This action was to have begun at dawn , but, sadly characteristic of the command style of Braxton Bragg, miscommunication led to a three hour delay in the attack.
During the night the Union left, under the command of General Thomas, had withdrawn from the battle line of the 19th to a much more defensible position at the crest of a slope ½ mile to the rear (don't confuse this with Snodgrass Hill, that would come later), and set his men to work constructing a nearly impregnable log breastwork about waist high all along that line. They worked throughout the night to accomplish this. It was against these defenses that the Confederate’s charged when the battle belatedly began on the morning of September 20th.
Perhaps assaults on such a hardened and very defensible line would have been carried with careful planning, but the charges on the Confederate right that day came in piecemeal fashion rather than by any coordinated plan. As a result they were, with a couple of exceptions, easily repulsed with massive losses.
Overseeing those early actions was corps commander D. H. Hill. At 10am , about an hour before our 24th S.C. saw action he’d sent in Helm’s Brigade led by General Benjamin Helm, brother-in-law to Abe Lincoln. Helm’s guys were terribly mauled and Helm himself was killed. They withdrew in tatters after a very brief assault. This created a gap in Hill’s line that he was obviously very eager to fill - enter our boys from Marlboro County.

Having heard that Gist’s brigade had finally arrived, Hill specifically requested that brigade be detached from Walker's Division to close his line. (Apparently the brigade’s reputation was such that he would ask for it. This was a matter of some controversy over the years, because he was offered an entire division for reinforcement but stubbornly insisted that only Gist’s brigade be sent. Later his most extreme left division, that of General John Breckenridge [former Vice President of the United States] actually managed to flank the Union left and was making spectacular progress until Union reinforcements drove him back. It’s felt that had Hill had the reserved division in hand he would have easily carried that end of the field and achieved the battles objective of isolating the Army of the Cumberland from Chattanooga. )
As it happens, I’m very familiar with the battlefield in general, and that part of the field in particular. At the point at which the 24th S.C. fought the Federal breastworks are reached after ascending a long ½ mile slope through very thick woods. At the crest there was (and still is) a glade about 200 yards wide (this is where the parking area presently sits at the head of Battleline Road), and the Federal defenses were about 50 - 75 yards back.
Going in the brigade passed over the wounded and dead of Helm’s brigade and assaulted the same position from which those troops been repulsed only an hour or so before. As the troops topped the hill they found themselves immediately under fire. They fought in the open, while the defenders crouched behind the new log wall, and the results are about what you’d imagine. It was murderous. Furthermore, since this charge was unsupported by any other coordinated attack, they were subject to enfilading fire from troops left of their front that weren’t otherwise occupied.
Like Helm’s Kentuckians before them, Gist’s brigade was repulsed very quickly without gaining any ground on the enemy. Col. Colquitt, who’d been placed in command of the brigade when General Gist was given command of Walker’s division earlier that morning, was killed while riding to encourage the troops. He’d been in command about 30 minutes. Losses of killed, wounded, and missing (as the photos show) were about 1/3 of the brigade. This all took plance in a half hours span. The division was then retired for the balance of the day. At about the same time as the 24th was marching into action, far to the left General Hood’s corps hit a weak point in the Union line with a massed attack that broke the Union center and eventually drove the entire Army of the Cumberland off the field. The battle was won, but just 3 months later the Feds, now under command of U.S.Grant managed to fight their way out of Chattanooga sending the Army of Tennessee into a retreat from which it would never recover. By the following Christmas Sherman would be in Savannah.

I’ve lived within one mile of Chickamauga Battlefield for the last 19 years – an incredible luxury for a history buff. I’ve spent untold hours tromping around the trails there studying the battle over the years. And since the area where the 24th fought is in one of the more accessible sections of the park, I’ve lingered there quite a bit. But I had no idea we had any ancestors that would have fought in this theater till my Mom mentioned it to me a couple of weeks ago. You can imagine my excitement. So I immediately found the tablets on the field detailing the 24ths action and hit the internet for research- the result of which I present here. Afterwards The 24th later took part in the siege of Chattanooga (specifically the Battle of Lookout Mountain), spent the winter in camp at Dalton, Georgia where Mom and Dad live, and were pursued south to Atlanta where it was detached with General Hood’s Corps for an ill-fated attempt to draw Sherman out of Georgia by threatening Tennessee. During that campaign Hood’s entire army was decimated during the Battle of Franklin and thereafter limped down to the Mississippi coast to it's winter camp (wherein Hood resigned his commission). Later it was transferred to North Carolina to help confront Sherman there, but it was of little hope. The war was effectively lost long before then.

I'll post more later when I can track down exactly the 24th South Carolina's role in the Battle of Chattanooga.