At the beginning of the game, 7:30 a.m. on 19 September 1863, Union corps commander General Thomas sent his two present divisions to crush a Confederate force. He stayed back at Kelly's Farm with his HQ because he was under the impression (as was the historical Thomas) that there was a lone confederate brigade at Jay's Mill.

Meanwhile, General Crittenden's Union corps was at Lee & Gordon's Bridge protecting the entry of the rest of the Union army coming from the south. Crittenden performed his duty with energy and attention to detail. fie guarded the bridge against Polk's Confederate corps that was visible on the east side of the bridge. He sent Palmer's division and Wilder's Lightning Brigade north to Hall's Farm to guard his left flank. He and Thomas soon sent messages to each other. Their main worry was the huge gap between their command, while the enemy's whereabouts was almost completely unknown.

Union army commander General Rosecrans was off-map, a few miles to the South. He heard the muffled thunder of the guns from the battlefield all morning and received reports from Thomas and Crittenden. However, he did not arrive until late in the morning.

On the Confederate side, corps commander General Walker was the first to move. He was under orders to defend Jay's Mill. He swiftly gathered his corps from their overnight bivouacs and sped them toward the mill. He lined up his brigades in their defensive positions not realizing they were arriving scant minutes ahead of Thomas's two attacking divisions. Thomas deployed into line just 400 yards away in the thick woods to the west. On the next turn, the bluecoats stormed toward Jay's Mill and met the brick wall of Walker's line, suffering a bloody repulse.

The only other action was on the opposite flank, at Lee & Gordon's Bridge. Polk's corps was sparring with Crittenden's men on the far bank. In this beginning stage, each was trying to defend the bridge and guess the intentions of the other. After a couple of hours of half-hearted combat, each sent a message to his superior indicating that the enemy did not seem intent on crossing here.

Meanwhile, Bragg gave pre-orders to Generals Hood and Buckner to "move to Brock House". Unfortunately, there are three Brock Houses on the map, and the two generals headed toward different ones! Hood, got Acceptance almost immediately and moved west toward the (wrong) Brock House across the Lafayette Road. Bragg, who had realized the ambiguity of his order was riding hell-bent over the dusty roads toward Hood to clarify it. He arrived too late. Wilder's Union brigade ambushed Hood's lead unit at Hall's Farm. Crittenden had just put them there to be ready for just such an opportunity. After receiving a bloody nose at 8:30 a.m., Hood pulled back east into the woods. He did not move forward again until 1:00 p.m. that afternoon. He never realized his mighty corps front the Army of Northern Virginia faced only one augmented division of Crittenden's vulnerable left flank. He also did not realize that a yawning gap of more than a mile, just north of Crittenden's Position, separated the two Union corps all morning.

The most important events of the early hours of the battle were the ones going on in General Bragg's head. Paralyzed by uncertainty about the Union positions, he whiled away the morning hours, issuing no orders while his whole army faced just two Union corps. His failure to move forward on this first morning gave the Yankees the time they needed to bring the rest of their army up from the south.

Communication was vitally important. Crittenden sent turn-by turn dispatches to Thomas at Kelly's Farm and Rosecrans at Crawfish Springs (not on the map-I found a bigger map and computed dispatch times from that). He detailed occurrences on his front, giving his positions and asking Thomas for his. Since he was not with his men, Thomas reported that he could hear heavy firing from the direction of Jay's Mill.

On the other hand, General Bragg conveyed a fixation with secrecy. This attitude resulted in poor coordination, piecemeal attacks, and "loose cannon" behavior by jumpy corps commanders who sometimes sat in the woods for hours with no word from anybody. The first of these occurred early on the morning of the first day. Polk, at Lee & Gordon's Mill, received no communication from Hood to outflank Crittenden's men on the opposite batik. Going with the division in person, Polk Bumped into Hood himself after his men crossed Hall's Ford and ran into Hood's line. After a heated (phone) conversation, Polk stuck with his decision to strike west toward Lafayette Road in front of Hood's position. He went ahead with his divisional attack at 11:00 am.. He sent Bragg word of his intentions at 9:30 a.m. Thus prodded, Bragg sent back attack orders to both Polk and Hood at 11:00 am.-his first offensive orders of the day, 3 1/2 hours into the battle (!). He ordered Polk to strike west across Lee & Gordon's Bridge and drive Crittenden north. On his right, Bragg ordered Hood to wheel south. Together they would crush Crittenden between them.

As it turned out, Polk's initial "loose cannon" divisional attack north of Hall's Ford petered out ineffectively at 12:30 p.m. This was just as Polk's other division accepted its orders and launched itself across Lee & Gordon's Bridge to the south. Crittenden stopped this attack at 2:00 p.m., just as Hood's attack hit to the north after a long delay. It was a classic demonstration of poor coordination that allowed Crittenden to give his full attention to each attack in turn.

McCook's Union corps had arrived from the south by the time Hood's attack hit Crittenden's left flank. McCook marched across Crittenden's rear, gathering at Brotherton Farm. He was midway between Thomas and Crittenden but in contact with neither. Rosecrans, the army commander, was present to direct McCook's deployment. However, due to Rosecran's confusion about the location of Thomas's and Crittenden's near flanks, he could not tell McCook where to link up with them. While Rosecrans dithered, Hood struck Crittenden's still unsupported left. Crittenden had held off two enemy corps all day. He fell back, exhausted, almost a mile to Widow Glenn's Farm.

At the east edge of Brock Field, Confederate corps commander Buckner had been sitting for three hours with no orders. While Hood was crashing across the Lafayette Road in pursuit of Crittenden, Buckner gave Preston's division an order to strike west to sever the Lafayette Road-the vital route for all Union cornmunications at Brotherton Farm. Preston's division, skulking west, ran smack into McCook's corps newly drawn up around Brotherton. Preston's foray distracted McCook from going to the aid of Crittenden, who was falling back in front of Hood a half-mile to the south. It also nearly captured the important Brotherton intersection when two of McCook's brigades routed. In addition, Preston's division also distracted the very able McCook from reacting immediatedly to the drama that was about to unfold just to the north.

Fall Back

After his drubbing that morning around Jay's Mill to the east, Union General Thomas fell back. He now had three divisions and drew up quietly into the woods on the west side of Brock Field. He had extended his line about a mile north to cover the main east-west road, the Reed's Bridge Road. Thomas had no way of knowing that he was right in the way of what would be the biggest of Bragg's hammerblows of the first day. Bragg had grown into command since coming out of his coma late that morning. At 2:30 p.m., he ordered Hill's newly arrived corps to attack from a staging area at the southeast corner of Brock Field. The aim of the attack was to move northwest across the field and beyond to sever the Lafayette Road at Kelly Farm a mile away. It was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Buckner's corps was still hiding in the trees on the cast side of Brock Field just north of Hill's jump-off spot. Bragg ordered Buckner's corps to launch a supporting attack one hour after Hill went in.

One division of reinforcements sent to Bragg from Johnston's Army of Mississippi joined each of these two corps. Bragg did not think the Yankees would be expecting an attack across the open field. More than that, he bet that his target would be completely deserted. He thought the Union army had gone south to meet Polk's and Hood's earlier attacks.

However, the Union army did not head south. Crittenden had managed to meet those attacks all by himself. Thomas's three divisions were directly in the way of this, the main Confederate attack of the day. So when Hill's Confederate corps swept out of the trees and rushed across the width of Brock Field at 4:00 he crashed headlong into Thomas's startled defenders on the far side. An immediate counter-attack by Thomas routed two rebel brigades on Hill's right flank. One turn after attacking and seeing his corps alone and vulnerable on the field, General Hill decided he had had enough. At 4:30, as Bragg and Buckner watched horrified from the trees on the east side of the field, Hill's corps turned and ran off the field!

General Wheeler had just reached Bragg at the head of his newly arrived corps of Confederate cavalry. He immediately accepted orders directly from Bragg to hit the exposed Yankee brigades on the field. Without breaking stride, Wheeler's troopers dashed onto the field and struck Thomas's bluecoats hard on the flank. Brock Field at 4:30 was a scene of roiling confusion.

At 5:00 Buckner, who had been waiting to go forward since early morning, got acceptance for his order to attack (supposedly in support of Hill). His corps, two big fresh divisions, screamed across the north half of Brock Field toward Thomas and the Lafayette Road beyond. On Buckner's right, Confederate General Walker accepted newly received orders to attack in support of Buckner. Walker ordered one of his divisions to attack on Buckner's immediate right, straight west toward the Lafayette Road. The other he sent west along the Reed's Bridge Road. They were in column heading toward the Lafayette Road a full mile north of where Buckner and Thomas were staging their showdown at Brock Field.

Here was the potential for a rebel breakthrough that would sunder the Union army, capture the middle passes through Missionary Ridge to Chattanooga, and win the battle on the first day. Thomas's messages to the other Union commanders were sounding more and more worried. To the South, Thomas had contracted his lines to concentrate his defense at Brock Field against Hill, then Wheeler, then Buckner (seven fresh divisions in all). He had thus uncovered the Reed's Bridge Road. Walker's division, speeding west along that road, was headed into a vacuum, straight toward a huge hole in the Union front.

All day long the Union generals in the south had been entirely negligent in keeping in touch with Granger's corps. He was guarding the vital Rossville gap about four miles north of Thomas. Rosecrans had not Communicated directly with Granger all day. Granger for his part had been content to stay at his lonely post all this time, listening to the far Oft' Sounds of battle. He sent few messages of his own, paralyzed by the thought of huge Confederate columns bearing down on him by any of a hall'-dozen roads to the south and east.

However, Granger finally stuck his head out of his shell at 4:00 p.m. and decided to have a look around. He rode with one of his divisions to the southeast. At 5:30, they struck the Confederate rearguard just north of lay's Mill. Both sides were startled. Walker sent a frantic dispatch to Bragg, who chose to ignore it. Each side shrank from further contact. Meanwhile, Granger ordered his other division south along the Rossville-Lafayett Road. They went to see what was happening in the direction of the increasing battle roar west of Brock Field.

A crisis had descended on Thomas's corps. Buckner's attack drove Thomas back yard by bloody yard to a last-ditch defense of the Lafayette Road at Kelly Field. Moreover, Hill's Confederate corps renewed their attack at 6:00 p.m. Hill ran forward and demolished Thomas's front at Kelly by close-assaulting a weak Union brigade. He threw it back and immediately brought up a battery, enfilading the whole blue line. Thomas, his corps crushed, ordered a headlong retreat back to the Missionary Ridge a mile further west.

Walker, with his "division of destiny" riding west to the undefended Union middle, stopped one-half mile short of his goal! He became afraid that he would expose his division if he advanced to cut the Lafayette Road. He was poised close to the vital Lafayette- Reed's Bridge Road intersection. Before long, Bragg rode up to Walker and ordered him forward into the Union rear.

By this time (7:30 p.m.), Granger's vanguard, stumbling south toward all the noise, had just covered the intersection. Walker's division burst onto the intersection from the west and quickly brushed aside Granger's men on their way into the Union rear. With Thomas's shattered remainder streaming away within striking distance to the west and south of Walker, things were at their grimmest for the Union army.

However, as the sun disappeared behind the western ridges, it became clear that the Confederates had planned the main attack for too late in the day. Together with Hill's sudden about-face on Brock Field and Walker's hesitation on the Reed's Bridge Road, the miscalculation prevented the Rebels from seizing a first-day breakthrough. At 8:00 p. in., darkness intervened and saved Thomas and the Union center. Thomas lost a few men to Walker's raiders in the first hours of darkness. However, the wave of' Confederates (which included the men of the implacable General Buckner, whose wrecked corps was still moving forward) lapped up against the wooded Missionary Ridge and stopped.

So ended the first day.

Second Day

On the second day of the battle the Rebels capitalized on having captured the Lafayette Road at the Reed's Bridge Road intersection. All swift communications between General Granger's corps and the rest of the Union army to the south had been cut. The Confederates concentrated in the north against the isolated Granger and broke through. They seized the Rossville Gap to Chattanooga and won the game at 4:00 p.m. on September 20. There were extraordinary events, gutsy decisions and missed opportunities on the second day to rival the ones on the first day of battle.

More Refereed Play

Prologue
The Game
Epilogue