The Tullahoma campaign, with the exception of the one immediately following, which placed the Army of the Cumberland across the Tennessee and terminated in the battle of Chickamauga, was the most brilliant of the great strategic campaigns carried to a successful issue by General Rosecrans.The movements of the army occupied nine days, during which time the enemy was driven from two strongly fortified positions, with a loss in prisoners captured of 1,634, eleven pieces of artillery, and a large amount of stores and supplies.
The result of this campaign gave to Rosecrans possession of Middle Tennessee, and placed the armies back in the relative positions occupied by them prior to Bragg's advance into Kentucky, a little less than one year previous.The campaign was conducted throughout, in one of the most extraordinary series of rain-storms ever known in Tennessee at that season of the year.This, with the resistance interposed by Bragg at our advance at Hoover's Gap, retarded operations thirty-six hours, and in front of Manchester a detention of sixty hours occurred.These delays and the storms prevented us getting possession of Bragg's communication and forcing him to a very disastrous battle.General Rosecrans in his official report of this campaign says: "These results were far more successful than were anticipated, and could only have been obtained by a surprise as to the direction and force of our movements."Bragg made no official report of the Tullahoma campaign, but in a statement to General J.E.Johnston of his operations at that time, he says that he offered battle behind his works at Shelbyville to Rosecrans, which was refused; that the latter passed to his, Bragg's, right on two occasions, threatening his rear.He being not able to cope with the Federal army retreated to the Tennessee.Bragg adds: "The Tennessee will be taken as our line."During these nine days of active campaigning the Army of the Cumberland, numbering less than sixty thousand effective men, with a loss of 560 killed, wounded, and missing, compelled the army under Bragg, numbering something less than forty-five thousand effective men, to retreat a greater distance and out of far stronger positions than the united armies under Sherman were able to compel the same army with but slight additional strength under General Joe Johnston, to fall back, in four months of active field campaigning, with a very much larger relative loss.The proportion of the forces of the opposing armies during the Tullahoma campaign was far nearer equal than that on to Atlanta, while the natural and military obstacles to be overcome were largely the greater in the Tullahoma campaign.To Bragg the forward movement of the Federal army in full strength was a surprise, but to find that army so far in his rear and so near to cutting his line of communications was a much greater surprise.These might not have been guarded against, but nothing displayed the marked superiority of Rosecrans over his opponent, as a great strategist, so much as the grand success of the final movement of the campaign, from Manchester south.The general who--as even the rebels, in their worship of their leader General Lee, admitted--was able in Western Virginia to completely outgeneral Lee, on the Tullahoma campaign again demonstrated his ability as the greatest strategic general of the war.
Brilliant campaigns, however, without battles, do not accomplish the destruction of an army.A campaign like that of Tullahoma always means a battle at some other point.This was true after the Atlanta campaign, where Sherman got the glory and Thomas did the fighting.
This was equally true as to the Tullahoma, and the fact that these two armies were yet somewhere to meet and engage in deadly strife, was apparent to the commanders of both armies.Where and when that meeting was to be was the problem that engaged the minds of both these commanders.In the Tullahoma campaign the elements were on the side of Bragg's army, both in preventing the rapid movements of the Federal army, and in furnishing a perfect barrier to a successful pursuit when the retreat was under way, by the high water in the swollen streams, the bridges over which Bragg destroyed as he fell back.
The concluding line of Bragg's letter to Johnston, that "The Tennessee will be taken as our line," demonstrated that, to his mind at least, his Kentucky movement of the year before did not meet with the success he anticipated.Here now he was waiting his opportunity to contest his last foothold on the State of Tennessee at the far corner in Chattanooga.With Rosecrans, his army required after these days of hard campaigning a rest to repair the wear and tear of the heavy marching, and the resupplying of his entire command.The railroads in his rear required his attention first.
These were placed in order up to his army, and the repairs on the road to the front were then to be pushed to the Tennessee River.In three weeks time these were completed, and on the 25th, the first supply train was pushed through to the Tennessee River.Then Rosecrans established his new depot of supplies at Stevenson, Alabama, and hastened, as rapidly as he could, the accumulation of supplies at that point.
