Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies: Union and Confederate Generals’ Accounts of the Battle of Chickamauga

The battle of Chickamauga in September 1863 was one of the biggest battles in the Western theater. In that campaign, Braxton Bragg’s Confederate army routed the Union Army of the Cumberland led by William Rosecrans, but the retreating Federals were rallied by George H. Thomas, forever known as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” and they made a defensive stand that allowed the Union army to regroup and retreat in an orderly fashion back to Chattanooga. Thomas would soon succeed Rosecrans as commander of the army, and the Union would eventually break the Confederates’ siege and pave the way for Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.

Before all of the generals relived the Battle of Chickamauga in their memoirs, they wrote official accounts of the battle to their superiors, and these accounts were preserved in the Official Records. This collection includes 5 accounts of the battle from prominent generals on both sides, including Commanders Braxton Bragg and William Rosecrans, and generals James Longstreet, George H. Thomas and Joseph Kershaw. It is specially formatted with a Table of Contents for each general’s account, and pictures of the generals who fought in it.