The cold front that washed over the north Georgia mountains on the evening of September 19, 1863 brought unspeakable misery to the thousands of wounded men lying in the woods and fields west of Chickamauga Creek. Nor were those lucky enough to be unhurt unaffected by the drop in the temperature. Unless they were far in the rear of the battle lines stretching along the Rossville-La Fayette Road, they shivered in the cold, under orders not to build fires that would attract random shots. Only the several thousand dead, Blue and Gray alike, were unaffected as their bodies stiffened into the grotesque positions where death had found them. The day’s fighting had produced a gigantic cloud of gunsmoke that hung heavily in the air, reducing visibility significantly. The smoke eventually merged with a dense fog that formed during the night and blanketed everything. The mist was especially thick near the creek, where visibility at dawn was less than 50 yards. Nevertheless, September 20 was to be another day of battle, and thousands of soldiers stirred early from their fitful sleep. Braxton Bragg’s battle plan called for Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk’s Right Wing to begin its advance at “day dawn,” or as soon as the light of day made it possible for troops to see their way forward. Sunrise that morning would be at 5:47 a.m., but there would be light before that time, and Bragg expected the battle to begin before sunrise. Rising before first light, he waited expectantly for the sounds of conflict to swell from the north, but only silence greeted his ears as he stood in the fog. Polk had clearly understood his orders at the conference held at Bragg’s headquarters at Thedford’s Ford the previous night. What could possibly have delayed him?1

The hour of Leonidas Polk’s rising on the morning of September 20 is lost to history, but there is enough credible testimony available to ascertain that it was considerably before sunrise. Upon awakening, Polk quickly learned that the courier bearing the attack order to Lt. Gen. Harvey Hill, Pvt. John Fisher of the Orleans Light Horse, had been unable to find him. Springing into action, Polk directed his assistant adjutant general, Lt. Col. Thomas Jack, to draft new orders directly to each of Hill’s division commanders, Maj. Gens. Patrick R. Cleburne and John C. Breckinridge. Timed at 5:30 a.m., the orders were unambiguous: “Move upon and attack the enemy so soon as you are in position.” This time no enlisted couriers were to be used; instead, the envelopes were entrusted to Capt. Frank Wheless of Polk’s staff. As Wheless mounted his horse, Polk admonished him to waste no time in delivering the orders to Cleburne and Breckinridge, as well as notifying Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham of their contents. Racing over Alexander’s Bridge, Wheless found himself momentarily lost in the dense fog of the Chickamauga bottoms and paused to find some landmark to guide him to the Confederate line. The initial glimmer of sunrise gave him the requisite direction and he proceeded up the long slope to the tree line several hundred yards ahead. Finding Cheatham relatively easily, Wheless delivered the contents of the message, then rode to Cheatham’s right in search of Cleburne and Breckinridge. Meanwhile, Braxton Bragg was also anxious about the morning quiet, and he dispatched Maj. Pollock Lee of his staff to Polk’s headquarters in order to learn the cause of the delay. Lee arrived just as Polk was mounting his horse, and after a brief conversation, he returned across the Chickamauga to report to Bragg. For reasons known only to himself, Lee told Bragg that he had found Polk sitting in a rocking chair and reading a newspaper, awaiting his breakfast.2

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