Volume XXVII Issue #1 • An Excerpt From:

The Tullahoma Campaign

by Michael R. Bradley

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Note: All Blue & Gray feature articles are annotated.

Prelude to the Tullahoma Campaign

Six months of preparation led up to the twelve wet days of the Tullahoma Campaign. In order to understand the campaign these months must be considered.

When the bloody fighting came to an end along the banks of Stones River just outside Murfreesboro on January 2, 1863, both the Army of Tennessee and Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland were exhausted. Three days of intense combat had drained both sides of strength and of resources. When Gen. Braxton Bragg (left) received faulty intelligence from Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry command that Union reinforcements were approaching, Bragg broke contact and fell back south and east to the Duck River. Placing Leonidas Polk’s corps at Shelbyville and William J. Hardee’s at Tullahoma, the infantry of the Army of Tennessee went into winter quarters. The cavalry would have a more active role to play, even during the inclement days of winter. Bragg stretched his cavalry along a line some 75 miles in length, from Spring Hill in the west to McMinnville in the east. The function of this extended line was not only to cover his front and protect his flanks, but to guard the area from which the army was to draw much of its food.

Bragg made his headquarters at Tullahoma on the main line of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. This rail line gave Bragg ready communication with Chattanooga, Atlanta, and even Richmond, but it did not supply him with food. The intention of the Confederate commissary was that Bragg should subsist his army from the territory to the west of his infantry lines, an area stretching into the western reaches of Middle Tennessee and open to raids from Union cavalry. The collection point for Bragg’s supplies was to be Columbia, Tennessee, just south of Spring Hill. Rosecrans’ right flank was anchored at Franklin, Tennessee, some 20 miles south of Nashville and west of Murfreesboro, which made the Confederate position vulnerable to Union probes.

From the collection point at Columbia it was 45 miles of muddy roads to Polk’s camps around Shelbyville, 60 miles to Hardee’s position at Tullahoma. In an attempt to speed the distribution of supplies the Nashville & Decatur Railroad was repaired from Columbia to Decatur, Alabama. There the supplies were transferred to the Memphis & Charleston Railroad which carried them to Stevenson, Alabama, at which point the goods were put on the Nashville & Chattanooga line to go back north to Tullahoma. This approximately 200 mile rail route was easier and faster than travel over the wagon roads. Even so, the Army of Tennessee lived on a day-to-day basis, seldom having as much as a week’s worth of rations in hand.

When William S. Rosecrans (right) found that Bragg had retreated after the Battle of Stones River, he and the Army of the Cumberland heaved a collective sigh of relief. They were 30 miles from their base of supply at Nashville and had little on hand in the way of food or ammunition. This situation was thanks to a successful raid by Joe Wheeler prior to the battle that had swept completely around Rosecrans’ position, destroying enormous numbers of wagons loaded with supplies and destroying the railroad which led from Nashville to Murfreesboro. Although the rails would soon be repaired there was a limited supply of goods to forward from Nashville. In early December 1862, John Hunt Morgan had struck a telling blow for the Confederacy by raiding Gallatin, Tennessee, and destroying tunnels on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. The destruction of the railroad left Rosecrans depending on the Cumberland River as a line of supply and that was a tenuous line. Low water and Confederate raiders frequently hampered navigation during the winter months. Rosecrans was delighted Bragg had decided to retreat. If Bragg had not retreated, Rosecrans would have been forced to return to Nashville because of his lack of supplies. Certainly, the Army of the Cumberland did not have the food or ammunition on hand to pursue the Confederates and neither did the weather favor an advance.

The supply situation would not improve rapidly for Rosecrans. Soon after the fighting ended at Stones River the Confederates dispatched a considerable force of cavalry, led by Wheeler, with Bedford Forrest second in command, to interdict boats on the Cumberland River. Though this force met a bloody repulse at the village of Dover, Tennessee, adjacent to Fort Donelson, they were successful at other locations. Guerrillas hampered the repair efforts on the tunnels near Gallatin, and Morgan had gone deep into Kentucky just prior to the Stones River battle, wreaking havoc on the L&N up to the outskirts of Louisville. Although somewhat better off than their gray opponents, the blue soldiers needed to keep a careful eye on their commissary.