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armies by counting their divisions, brigades or regiments, for the reason that it is impossible in an active campaign to keep up the relative proportions of separate corps, engaged at different times and often with no option as to whether a fresh or a decimated command shall go into action.
The writer was an officer of General Walker's division, and knows that at the battle of Chickamauga, on the 20th, that division of three brigades did not number 3,000 men. General Gist's brigade, to which the writer was attached, went into action on the 20th, 980 strong, one of its regiments (Sixteenth South Carolina) and its light battery being absent at Rome.
By studying the field returns of both armies, nearest to the opening battle on the 19th (Rosecrans' of September 10th and Bragg's of August 20th), and making deductions for commands on stations or on detached duty, and counting in for Bragg's army the two divisions from Mississippi (Breckinridge's and Walker's), and Longstreet's five brigades and Buckner's troops, and estimating losses for both armies up to the battle of the 19th, it is believed that Bragg crossed the Chickamauga on the 18th, 19th and 20th with 45,000, exclusive of his cavalry.
By the method of estimating the strength of General Bragg's army, the writer believes that Rosecrans confronted Bragg with 53,000, exclusive of his cavalry.
Before the battle, each general overestimated the strength of the other and underestimated his own. On September 12th, General Rosecrans believed that ‘the main body of Johnston's army had joined Bragg,’ and that he had been heavily reinforced from Virginia.
The truth is, that so far as Bragg's reinforcements affected the engagements of the armies at Chickamauga, they did not add a man more than 10,000 to Bragg's strength, if, indeed, they added so many.
The two armies facing each other from opposite sides of the Chickamauga, Bragg gave order for battle.
Rosecrans' left, under Thomas, was at Kelly's house on the
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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