Viniard Field, 2:30-5:00 p.m.

Wilder Saves the Union Right, Viniard Field 2:30-5:00pm

September 19, 1863

Fighting in the Viniard Field.
From White, Bushwhacking on a Grand Scale, 42.

Most of the action on September 19 was between the northern flank of the Army of the Cumberland and the northern flank of the Army of the Tennessee. As the day wore on, both commanders began to think about attacking the enemy’s southern flank in an attempt to outflank the other. Each commander sent units to probe the dense forest in hopes of discovering that the other commander had the majority of his troops centered to the north. Instead, these probing units crashed into each other, beginning a bloody struggle and the hardest fighting of the day. 

Union General Rosecrans sent the division under Jefferson C. Davis south of Dyer Road and across the Widow Glenn field towards the Lafayette Road. Davis was supposed to fall into battle line on the southern end of Brigadier General Horatio Van Cleve’s division. However, the dense forest and lack of a landmark to use as a guide caused Davis to end up half of a mile to south of Van Cleve. Though no one knew it, a gap had been created in the Union line. 

As the division moved forward, Davis’s lead brigade under the command of the Norwegian Colonel Hans Heg, marched straight into the Confederate skirmish lines of Bushrod Johnson’s Tennesseans. Both sides were shocked at the other’s presence, but without hesitation, they began firing rapid volleys at close range. At first Heg was able to push the Tennesseans back, but as Johnson consolidated his troops, he used his numerical advantage to drive Heg back. Confederate corps commander John Bell Hood ordered Johnson to push the Federals back and to the right, swinging like a door, in order to flank them. The units of Johnson’s right were able to push back Davis’s right, the brigade under the command of Brigadier General William Carlin, and began to outflank them. But Heg’s brigade regained its momentum and shattered Johnson, providing some relief to Carlin. Hood then sent Brigadier General Evander Law’s division forward. Fresh troops overwhelmed Davis’s division and they were pushed back. But then two brigades under Union General Thomas Wood came to support Davis, and together they held their ground. By now, enough troops were engaged on both sides that the fighting spilled out of the dense woods and onto an open field, Viniard Field. 

The tide of the battle went back and forth. Each side would gain ground only to lose it again. They marched across the same ground over and over again, stepping over the dead and wounded that began to cover the field and forest floors.

The Union troops in that part of the field, under the overall command of Major General Thomas Crittenden, began to lose ground and were pushed back to the Lafayette Road. They made a valiant stand just in front of the road. This road that ran North-South represented the main Union escape route to Chattanooga. That day, General William Rosecrans, commander of the Army of the Cumberland, had drawn up his battle in order to protect it. Now he was in danger of losing it. The exhausted Union soldiers, standing just several yards in front of the road, looked around them for support, but only saw Union artillery far to their rear. Heg’s Norwegian troops had largely been destroyed by the Confederates in the thick woods. The remaining few fought from the safety of a log schoolhouse that sat by the road. The Norwegians had met their match, though, in the form of the famous Texas Brigade. From horseback, Heg encouraged his men to fight on and for a while they held off the Texans. But the Texans soon outflanked Heg’s men, the last Union unit before the gap created by Davis.  

Then the Confederates put more reinforcements into the field, a brigade under the command of Colonel Robert Trigg. They charged across Viniard Field and went up against Carlin and one of Wood’s brigades, commanded by Colonel George Buell. Momentarily, Carlin and Buell held off Trigg, as they desperately hoped for reinforcements of their own. Just then, Colonel Sydney Barnes’s brigade from Van Cleve’s division, appeared, with orders from Crittenden to flank Trigg. Barnes went to the right of Carlin, but while trying to flank the Confederates, they themselves became outflanked by Trigg. Barnes’s brigade broke and retreated through Carlin’s men. Carlin’s men joined the retreat. 

Crittenden’s men were now outflanked on both edges. Carlin, Buell, and Heg made one last effort to defend the road, but their exhaustion and heavy Confederate fire proved to be too much. The Federals broke and fled across the Lafayette Road, the Confederates on their heels. While Heg tried to rally his troops, he was shot from his horse, mortally wounded. As they ran toward the Union artillery, their backs to the Confederates, hundreds of Union soldiers sought shelter in a shallow ditch just beyond the Lafayette Road. The ditch was only a few feet deep, but several feet wide. They tried to hold their ground, using the ditch to their advantage, but they were again forced to retreat as the Confederates continued to advance. As the Federals fled from the ditch and across an open field, the Confederates shot them down in droves. A fence beyond the ditch, the edge of Viniard’s farm, slowed the Union retreat and bunched them up as they tried to climb over it. For the Confederates, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. 

Hood’s Confederates pressed forward, and soon came in range of the Union breastworks set up in front of the tree line. The men behind the barricade were men belonging to Colonel John Wilder’s cavalry. After waiting for the last retreating Union soldiers to pass through them, they opened fire. With their repeating Spencer rifles, they poured a heavy fire into onrushing rebels. It was the Confederates’ turn to find shelter in the ditch. Wilder then called up his artillery, commanded by Captain Eli Lilly. Lilly was directed to a position where he could fire his guns into the ditch, end-on. As the artillerists fired canister into the ditch, it soon became a death pit. Hundreds of Confederates were dead in mere minutes, mutilated by the constant firing of canister. 

By that time, Union reinforcements had arrived in the form of Major General Phillip Sheridan’s division. He crossed the open field towards the ditch and pushed the Confederates back across Lafayette Road. But a stubborn fight by the Confederates allowed Sheridan to push them back no further. 

The battle for Viniard Field ended as the sun set. Neither army had made any significant gains. They had only found out where the other was.

Author: Shannon Rowe, March 2, 2015

Further Reading:

Woodworth, Steven E. ​Six Armies in Tennessee: The Chickamauga and Chattanooga Campaigns. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, 90-97. 

White, William L. Bushwhacking on a Grand Scale: The Battle of Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie LLC, 2013, 51-57.