Polk's wing
captured twenty-eight pieces of artillery and Longstreet's twenty-one.
Eight thousand prisoners of war were taken, fifteen thousand stand of
arms and forty regimental colors.
Rosecrans' army of eighty thousand men was literally cut to pieces by
Bragg's fifty thousand Southerners. No more brilliant achievement of
military genius illumines history. Chickamauga was in every way as
desperate a battle as Arcola--and in all Napoleon's Italian campaigns
nothing more daring and wonderful was accomplished by the Man of
Destiny.
Bragg had justified the faith of Davis. Rosecrans was hemmed in in
Chattanooga, his supplies cut off and his army facing starvation when he
was relieved of his command, Thomas succeeding him. Grant was hurried to
Chattanooga with two army corps to raise the siege.
With his reenforcements Grant raised the siege, surprised and defeated
Bragg's army which had been weakened by the detachment of Longstreet's
corps for a movement on Knoxville.
Bragg withdrew his army again into Georgia and resigned his command. The
stern, irritable Confederate fighter was disgusted with the constant
attacks on him by peanut politicians and refused to hear Davis' plea
that he remain at the head of the Western army.
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