Chickamauga

Chickamauga

Richard J. LeFevre (1931 - 2000)

1991

watercolor and mixed media on paper

In the Western Theater of the war, Union Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans had outflanked and outmaneuvered General Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee and taken the city of Chattanooga without firing a single shot. As the forces each moved south past Chattanooga into Georgia, the two armies collided on September 19-20, 1863, near Chickamauga Creek from which the Battle of Chickamauga gets its name. Rosecrans made a fatal error when he believed one of his flanks was exposed and pulled an entire regiment from the center of his line to that flank. Arriving with his troops in time to aid Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet exploited Rosecrans’ mistake by charging through the center of his line, effectively breaking the entire Union Army in half. Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas (shown on the left) earned his nickname “The Rock of Chickamauga” as he held off the Confederate army on Snodgrass Hill near the Snodgrass family’s log cabin (shown in the center portion) long enough for the Union forces to escape back to Chattanooga. The extreme right shows Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger who brought two brigades to Thomas’s aid and lost 44 percent of his troops during the battle. The center of this piece includes an illustrated page of Thomas's diary in which he defends his actions.

Bequest of the Artist