I'll have to take your word for it then. My collection od Civil War books does not include one that covers that battle in detail. I guess I'll have to make sure it does eventually. I'm over 50 books so far...it's amazing how much has been, and continues to be, written about that conflict.
Bragg was a wonderful administrator and you'd want no one else to PREPARE an army for you. He simply was not the man you wanted leading an army in battle. He did so well logistically and organizationally that he always had initial success; his men were prepared and understood what was expected. Yet, after contact, when all that preparation and order and logistics went to hell in a hand basket, he was always unable to readjust on the fly and maintain advantage. It was so bad, he'd lose all situational awareness and direct men to do what was on the plan when it became plainly unwise or even impossible and it simply disoriented him AND he blamed it on his generals, not exactly a top shelf leadership quality. He was very weak on the fly and improvisational-y which is really ironic when you consider how important his namesake base is to people whose entire purpose it to deal with things on the fly.
As typically screwed up for civil war battles as Chickamauga was, especially with one commander essentially AWOL, had Forrest been listened to on day 1 on the right or Longstreet on day 2 on the left, it came damn close to being the one major battle where the loser would have been effectively destroyed. And, saying that, it only almost happened on day 2 because Rosecrans made a crucial, yet enormous mistake because of a misunderstanding of where one of his divisions was; he pulled a division out of line on his right where Longstreet was getting ready to hit to go fill a gap on Thoma's side that was no longer a gap. Absent that, it would have just been yet another blood bath where both sides would decide who won based on who pulled out last.
Awful, awful battle. The only major battle where artillery didn't (could not) play much of a role which makes the bloodshed that much worse; it was pretty much ALL inflicted by small arms whereas arty played a huge role in every other major battle in terms of the slaughter. You found the enemy by having his rifles go off in your face. Chichamauga was a solders battle, THE soldiers battle, and can arguably be called the greatest battle of the war because of it. It was Little Round top. For two days. With well over 100,000 men, very few of which were never engaged, another Chichamauga honor as all the other major battles had brigades and even divisions who saw little, if any combat.
