After the Tullahoma Campaign, Rosecrans renewed
his offensive, aiming to force the Rebels out of Chattanooga. The three
corps comprising Rosecrans's army split and set out for Chattanooga by
separate routes. Hearing of the Union advance, Braxton Bragg
concentrated troops around Chattanooga. While Col. John T. Wilder's
artillery fired on Chattanooga, Rosecrans attempted to take advantage of
Bragg's situation and ordered other troops into Georgia. They raced
forward, seized the important gaps, and moved out into McLemore's Cove.
Negley's XIV Army Corps division, supported by Brig. Gen. Absalom
Baird's division, was moving across the mouth of the cove on the Dug Gap
road when Negley learned that Rebels were concentrating around Dug Gap.
Moving through determined resistance, he closed on the gap, withdrawing
to Davis' Cross Roads in the evening of September 10 to await the
supporting division. Bragg had ordered General Hindman with his division
to assault Negley at Davis' Cross Roads in the flank, while Maj. Gen.
Patrick R. Cleburne's division forced its way through Dug Gap to strike
Negley in front. Hindman was to receive reinforcements for this
movement, but most of them did not arrive. The Rebel officers,
therefore, met and decided that they could not attack in their present
condition. The next morning, however, fresh troops did arrive, and the
Rebels began to move on the Union line. The supporting Union division
had, by now, joined Negley, and, hearing of a Confederate attack, the
Union forces determined that a strategic withdrawal to Stevens Gap was
in order. Negley first moved his division to the ridge east of West
Chickamauga Creek where it established a defensive line. The other
division then moved through them to Stevens Gap and established a
defensive line there. Both divisions awaited the rest of Maj. Gen.
George Thomas's corps. All of this was accomplished under constant
pursuit and fire from the Confederates.