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The imminent arrival of more Confederate troops renewed Bragg’s confidence. A battle was imminent, but he would no longer be fighting a numerically superior enemy. Rosecrans had divided his army into three isolated forces. If Bragg could lure each of them in turn into one of the deep valleys that marked the terrain around Chattanooga, he might be able to destroy the entire Federal army. His plan depended on General Burnside’s remaining in Knoxville, and on his own generals’ following his exact orders. Burnside obligingly fiddled and fussed, but Bragg’s second requirement proved to be impossible. The Confederate commander had made himself so despised that his generals ignored him, allowing opportunities to attack to slip through their grasp. Bragg desperately needed Longstreet, if only to restore order and spirit to his army.

When news of Longstreet’s departure for Tennessee reached Charleston, Frank Vizetelly and Fitzgerald Ross took the first available train to Georgia, accompanied by a British Army officer named Charles H. Byrne, who had run the blockade in order to join the staff of the renowned Irish Confederate general Patrick Cleburne. The travelers arrived in Augusta on September 15. The town owed its prosperity to the Savannah River; “most of the goods which run the blockade into Charleston and Wilmington are sold by auction here, whence they are dispersed all over the interior,” reported Ross, whose appetite for running after the action remained strong despite the misery of Gettysburg. “We found several English friends in Augusta engaged in the blockade-running business.” An invitation to stay proved too tempting to resist, and the three companions had such a merry time that they were caught by surprise when Longstreet’s train passed through on September 19. Realizing that they were in danger of missing the battle, they begged a ride on the next train. On the twentieth they lurched to a halt outside Ringgold, several miles south of Bragg’s army, unable to travel any farther because of broken track. It was obvious from the crowded pens of Federal prisoners in the middle of the town that the battle for east Tennessee had already begun.

Longstreet arrived at Bragg’s headquarters near the Chickamauga River (“River of Death” in Cherokee) just before midnight on September 19; the bulk of his troops were with him, although the artillery train carrying Francis Dawson was still en route. Bragg had mismanaged the first day of fighting, making uncoordinated attacks that were readily crushed by the Federals. For the morrow, he told Longstreet, the army was to be divided into two, with Longstreet commanding one wing and General Bishop Leonidas Polk the other, in order to hit Rosecrans in synchronized blows, left and right.16 The blows did take place, but, because of a combination of undelivered orders, misunderstood directions, and the difficulty of operating in a thickly wooded terrain that screened parts of the fighting, the synchronization did not. Even so, Longstreet was magnificent. While Bragg was panicking and calling the battle lost, “Old Pete” realized that the Federal line had split and sent in his wing to exploit the opportunity. The Confederates almost succeeded in breaking Rosecrans’s entire army. But one U.S. general, George H. Thomas—who was henceforth known as “the Rock of Chickamauga”—held his position and prevented a total Federal disaster.

It was late afternoon when Vizetelly and Ross heard about Longstreet’s assault. Vizetelly wanted to rush to the front, appalled that he was missing the battle. They did not arrive at Longstreet’s camp until evening: “We had walked a dozen miles,” wrote Ross, “and, not knowing where to find our friends, we concluded to stay where we were all night.” They had missed one of the most dramatic and bloody days of the war. Longstreet’s attack had spread mass panic among his opponents, reminiscent of the Federal flight during the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Rosecrans’s army, and indeed Rosecrans himself, had fled to Chattanooga, leaving the Confederates