After their disastrous defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, Union forces under Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee besieged the city, threatening to starve the Union forces into surrender.

Bragg's troops occupied Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, both of which had excellent views of the city, the river, and the Union's supply lines.

Confederate troops launched raids on all supply wagons heading toward Chattanooga, which made it necessary for the Union to find another way to feed their men.

Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith, Chief Engineer of the Military Division of the Mississippi, who conceived the overall Cracker Line plan, was assigned the task of establishing the Brown's Ferry bridgehead.

[2] At 3:00 a.m. on October 27, portions of Hazen's brigade embarked upon pontoons and floated around Moccasin Bend to Brown's Ferry.

[4] Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker marched with three Union divisions from Bridgeport by following the railroad via Shellmound and the Running Water Creek gorge.

Longstreet, obsessed with the possibility of a Union attack further to the southwest, had failed to properly scout Hooker's advance.

Gen. John W. Geary's division at Wauhatchie Station, a stop on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, to protect the line of communications to the southwest as well as the road west to Kelley's Ferry.

Once he reached his goal, "Hooker's dispositions were deplorable," with Howard's understrength XI Corps "bivouacked haphazardly" at Brown's Ferry.

Hooker bypassed Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard in the chain of command and ordered Maj. Gen. Carl Schurz to march to Wauhatchie Station as reinforcements.

Col. Orland Smith's brigade of Steinwehr's division was fired on by Law's Confederates, who were positioned on a 200-foot (61 m) high hill that dominated the road from Brown's Ferry.

Meanwhile, Hooker mistakenly deployed units from both XI Corps divisions against Law and Benning, leaving no one to go to Geary's aid.

Just as Bratton began to sense victory, he received a note to retreat since Union reinforcements were arriving at his rear.