The 5th Georgia Infantry, as a part of John K. Jackson's Brigade was stationed at Bridgeport, Al from November 1862 until late December of 1862, when the brigade was sent to Murfreesboro, TN to reinforce Bragg's army. After the battle of Murfreesboro (Stones River) some histories state that Jackson's brigade was stationed at Shelbyville, TN during the Tullahoma Campaign, but one of the regiments the 8th Mississippi Infantry was apparently returned to Bridgeport, AL and remained there through July 1863 (Dunbar Rowland's "Military History of Mississippi, 1803-1898"). I'm trying to determine if the 5th Georgia was at Shelbyville, TN and that it did not return to Bridgeport prior to the battle of Chickamauga.
Here is some more detail from a unit history of the 5th Georgia Infantry in "America's Civil War" (2002)
The retreat from the Bluegrass State took the troops to Bridgeport, Ala. The 5th's Joseph Cumming wrote his wife on November 23, 1862: “We arrived at this place yesterday…Bridgeport, not honored with a place on the map is nothing but a Railroad station. There isn't an inhabited house near it except a few shanties that have been knocked up for military purposes. We have seized upon an old hotel, a miserable inconvenient, shocking old box.… My bedding consists of my European shawl…two blankets…and an old piece of carpet.”
In late December 1862, the 5th Georgia was transferred to Murfreesboro. The brigade was reorganized, with the 5th joining the 2nd Georgia Battalion of Sharpshooters and the 5th and 8th Mississippi, still under the command of Jackson. In Murfreesboro, the Confederates awaited a Federal advance from Nashville, and a fight they did have. The Battle of Murfreesboro, fought on December 31, 1862, and January 2, 1863, started well for the Confederates, as their left wing drove the Federal army from every position it attempted to hold except a line in a four-acre grove astride a railroad called the Round or Cedar Forest and later known as “Hell's Half Acre.” Federal musket and artillery fire cut apart successive Confederate assaults on the position, and in the late afternoon, it was the 5th Georgia's turn to attack.
The slaughter was sickening. The 5th Georgia had carried 27 officers and 146 enlisted men into the onslaught, and they suffered a total of 64 casualties, nine of them killed, including Colonel Black, who was mortally wounded in the head. Also lost in the fighting was the regimental battle flag, captured after the death of color-bearer Thomas Brantly.
After the fight, the Army of Tennessee retreated southward. For the next six months the 5th Georgia, now under the command of Colonel Charles P. Daniel, rested and refitted near Shelbyville, Tenn.
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Any information regarding the above would be most appreciated.
Jim Martin