In late June 1863, Union Major General William S. Rosecrans launched a major offensive from Murfreesboro to drive Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee from its entrenched line at Shelbyville and Wartrace, seize the road to Chattanooga, and help secure East Tennessee. Rosecrans divided his army into four columns under Gordon Granger, Alexander McCook, George Thomas, and Thomas L. Crittenden to threaten Shelbyville, move through Liberty Gap, advance down the Manchester Pike, and cross the Highland Rim near Gillie’s Gap. Despite heavy rain and muddy roads, the Union advance pushed through the gaps toward Manchester on June 24 and 25, turning the Confederate position at Wartrace and forcing Lieutenant General William J. Hardee’s corps, which had guarded Liberty Gap and Hoover’s Gap with divisions under Major General Patrick Cleburne and Major General A. P. Stewart, to retreat south to Tullahoma. By July 4, the Army of the Cumberland had compelled Bragg’s retreat to Chattanooga and left nearly all of Tennessee in Union hands. Wartrace was also associated with Patrick Cleburne, an Irish-born officer who rose from private in 1861 to major general by late 1862, trained sharpshooters there with five Whitworth rifles capable of accurate long-range fire, and proposed that the Confederacy arm slaves and emancipate them and their immediate families, an idea that won little support and helped halt his rise before he was killed at Franklin in 1864.