Meanwhile, in the Western Theater, the Confederate army under General Braxton Bragg was faring poorly. Lee dispatched two divisions of Longstreet's Corps to Tennessee, and Hood was able to rejoin his men at Chickamauga Creek on September 18. Bragg ordered him to form a "mini-corps," merging one of the brigades he had with him on the field with Brig. Gen. Bushrod Johnson's division. It was then that Hood participated in the Battle of Chickamauga, driving Col. Robert Minty's Union brigade from Reed's Bridge and stopping only at Alexander's Bridge, where John T. Wilder's men fired their Spencer repeating rifles on the Confederates. As darkness set in, he chanced to have met Gen. John C. Breckinridge, former Vice-President of the United States, presidential candidate and Senator of Kentucky as well as a cousin of Buck Preston. The remaining two units of Hood's division regrouped with their commander to prepare for the next day's battle.