Chattanooga campaign

• 1. Introduction

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  The Chattanooga campaign began in the wreckage of one Union disaster and ended by opening the door to the Deep South. In September 1863, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans led his Army of the Cumberland into what became the Battle of Chickamauga, where a gap opened accidentally in his own line and Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's force drove straight through it. Much of the Union army fled toward Chattanooga in a rout. Only Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, who held his ground on Snodgrass Hill, kept the army from being destroyed entirely. That stubborn stand earned him the nickname "Rock of Chickamauga." Now his men sat in Chattanooga, surrounded on the high ground by Gen. Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee, running out of food, watching their horses and mules die. The city had been a vital rail hub connecting Nashville, Knoxville, and Atlanta. Whoever controlled it controlled the corridor south. How the Union broke the siege, who would lead the breakout, and what would happen when an improvised army charge went far beyond its orders are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. Starvation and Command

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  President Abraham Lincoln described Rosecrans after Chickamauga as seeming "confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head." The description was precise. Rosecrans could not organize a response to the siege, and by late October his soldiers were surviving on roughly four hardtack crackers and a quarter pound of pork every three days. The only supply route not cut by the Confederates was a winding mountain road nearly 60 miles long over Walden's Ridge from Bridgeport, Alabama. Heavy autumn rains began washing away long stretches of that road in late September. On October 1, Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler's Confederate cavalry intercepted a train of 800 wagons at the start of his October 1863 raid through Tennessee, burning hundreds of those wagons and killing hundreds of mules.

  In Washington, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton moved fast. Only hours after the defeat at Chickamauga, he ordered Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker to Chattanooga with 20,000 men drawn from two corps of the Army of the Potomac. Even before the battle was lost, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had been ordered to send available forces to assist Rosecrans; they departed under Grant's subordinate, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, from Vicksburg, Mississippi. On September 29, Stanton ordered Grant himself to Chattanooga as commander of the newly created Military Division of the Mississippi, the first time the territory from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River had been placed under a single commander.

  Grant replaced Rosecrans with Thomas on October 18. Before he had even arrived in Chattanooga, Grant telegraphed Thomas: "Hold Chattanooga at all hazards. I will be there as soon as possible." Thomas replied immediately: "I will hold the town till we starve." Grant made the treacherous journey over the mountain supply roads and reached the city on October 23.

• 3. The Cracker Line

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  Brig. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith, the Army of the Cumberland's chief engineer, had already sketched out a way to feed the city before Grant arrived. The plan centered on Brown's Ferry, a crossing of the Tennessee River at Moccasin Point. If Union forces could seize that crossing and link up with Hooker's column advancing through Lookout Valley from Bridgeport, Alabama, a short and reliable supply route would be open. The men quickly named it the "Cracker Line" for the hardtack they hoped would flow along it.

  Smith briefed Grant on the evening of October 23. Grant approved immediately. The assault required a night operation, floating most of Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen's brigade downriver on pontoons and a raft, while Brig. Gen. John B. Turchin's brigade marched across Moccasin Point as support. Bragg had no idea the operation was underway. He had ordered Longstreet to move additional units into Lookout Valley, but that order was simply ignored. Longstreet's inattention left only two Confederate regiments near Brown's Ferry.

  Early on October 27, Hazen's men floated undetected past the Confederate position on Lookout Mountain, helped by low fog and no moonlight. They secured the ground above Brown's Ferry by 4:40 a.m. A counterattack by the 15th Alabama Infantry, under Col. William C. Oates, who had fought at Little Round Top, was beaten back and Oates himself was wounded. Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law, Oates's brigade commander, reported the Union success to Longstreet, who dismissed it as a feint and told neither Bragg nor his subordinates to act. Hooker's column linked up with Hazen and Turchin at Brown's Ferry at 3:45 p.m. on October 28, and the supply line was effectively open.

• 4. A Night Fight at Wauhatchie

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  Longstreet, having ignored direct orders from Bragg to attack Brown's Ferry, was given a new target: Hooker's concentration at Wauhatchie. Hooker had been careless. He left Brig. Gen. John W. Geary's division at Wauhatchie Station on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, instructing them merely to find good cover and camp. Geary's men bivouacked with their large wagon train sitting in the open directly in front of the Confederate position. Longstreet, astonished at what he saw, ordered a night attack, a relatively unusual choice in the Civil War.

  The assault was set for 10:00 p.m. on October 28, but confusion delayed it until midnight. Longstreet used only Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law's brigade and Brig. Gen. Micah Jenkins's division, far fewer troops than Bragg had authorized. Although Geary's officers had posted pickets expecting trouble, the attack's timing still caught them off guard. Col. John Bratton's brigade enveloped them from the north, pushing the Union defenders into a V-shaped battle line. Geary's son Edward, an artillery lieutenant, was killed in the fighting, dying in his father's arms.

  Hooker, hearing the battle from Brown's Ferry, sent Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard with two XI Corps divisions as reinforcement. Orders got tangled in the dark, and Hooker accidentally deployed his forces against Law's hilltop position while nobody moved to help Geary. Law's 2,000 men faced greatly superior numbers but the terrain protected them, and several Union assaults were repulsed. The battle ended when Law, receiving an erroneous report that Bratton was retreating, began to pull back. Col. Orland Smith's brigade immediately overran the empty Confederate entrenchments. Bratton, told by Jenkins that Union reinforcements were closing from behind, also withdrew to Lookout Mountain. Grant was disgusted by Hooker's disorganized performance and considered relieving him. Bragg's biographer, Judith L. Hallock, assessed Wauhatchie as, for Longstreet, an "ill-conceived, ill-planned, and poorly coordinated attack" that "resulted in a shambles."

• 5. Bragg's Fracturing Army

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  Even before Grant arrived, Bragg's army was tearing itself apart from within. On September 29, Bragg relieved two subordinates who had disappointed him at Chickamauga: Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman, who had failed to destroy part of the Union army at McLemore's Cove, and Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk, who had delayed attacking on September 20. On October 4, twelve of his most senior generals sent a petition directly to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, demanding that Bragg be removed from command. Davis traveled to Chattanooga personally to hear the complaints. He retained Bragg, who then retaliated by relieving Lt. Gen. D.H. Hill and Maj. Gen. Simon B. Buckner.

  The opening of the Cracker Line forced Bragg to reconsider his entire position. He identified only one promising option among several bad ones: moving around Grant's left flank toward Knoxville, where he could re-establish a rail supply line to Virginia and link up with about 10,000 men under Maj. Gen. Samuel Jones. Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Ohio, occupying Knoxville, blocked this route.

  At a council of war on November 3, Bragg announced he was sending Longstreet and his two divisions into East Tennessee to deal with Burnside. President Davis had suggested Longstreet specifically because those divisions were intended to return to the Army of Northern Virginia and Knoxville sat on the road back to Virginia. Campaign historian Steven E. Woodworth judged that the decision cost Bragg roughly 4,000 men, less than 10 percent of his force, but added that "even the flat loss of the number of good soldiers in Longstreet's divisions would have been a gain to the army in ridding it of their general's feuding and blundering." Longstreet's Corps departed on November 5, leaving Bragg with Hardee's and Breckinridge's corps to defend Chattanooga. Breckinridge's command, tasked with defending the center and right of Missionary Ridge, had only 16,000 men to cover a line five miles long.

• 6. The Battles of November

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  Grant's plan for the assault on Bragg placed Maj. Gen. Sherman at the center of the effort. Sherman was to cross the Tennessee River, fall on Bragg's right flank at Tunnel Hill on Missionary Ridge, and seize the two railroads supplying the Confederate army. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland would pin down the Confederate center. Hooker would assault Lookout Mountain, Bragg's left flank, and push toward Rossville to threaten a Confederate retreat.

  On November 23, Thomas moved first. Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood's division, with Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's division protecting its flank, advanced in near parade-ground alignment toward a small knoll called Orchard Knob, about 2,000 yards away and 100 feet high. At 1:30 p.m., 14,000 Union soldiers moved at the double quick across the open plain and overwhelmed the 600 Confederate defenders, who managed only a single volley. Grant and Thomas decided to hold and fortify the position, which became their headquarters for the rest of the battles.

  The following day, November 24, Hooker moved on Lookout Mountain with roughly 10,000 men in three divisions. Brig. Gen. John W. Geary crossed Lookout Creek unopposed to the south, found the defile between the mountain and the river unguarded, and swept northeast, pushing Brig. Gen. Edward C. Walthall's badly outnumbered brigade back to the Cravens House. By about 3:00 p.m., thick fog had enveloped the mountain. Brig. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, the Union quartermaster general, was the first to name the action the "Battle Above the Clouds." Bragg recognized the battle was lost and ordered the position abandoned. At midnight, under a lunar eclipse, the Confederate divisions of Stevenson and Cheatham retreated behind Chattanooga Creek, burning the bridges behind them.

  Sherman's assault on Bragg's right on November 24 ran into an early problem. His forces crossed the Tennessee River and occupied high ground they believed was the north end of Missionary Ridge. It was not. A deep ravine separated them from Tunnel Hill, the actual northern tip of the ridge, which the Confederates had fortified. Sherman did not advance further that day.

  On November 25, Sherman launched repeated attacks against Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne's veterans on Tunnel Hill, committing only four brigades despite his larger force, and gained no ground. Hooker's advance from Lookout Mountain was delayed for hours because the Confederates had burned the bridge over Chattanooga Creek. Around 3:30 p.m., Grant ordered Thomas to advance his center in a demonstration to relieve pressure on Sherman. Thomas's men swept down from Orchard Knob, pushed the Confederates from the rifle pits at the base of the ridge, and then found themselves caught in withering fire from above with nowhere to shelter. Most of these soldiers had been at Chickamauga and had endured months of taunts from Sherman's and Hooker's troops about that defeat. Without orders to go further, they went further anyway. Military historians Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones later called the Battle of Missionary Ridge "the war's most notable example of a frontal assault succeeding against intrenched defenders holding high ground." Bragg had placed his artillery and infantry along the actual crest of the ridge rather than the military crest further down the slope, an error that left the defenders unable to depress their weapons against men climbing directly below them. By 4:30 p.m. the Confederate center had broken and fled in panic. The last flag carrier who reached the top carrying the colors of a Union regiment was Arthur MacArthur Jr., father of Douglas MacArthur; his actions that day earned him a Medal of Honor.

• 7. Aftermath and Consequences

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  Union casualties for the campaign totaled 5,824 men, with 753 killed, 4,722 wounded, and 349 missing, out of about 56,000 engaged. Bragg reported Confederate casualties of 6,667, including 361 killed, 2,160 wounded, and 4,146 missing, most of them prisoners, from a force of about 44,000. Grant claimed 6,142 prisoners. When a chaplain asked General Thomas whether the dead should be sorted and buried by state, Thomas replied: "Mix 'em up. I'm tired of States' rights."

  Cleburne's division, augmented by two additional brigades, covered the Confederate retreat east and then fought off the Union pursuit at the Battle of Ringgold Gap on November 27. At 3 a.m., Cleburne readied his 4,100 men and let Hooker's 12,000 come almost upon them before opening fire. For five hours he held the gap, then withdrew, allowing the Confederate wagons and artillery to escape unharmed. Grant called off the pursuit because his army was running low on rations and Washington was pressing him to relieve Burnside in Knoxville. Lincoln's congratulatory message after Missionary Ridge had ended with: "Remember Burnside."

  Bragg resigned from command of the Army of Tennessee on December 1. He was replaced temporarily by Hardee, and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston assumed permanent command on December 27. In East Tennessee, Longstreet's offensive against Burnside collapsed at the Battle of Fort Sanders on November 29. Longstreet eventually abandoned his siege of Knoxville on December 4 and went into winter quarters before returning to Virginia in the spring of 1864.

  The Union now held Tennessee completely, including Chattanooga, which became the supply and logistics base for Sherman's Atlanta campaign of 1864. Grant's victory at Chattanooga was his final battle in the West before he received command of all Union armies in March 1864. Portions of the battlefield, including 3,000 acres at Lookout Mountain, are preserved today as part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.