A Journal of the American Civil War: V7-1: Chickamauga & Chattanooga

By Theodore P. Savas

Balanced and in-depth military coverage (all theaters, North and South) in a non-partisan format with detailed notes, offering meaty, in-depth articles, original maps, photos, columns, book reviews, and indexes.

Chattanooga Revisited – Missionary Ridge – US Regulars at Chickamauga – Cleburne and Tunnel Hill – 2nd Georgia Sharpshooters – Camp Thomas, 1898

• Language: English
• Publisher: Savas Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954547391

Book preview

Theodore P. Savas

The Battles for Chattanooga Revisited

Summer 1976. Another year of high school was over and my brother and I were jammed into a small orange Datsun pickup truck heading out of Iowa in the direction of our ultimate goal, Florida. With scuba tanks roped tight and chips and soda piled high in the cab, we blared REO Speedwagon and Deep Purple and sped south along Interstate 75. (Remember, I was only seventeen; ok, I still listen to Deep Purple, but with a healthy leavening of Mozart and Beethoven.) While Anthony was piloting our unsafe at any speed auto, I was absorbing (again) Thomas Connelly’s Autumn of Glory, a wonderful history of the hard luck Confederate Army of Tennessee. I may have been a teenager, but I knew hallowed ground was drawing closer with every mile of concrete put behind us. It was my first trip into the South.

Much to my dismay we missed Stones River (I was sleeping and Anthony chose not to stop). Somehow we managed to avoid a fratricidal war while occupying a torn and taped Japanese bench seat in Tennessee. Because of the near-miss at Stones River, Chickamauga’s wooded terrain was the first battlefield I set foot on. One of my favorite pictures has me posing next to a Napoleon artillery piece somewhere near Kelly Field—snapped five seconds before I slapped the barrel in delight and a pair of wasps flew from the bronze tube and stung me twice. As we walked through the park and I explained to my brother what had transpired there (the battle, not my travails with obnoxious winged insects), my brother’s interest in the Civil War blossomed. We ended the day backtracking a bit to Lookout Mountain. I still remember fondly the musky fragrance of the wooded atmosphere surrounding the Cravens House, the lovely panoramic view of the city stretched out below Point Park, and the even more lovely guide who led the tour before graciously joining us for dinner.

If any series of engagements can be categorized as decisive, the battles around Chattanooga surely must be. The momentous September encounter at Chickamauga between Gens. Braxton Bragg and William S. Rosecrans in the tangled woods and farm fields in North Georgia resulted in the only large-scale battle victory scored by the Army of Tennessee during the entire war. Although he ultimately squandered his bloody success, Bragg used his opportunity to follow Rosecrans’ defeated Army of the Cumberland to the gates of Chattanooga, where he unwisely settled into a siege. After occupying Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, the disagreeable Confederate commander instituted his own version of the Night of the Long Knives by sacking generals and shuffling about organizations to break apart anti-Bragg cabals openly festering within the army. After ripping apart the morale of his recently-victorious army, Bragg detached a large portion of his command for operations in East Tennessee. These moves left the remainder of his army understrength and overextended.

While these Southern machinations were underway, the Union’s only consistendy victorious general, Ulysses S. Grant (discounting his first skirmish at Belmont), was tapped to command the newly-created Military Division of the Mississippi. Grant’s victory at Vicksburg that summer had propelled him into the national consciousness, and he was the obvious choice to save the deteriorating situation at Chattanooga. He immediately set his plans in motion by replacing Rosecrans with George Thomas and issuing orders for the concentration of reinforcements to break the siege and defeat Braxton Bragg. Within a few weeks his legions broke the Southern grip on the city, captured Lookout Mountain, and drove the Army of Tennessee pell-mell off the seemingly impregnable Missionary Ridge. Grant’s stunning victories consolidated control over Tennessee for the Union, set the stage for William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign the following spring, ended Bragg’s tenure with the Army of Tennessee, and resulted in his own promotion to lieutenant general and command of all Union armies. Decisive is certainly an apt adjective for these actions.

The battles around Chattanooga truly sounded the death knell of the Confederacy. Yet, they somehow evaded serious scrutiny for more than a century. Fortunately several good book-length studies are now available. This issue of Civil War Regiments adds to the growing literature with a new look at the attack and defense of Missionary Ridge, two outstanding unit histories (one Union and one Confederate), an examination of Patrick Cleburne’s brilliant defense of Tunnel Hill, and the story of Camp Thomas, an 1898 training ground on the old field of Chickamauga for U.S. soldiers preparing for service in the Spanish-American War.

We are proud to bring them to you.

Michael A. Hughes

That Is Not Fancy: It is Fact!

The Battle for Missionary Ridge, November 25, 1863

Few Civil War battles had been fought on such a scale. None so important would ever again be concluded in such an unlikely fashion. Six military operations had been directed towards the ultimate possession of Chattanooga, supported or opposed by raids and expeditions over a six-state area. The general staffs of two of the most populous nations of the western hemisphere had spent nearly two years evolving strategies to hold or reclaim the important logistical center. Portions of five Federal and Confederate armies had been thrown into the competition, and the regiments of more states had been committed to winning the city than any other prize of the war. Tens of thousands of young men had been entrained there in the four greatest railroad movements the world had ever witnessed. Yet, in the end, two powerful theater commanders could only watch in impotent confusion as a handful of wild-eyed Western boys insistent on scrambling towards some wagon ruts one afternoon concluded the issue.

To the disappointment of the Confederacy, the fighting in September 1863 at Chickamauga did not result in the the recovery of Chattanooga or the destruction of Gen. William Rosecrans’ Union Army of the Cumberland. Thereafter the much-loathed commander of the Army of Tennessee, Gen. Braxton Bragg, decided to besiege Chattanooga and the occupying Federals. He hoped that their resulting debilitation or tactical errors (or both) would give him a belated opportunity to reap the full fruits of the Army of Tennessee’s only clear-cut large-scale victory of the war.

Bragg’s army held a seemingly ideal position. The left of the Confederate line was anchored on the palisaded bulwark of Lookout Mountain, southwest of Chattanooga. The direct wagon and locomotive routes to the Federal bases in Middle Tennessee, and the boat route to the low water ports of the Tennessee River, were pinioned against its base. As long as Bragg held Lookout Mountain and the Wauhatchie Valley, the Federals were hard pressed to supply Chattanooga beyond a subsistence level. Bragg’s right flank rested on the 400-foot heights of Missionary Ridge, named for a onetime mission to the long exiled Cherokee Nation. The imposing ridge barrier divided the forces under Rosecrans from those of Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Ohio, operating in East Tennessee. In addition to being positioned to block Federal land campaigns into the lower South, Bragg’s deployment protected his army from both frontal attacks and turning movements, or so it seemed. The single apparent shortcoming in the Southern position was Chattanooga Valley, a broad gap bisected by meandering Chattanooga Creek between Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.

General Braxton Bragg

National Archives

The Army of Tennessee’s real weakness, however, came from within. Bragg’s habit of seeking retribution against subordinates for his own failures, coupled with his evolving pattern of reaction versus action against his opponents had destroyed his army’s effectiveness. The former shortcoming was a factor in his decision to detach his reinforcements from the Army of Northern Virginia under James Longstreet northeast towards Knoxville, dismiss key generals, and reorganize his divisions. The latter flaw enabled the new Union theater commander, Ulysses S. Grant, to secure better alternative supply routes to Chattanooga and to bring reinforcements within operational range of the town. These new troops included most of two corps (XI and XII) from the Army of the Potomac under Gen. Joseph Hooker, and most of another two corps (XV and XVII) from the Army of the Tennessee under Gen. William T. Sherman.

Grant’s goal was to remove the remaining menace to Chattanooga and its defenders and, by reopening contact with Burnside’s isolated forces, accomplish a similar feat for Knoxville. In order to accomplish this, he sacked Rosecrans on October 19 and appointed Gen. George Thomas as commander of the Army of the Cumberland. Grant, however, seemed to believe that Thomas’s army had not recovered sufficiently from the disaster at Chickamauga to play a decisive part in freeing itself from the confines of Chattanooga. He intended to use the divisions newly arrived in the area under Hooker and Sherman to distract and outflank Bragg, while Thomas’s men held the center and pinned the enemy on the ridge.

As a result of Grant’s long-standing friendship and trust in Sherman and his troops of the Army of the Tennessee (who had served under him during the successful Vicksburg campaign), Sherman’s divisions were given the key role in dislocating Bragg’s army. From a concealed position amidst hills on the north side of the Tennessee River, Sherman was to cross to the south or Chattanooga side on November 24th. Once in position, he was to attack the north end of Missionary Ridge at Tunnel Hill, breaking through and turning Bragg’s right flank. Grant believed Sherman’s thrust would reopen the route between Chattanooga and Knoxville and induce Bragg to lift his siege. Unfortunately, Sherman misread the terrain and discovered that an undefended hill he seized was not Tunnel Hill but Goat Hill. The delay this caused meant that any successes on the 24th would have to come in another sector.

Hooker, for whom Grant held little esteem, was ordered to merely demonstrate against the Confederate left on Lookout Mountain. However, a break in a pontoon bridge on the Tennessee River left the former commander of the Army of the Potomac in possession of far more troops than Grant intended him to have. Hooker and Thomas, who was Hooker’s intermediate superior, decided to carry out the demonstration as aggressively as possible and take Lookout Mountain on November 24. As it happened, the mountain’s cliff and terrace topography, the length of the Confederate siege line, and Southern command decisions left only a single scattered brigade to initially face Hooker’s three divisions.

General Ulysses S. Grant

National Archives

The passage of Lookout Mountain into Federal hands wrecked the Confederate left and jeopardized Bragg’s entire position. Hooker was now free to descend the slopes into the Chattanooga Valley and move with Thomas. The fall of Lookout Mountain placed every major passage into Chattanooga from the north and west in Union hands, effectively ending the siege.

There was no longer any good reason for Bragg to remain hovering about Chattanooga, especially with a divided force and in the face of a rapidly swelling concentration of enemy corps. While favorably steep, Missionary Ridge was long—too long to defend with the numbers Bragg had on hand. He could not extend his line past Rossville Gap, a deep break in the ridge. This meant his relocated left at the gap was vulnerable. Prudence demanded Bragg abandon the ridge and fall back east behind Chickamauga Creek or a more distant ridge. Several of his generals, however, argued that the onset of darkness at the end of what had been a very chaotic (and disastrous) day would prevent a safe, organized retreat in the face of an aggressive enemy. Bragg also possessed one last hope of redeeming the lost promise of Chickamauga: if the Federals were so unwise as to assault the seemingly impregnable ridge, they would be decisively repulsed.

* * *

In less than twelve hours, Ulysses S. Grant and his commanders had completely reversed the situation at Chattanooga, knocking Braxton Bragg’s army back on its heels and firmly on the defensive. As morning dawned on November 25, Grant and George Thomas made plans to turn both flanks of the Army of Tennessee. Two of the most dramatic events of the entire war would occur during the course of this day. The first would take place very early on the point of Lookout Mountain; the second would take place later on the other elevation dominating Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge.

During the night, Hooker’s troops had secured possession of the slopes of the mountain and the routes that passed its base. They were still uncertain whether any troops from Carter Stevenson’s Confederate division remained on the palisades at the crest. Even a token force of Southern artillery atop the sheer cliffs might disrupt Union troop and supply movements. Hooker’s officers fervently hoped for verification that the Confederates had completely abandoned the summit Moreover, most of the soldiers in Chattanooga still did not know the outcome of the batde for the mountain and awaited some sure sign of victory.

That evidence came early on the morning of the 25th, when Walter C. Whitaker, commander of Charles Cruft’s Second Brigade, asked if any volunteers from the Eighth Kentucky Infantry regiment would be willing to scale the point of Lookout Mountain. Though they had no idea if the mountain top was still occupied by the Confederates, eight men volunteered to try to scale the heights with their regimental flag.1 Soon after daylight the party reached the crest. By sunrise they had unfurled their colors in full view of both armies. Not until the flag-raising on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi over seventy years later during WWH would the raising of an emblem have such an emotional impact on watching Americans.

William T. Sherman was moving against the end of Missionary Ridge at Tunnel Hill about 10:00 a.m. that same morning. The capture of some of Patrick Cleburne’s abandoned breastworks on the point of Tunnel Hill by a brigade of Morgan L. Smith’s division seemed to promise an early success for Sherman. However, as Gen. William Hardee would say of Cleburne’s command after that general’s death a year later at Franklin, Where this division defended, no odds broke its lines. Hardee’s statement was literally true.2 Cleburne possessed an unusually well disciplined and confident division and, as Sherman would discover, one of the few Confederate commands well drilled in marksmanship. During the day, eight of Sherman’s regiments would lose their regimental colors to Cleburne’s men.

Cleburne had established his line at a right angle, part of it stretching eastward toward the railroad bridge, the rest extending south down the ridge. The slopes of Tunnel Hill provided few good approaches for an assault, and Sherman compounded his difficulties by conducting a series of piecemeal attacks against Cleburne’s line. The attacks began on the north and were continued roughly counter-clockwise around the knoll, one at a time. Although he had vastly superior numbers, Sherman failed to utilize eleven of his seventeen brigades.

At about 11:00 a.m., Sherman launched his first assault up the relatively gradual northern slope using two brigades from Morgan Smith’s and Hugh Ewing’s divisions. This attack was savaged by two recently-arrived artillery batteries, and the Southern brigade commander at the apex of Cleburne’s line, James A. Smith, was severely wounded.3 Three hours later, the fighting shifted around to the western face of Tunnel Hill. Three brigades from John E. Smith’s and Adolph Von Steinwehr’s divisions (Sherman had by this time been reinforced by Van Steinwehr’s and Carl Schurz’s divisions of Oliver O. Howard’s corps) now attempted to take the crest. Perhaps no place on Tunnel Hill was really assailable, but it is difficult to understand why Sherman chose the especially abrupt western slope. The side of the hill was so steep that men who stumbled or were wounded tumbled to the base of the ridge throughout the assault.4

During this second attack, Cleburne called upon division commander Carter Stevenson, on his left, for assistance. Two of Stevenson’s brigades charged down into a small valley which incised the neck of Tunnel Hill and advanced so far they penetrated the lines of the Federal reserves at the base of the hill. Their sudden appearance from out of the railroad cut at the foot of the hill was so unexpected that a legend was bom that they had come through the hill via the railroad tunnel. During this attack, some of the Federal wounded were incinerated when the field hospital established at the Glass House caught fire.5

An hour later, about 3:00 p.m., in the last major action of the day, the men of two Federal brigades, Green R. Raum’s and Charles L. Matthies’s, were thrown against the difficult west slope. They managed to gain a position a few yards from Cleburne’s line by literally hanging on with their fingertips. Though protected from Confederate fire by the acute angle of the hillside, the attackers could advance no further. The men of James A. Smith’s Brigade, now under the command of Col. Hiram Granbury, responded to the uncomfortable proximity of the assailants by lobbing rocks where bullets could not be fired. Alfred Cumming’s Brigade and what remained of Smith’s [Granbury’s] brigade counterattacked. Cumming cleared the western slope on the third of his bayonet charges. Every one of his regimental commanders fell in the process, while his men succeeded in wounding both Union commanders Raum and Matthies. By the time Cleburne was ordered to withdraw from Missionary Ridge later that night, a majority of the brigade and division commanders who had set foot on Tunnel Hill, Union and Confederate, had been killed or wounded.6

As Sherman’s men struggled against Cleburne’s impenetrable front, Joseph Hooker’s men on the Federal right were also making poor progress, though for different reasons. By 10:00 a.m., Hooker had ascertained that the Confederates had abandoned Lookout Mountain. His new orders from General Thomas, commander of the Army of the Cumberland, were to attack the Confederate left flank via Rossville Gap. Less than a mile east of Lookout Mountain, Hooker discovered that the retreating Confederates had removed the planking from the bridge across Chattanooga Creek. This simple tactic delayed Hooker’s progress for three critical hours.7

Grant, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly concerned over the failure of Sherman’s attack and the fact that there was no sign of Hooker’s column near Rossville Gap. At the same time, Grant and a number of both officers and civilian observers thought they saw Confederate troops being marched atop Missionary Ridge toward Cleburne’s position at Tunnel Hill. This seemed a likely possibility since Grant had shifted Absalom Baird’s division from the Union center towards Sherman and the Confederate right.8 Grant concluded that Sherman’s assaults and Baird’s activity had caused masses of Confederate troops to be sent to defend Tunnel Hill. This response by Bragg, Grant reasoned, must have thinned the Confederate center on the ridge. Therefore, a demonstration by Thomas’s army against Bragg’s weakened center would presumably cause the southern commander to recall the troops who were en route to resist Sherman.

Grant later contended that Sherman’s attack against Tunnel Hill was as responsible for the Union victory on Missionary Ridge as George Thomas’s accomplishments. That evening Grant would considerably exaggerate Sherman’s role in a congratulatory dispatch. He assured Sherman that he could feel a just pride, too, in the part taken by the forces under your command in taking, first, so much of the same range of hills, and then in attracting the attention of so many of the enemy as to make Thomas’s part certain of success.9

Actually, there is nothing in Bragg’s or Cleburne’s reports to indicate that Cleburne fought with anything more than the troops which were initially deployed near Tunnel Hill. Cleburne never received any reinforcements from elsewhere on the ridge, nor were any ever en route to his assistance. Confederate veterans who read Grant’s interpretation of events after the war pointedly denied it. Bruce Catton labeled Grant’s observations of troop movement some sort of hallucination. But Grant sincerely believed he saw the Confederate right being reinforced and the center thus weakened, and that was what mattered when he responded to his observation.10

Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland had been poised in line all day, ready to be used either to demonstrate against the Confederate center or to shift to the left, or north, to support Sherman. After some initial confusion and delay in the transmission of Grant’s orders, Thomas’s corps commanders received instructions to assault the line of Confederate earthworks at the base of Missionary Ridge. At 4:00 p.m., six guns on Orchard Knob signaled a general advance, and Thomas’s line moved out in a formation almost as precise as that directed against Orchard Knob the previous day.

A Federal assault against even the foot of Missionary Ridge required an advance of almost a mile and a half, under Confederate artillery fire part of the way. The ridge itself was considered impregnable by Smith’s engineers and by Grant’s general officers. Averaging 400 feet in height, some of its slope is as steep as seventy-five degrees. In 1863, the ridge was almost