Chattanooga

“ I wonder if the readers of Young People know how delightful the climate and surroundings of Chattanooga are. Near the base of Lookout Mountain, which has grown historical since the war, the views in all directions are magnificent, that from the point on the mountain being the grandest, where one can see places in seven different States. Chattanooga is an Indian word, meaning eagle's nest.
Paul Dwight Moross.
Traverse City, Michigan.
I live in a lonesome country, but it is very beautiful in the summer. We have nice lakes and woods, and all kinds of birds. ”

“ I must say I felt shame to be so angry, and I was much amused some weeks later to read in a Chattanooga newspaper picked up by accident that Billy Sunday had visited this city and had preached in the said works, and at the close of his address, the superintendent being present, all the employees were en bloc converted to Christ.
Chattanooga is a larger city than Knoxville, better built and more spacious. One has entered the rayon of Southern steel and coal. Its many factory chimneys and its sooty sky testify to [112] considerable industrialism. ”

“ The sky was clouded, but here and there were fugitive patches of sunshine, now on Missionary Ridge, now on the river, now glorifying the smoke of the city. Southward, just across the valley and over Chattanooga, was Lookout Mountain; eastward stretched Missionary Ridge, with many higher hills behind it; and more to the north, and far in the distance, loomed the Great Smoky Mountains, in all respects true to their name. The valley at my feet was beautiful beyond words: green forests interspersed with green clearings, lonely cabins, and bare fields of red earth. ”

“ Let me show you a landscape that shall not fade out from 'the lidless eye of time' long after we are all dead. A half mile [p. 312] from the eastern border of Chattanooga is a long swell of land, sparsely sprinkled with houses, flecked thickly with tents, and checkered with two or three graveyards. On its summit stand the red earthworks of Fort Wood, with its great guns frowning from the angles. Mounting the parapet and facing eastward you have a singular panorama. Away to your left is a shining elbow of the Tennessee, a lowland of woods, a long-drawn valley, glimpses of houses. ”

“ We arrived at Chattanooga while a feeble glow of the soft spring twilight lingered in the air. The headquarters of General Leadbetter, then district commander, was in one of the principal hotels of the town, and we at once drove there. I was left in the carriage while the major ascended to inform him of the arrival.
The town had already been informed. The curiosity to see one of the men who had captured the train and frightened the women and children of Chattanooga into the woods only two days before was intense, and a very large crowd soon assembled. ”

“ But the first great blunder, detaching Longstreet, cannot be accounted for in any way I know of. If he had captured Chattanooga, East Tennessee would have fallen without a struggle. It would have been a victory for us to have got our army away from Chattanooga safely. It was a manifold greater victory to drive away the besieging army; a still greater one to defeat that army in his chosen ground and nearly annihilate it. ”

“ Upon the Tennessee River, at the head of navigation, and near the junction-point of the three States, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, is Chattanooga, the Indian "crow's nest," now a busy manufacturing city and a great railroad centre, served by 349 no less than nine different roads diverging in all directions, the iron, coal and timber of the neighboring country having given it an impetus that has brought a population of fifty thousand. This city has had all its development since the Civil War, and is the seat of Grant University of the Methodist Church, attended by six hundred students. ”

“ Chattanooga is a small town—not much more than a village. It is pleasantly situated on the banks of the Tennessee, and is bowered in amidst lofty mountain peaks. One of these hangs right over the town, and is more than seven hundred feet in perpendicular hight. From its summit parts of four States are visible—Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina. It is capable of being very strongly fortified ”

“ Now, our own General Mitchell finds himself in a position to press into East Tennessee as far as possible, and he hopes soon to seize Chattanooga, after he has taken Huntsville, Alabama. But to do this he must cut off Chattanooga from all railroad communication to the south and east, and therefore all aid. In other words, we men are to enter the enemy’s country in disguise, capture a train on the Georgia State railroad, steam off with it, and burn the bridges leading in the direction of Chattanooga, on the northern end of the road. ”

“ The view included Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, and much else; but its special charm was its foreground, the part peculiar to itself,—the valley, the river, and Raccoon Mountain. Along the river-banks were small clearings, each with its one cabin, and generally a figure or two ploughing or planting. A man in a strangely long boat—a dugout, probably—was making his difficult way upstream with a paddle. The Tennessee, in the neighborhood of Chattanooga, at all events, is too swift for pleasure-boating. ”

“ The latter point is only eight miles from Chattanooga and connected with it by a good wagon-road, which runs through a low pass in the Raccoon Mountains on the south side of the river to Brown′s Ferry, thence on the north side to the river opposite Chattanooga. There were several steamers at Bridgeport, and abundance of forage, clothing and provisions.
On the way to Chattanooga I had telegraphed back to Nashville for a good supply of vegetables and small rations, which the troops had been so long deprived of. Hooker had brought with him from the east a full supply of land transportation. ”

“ The battles around Chattanooga must be considered as ending in one of the most complete victories of the war. Bragg’s army was defeated, men and material captured, and the Confederates driven south. The mountainous defense line which the Confederacy hoped to hold had been pierced and large sections of it were in Union control. Chattanooga, the railroad center, was now in Union hands and the interior line of communication from this section of the Confederacy to Richmond, by way of Knoxville, was destined to remain in Union control for the remainder of the war. ”

“ As we could not thus hold Chattanooga, our army, on September 7th and 8th, took position from Lee and Gordon's Mill to Lafayette, on the road leading south from Chattanooga and fronting the east slope of Lookout Mountain. The forces on the Hiawassee and at Chickamauga Station took the route by Ringgold. A small cavalry force was left in observation at Chattanooga, and a brigade of infantry at Ringgold to cover the railroad. ”

“ To an idler desirous of seeing wild life on easy terms Chattanooga offers this advantage, that electric cars take him quickly out of the city in different directions, and drop him in the woods. In this way, on an afternoon too sultry for extended travel on foot, I visited a wooded hillside on the further bank of the Tennessee, a few miles above the town. ”

“ Elsewhere the foreground was an unbroken forest. For some time I could not distinguish the Ridge itself from the outlying world. Mountains and hills crowded the hazy horizon, range beyond range. Moving along the rocks, I found a vista through which Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain were visible. Another change, and a stretch of the Tennessee River came into sight, and, beyond it, Missionary Ridge with its settlements and its two observatories. ”

“ Reynolds crossed over with his Division, if I remember rightly, at Doherty's gap, while Crittenden's corps moved up the railroad around the north end of the mountain, and General Wagner continued to threaten Chattanooga in front with Wilder's and Minty's brigades of cavalry. Chattanooga lays in the wide end of a Y, formed by Lookout on the west, and Pigeon mountains on the east; the north end of Lookout rising about one mile and a half from the west side of the town. Pigeon mountain is a spur of Lookout, which projects itself over to the Tennessee, about four miles east of Chattanooga. ”

“ In strategic importance, it was scarcely inferior to Richmond itself; for it now held the only remaining railroad which extended from the far West into the Eastern states of the Confederacy. Chattanooga was also important, since it was so situated as to control, not only Eastern Tennessee, but also the most easy and natural passage from Virginia to the Southwest. Soon after Halleck was placed in command at Washington, in July, 1862, Grant was left in charge of the territory about Vicksburg, and Rosecrans about Chattanooga. ”

“ President Lincoln wanted Chattanooga to relieve the sorely persecuted Unionists of East Tennessee. Military men wanted Chattanooga for its immense strategic importance, second only to that of Vicksburg.
The men of the Army of the Cumberland wanted Chattanooga, as those of the Army of the Potomac wanted Richmond, and those of the Army of the Tennessee had wanted Vicksburg, as the victor's guerdon which would crown all their marches, skirmishes and battles. ”

“ Missionary Ridge divides the valleys of the Chattanooga and Chickamauga. It rises abruptly, like a mighty rampart, to a height of 1600 feet above the Tennessee River, and at an average distance of about two miles from Chattanooga. From the nearest part of its summit every quarter of the town is commanded. The rebel lines stretched from near the abutment of the Ridge on the Chickamauga along its brow to and beyond Chattanooga Creek, up the slopes of Lookout Mountain facing the town. ”

“ The true thing to do was to push Rosecrans's army to Chattanooga and beyond. With the valley of the Tennessee in our possession, and Chattanooga held as a new base of supply for a column in East Tennessee as well as another in Georgia, the occupation of Knoxville and the Clinch and Holston valleys to the Virginia line was easy. Without it, all East Tennessee campaigns were visionary. ”

“ No sound can awake them to glory again." More than twenty-seven years have passed since that heroic struggle on the steep mountain side of Missionary Ridge. The blue and the gray sleep side by side in the National Cemetery at its base. Chattanooga, then a small war-battered village, has grown, by northern capital and northern industry, to be an important iron manufacturing city. The Tennessee runs its bright and winding way around the proud Lookout, but no rebel yell pollutes the air, and no rebel rag defies the national authority, but all is peace and order, industry and law. ”

“ The strategy—matchless in our war—which compelled Bragg to abandon Chattanooga; the life and death struggle for concentrating the Union army when Rosecrans, against the protests of Washington authorities that it could not be true, found his widely separated corps confronted with re-enforcements from every part of the Confederacy; and, lastly, the great battle in the Chickamauga forests for the possession of Chattanooga, [6] are each most fruitful and interesting themes. The present letter will relate to the first-named subject, the strategy of the Chickamauga campaign. ”

“ An army could operate on this slope only below the crest, from the west to the east, or on the side of Chattanooga, around the northern slope, under the crest. Hooker’s army did not cross the top of the crest; but by taking the slope, the Confederate troops occupying the top, were forced to retreat by the only wagon road reaching to the top on the Chattanooga side. The slope on that side is less precipitous than on the west side where Hooker was. ”

“ After the battle of Chickamauga the center of the army of the Cumberland withdrew from the field in good order on the night of Sept. 20, 1863, to Rossville, a few miles south of Chattanooga, and was ready to give battle on the following day, the right and left wings being again in position. It was not however closely followed or attacked by the enemy, but as Chattanooga was considered a much better position for defense, on Sept. 22, the army took up its position on the hills surrounding the town and was soon intrenched and securely fortified against any attack. ”

“ The Twenty-first Corps with the exception of Hazen’s and Wagner’s infantry and Minty’s cavalry—which were still north and east of Chattanooga—were to march to Wauhatchie, at the lower end of Lookout Valley, near Lookout Mountain, and to communicate with the Fourteenth Corps at Trenton in the same valley, and threaten Chattanooga by way of the Tennessee River via the nose of Lookout Mountain. The cavalry crossed at Caperton’s and at a ford near Island Creek, in Lookout Valley, from which point they reconnoitered towards Rome, Georgia, fifty-five miles south of Chattanooga, via Alpine. ”

“ The Western and Atlantic Railroad (often called the State Road) at the time discussed in the preceding pages, was the only line of communication between the southern centre of the Confederate States and the Army of Tennessee. It was worthy of notice that this road was not paralleled by any of the roads now in existence. The Memphis and Charleston Railroad came into the Nashville and Chattanooga at Stevenson as now, and the latter road reached from Nashville to Chattanooga. The East Tennessee and Georgia Road also came into Chattanooga then as now, and also into Dalton. ”

“ At the expiration of our four days rest at Chattanooga, we marched, on the morning of the 18th of October, by the Rossville and Dry Valley roads, to Lee and Gordon's mills on the Chickamauga river and encamped for the night. Oct. 19th marched to La Fayette and camped for the night. Oct. 20th, marched south from La Fayette about twelve miles and turned to the right, on a road leading to Brown Town Valley, and after fording Chattanooga river, we went into camp for the night. October 21st, marched 25 miles on Brown Town Valley road towards Galesville. ”