Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge: Chattanooga and Bragg

The most vigorous preparations were now made for the attack and defence of this important post, which had become the centre of operations for the Western armies. Bragg began a siege of the town that threatened to reduce it by starvation. He seized the passes of Lookout Mountain, destroyed the railroad-bridge at Bridgeport, and thus broke the railroad-communication with Nashville. The supply-trains of Rosecrans's army were obliged to make their way over a difficult ridge by steep and rough roads, since Bragg commanded all the low grounds along the Tennessee. In October heavy rains fell. The roads became almost impassable. The Confederate cavalry attacked the trains. In one day they destroyed three hundred wagons and killed or captured eighteen hundred mules. As one soldier said, "The mud was so deep that we could not travel by the road, but we got along pretty well by stepping from mule to mule as they lay dead by the way." Starvation threatened the camp. The army must be relieved or must retreat, and a retreat might have ended in a great disaster.

Vigorous measures were now taken. Grant was made commander of the Western armies. He had about eighty thousand men, in addition to Burnside's force; Bragg, about sixty thousand. Sherman was directed to march from Vicksburg to Chattanooga, his troops being first transported by steamboat to Memphis. He left Memphis on October 2, repairing the railroads as he went. It was also determined to reinforce Rosecrans from the Army of the Potomac, and two corps, numbering twenty-three thousand men, under Hooker, were transported, with their artillery, baggage, and animals, from the Rapidan in Virginia to Stevenson in Alabama, a distance of eleven hundred and ninety-two miles, in seven days; an unprecedented performance.

Grant telegraphed to Thomas, then in command at Chattanooga, to hold the place at all hazards. "I will do so till we starve," was the answer. Grant reached the town on October 21, and found that all the heights surrounding it were in the hands of the enemy, who controlled both the river and the railroad. Ten thousand animals had perished by famine. The roads must be opened, or the army must retreat, and that meant destruction, as they would have had to march without supplies. Within a few days, however, the state of affairs remarkably changed. A secret expedition drove the enemy from the range of hills which commanded the river road. Immediately afterwards Hooker reached the same point and strongly guarded it. Good roads for supplies were now secured, and the problem of holding Chattanooga was solved. Bragg had lost his advantage by a surprise. He sought to recover it by a night assault on Geary's command at Wauhatchie, but was repulsed with great loss.

A new Confederate scheme was now devised, which fatally weakened Bragg's army. Longstreet was sent with fifteen thousand men to attack Burnside at Knoxville. Sherman's men arrived late in November, and an assault on Bragg's position was arranged for the 24th. Meanwhile, Bragg was so confident of the strength of his position that he sent a division to reinforce Longstreet. A second division had started, but was recalled when Grant's attack began. From Van Horne's "Army of the Cumberland" we select a description of the remarkable action that succeeded.]

THE Confederate leaders and the army commanders were sanguine of the success of the siege of Chattanooga up to the very moment of its failure. General Bragg had, for a time, just ground for sanguine expectations, as the elements were his allies. At the time of greatest promise, the oracular Confederate President appeared on Lookout Mountain, and from "Pulpit Rock," as he looked down exultingly upon the beleaguered army, predicted its total ruin. But the loss of Lookout Valley, the river, and the direct roads to Bridgeport virtually threw Bragg upon the defensive. It is true that he maintained his lines on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and through the intervening valley, in semblance of besieging effort, until the army with which he had so often battled leaped from its intrenchments and hurled him and his oft-defeated army from their lofty battlements. But he made no movement of actual offence against Chattanooga during the time the Army of the Cumberland was preparing to assume the boldest aggression. .

The town is surrounded with almost all the types of the grand and beautiful in nature. Mountains far and near, rising from water and plain, sharply defined by low valleys and the river curving at their feet; subordinate hills with rounded summits and undulating slopes, and broad plains delicately pencilled here and there by winding creeks and rivulets, are the prominent features of nature's amphitheatre, in the centre of which is Chattanooga.