THE CAMPAIGNS OF CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA
While Lee was fighting his tremendous campaigns in Virginia, Maryland
and Pennsylvania, and while Grant was battling for Vicksburg, two
other armies confronted each other near the southern border line
of Tennessee. Rosecrans had command of the Federal forces near
Murfreesboro, and Braxton Bragg was in charge of the Confederates at
Chattanooga. The position of each of these armies was a serious threat
to the other side. If Bragg should be left unoccupied by his enemy it
was easily within his power to make a dangerous dash towards Cincinnati
or Louisville, while if he should withdraw from Rosecrans's front there
was nothing to prevent that general from "marching through Georgia," to
Mobile or Savannah or Charleston.
Grant, besieging Vicksburg, asked for reinforcements from Rosecrans by
way of warding off that blow in the rear which he feared that Johnston
might deliver and at the same time Johnston begged for reinforcements
from Bragg in order that he might deliver such a blow. Each of the
commanders at Murfreesboro and Chattanooga realized the necessity of
remaining where he was so long at least as his adversary should remain.
The result was that neither sent the reinforcements for which his
brother in the field was so clamorously calling.
These two armies for a long time stood watching each other, each
waiting for the other to make some movement that would give it
opportunity. In the meanwhile the cavalry on either side was engaged in
making some of the most picturesque raids that were at any time made
during the struggle. On both sides the cavalry had by this time learned
its business, and realized its possibilities of independent action in
the enemy's country. The Federal cavalier, Grierson, swept through
Mississippi carrying desolation wherever he went. The Confederates,
Wheeler and Forrest, rushed hurricanelike through the country north,
battling here and there with such forces as they met. Gordon Granger
and Colonel Streight on the Federal side were swinging swords almost
continually.
The operations of this kind were too many, and strategically of too
little importance to call for detailed description in a general history
of the war. But two of them were so dramatic in their conduct and
ending that they must be mentioned here. One of these was the attempt
of Colonel Streight with about 2,000 men to march around Bragg's army,
and cut off his communications. This raid was made early in April, and
Forrest followed it with all the vigor that usually characterized that
general's operations. The two forces were in constant battle as the one
swept onward and the other followed. Streight meanwhile was working
havoc with Confederate depots of supplies, with railroad property, and
other possessions of his enemy. Finally on the third of May, Forrest
succeeded in placing himself in a position where he was justified in
demanding the surrender of Streight's force. He made the demand boldly
and threateningly and Streight surrendered only to learn after the
capitulation was made that the men under his command really outnumbered
those of Forrest. It was Forrest's boast afterward that in this case he
had "won by a pure bluff."
The other raid which rises into historical importance was that of
John Morgan north of the Ohio. Starting in July with a force of 3,000
Confederate cavalrymen and ten guns Morgan crossed the Ohio river
into Indiana, capturing two steamers and using them as ferryboats.
He then swept through Indiana towards Cincinnati, burning mills and
bridges, tearing up railroads, and spreading terror in his pathway.
But resolution accompanied the terror. Every man in all that region
who could bear a gun turned out to fight the raiders and to destroy
them before they should succeed in recrossing the river. This was
accomplished at last with the aid of gunboats and steamboats. Morgan
was compelled to surrender a small remnant of his force, and was sent
for safe-keeping to the Ohio state prison, from which he later escaped
by digging.
All these operations, of course, were subsidiary to the general
purposes of the campaign.
Rosecrans was an exceedingly capable strategist and upon this occasion,
more conspicuously than on any other during his career, his capacity in
that way was demonstrated.
Bragg occupied Chattanooga, the strategic importance of which has
been explained in an earlier chapter. The position was practically
impregnable by any form of direct assault; for Rosecrans to have hurled
his army against it would have been an act of well-nigh suicidal
folly. In such an assault he must have lost ten men for every one of
his enemy's men whom he could hope to put hors de combat. Yet it was
necessary for Rosecrans to get Bragg out of Chattanooga. In order to
do so he pushed a part of his army southward, threatening an invasion
of Georgia. That state was defenseless except in so far as Bragg's
army defended it. Rosecrans's movement, therefore, quickly compelled
Bragg to withdraw from his strong and threatening position in order to
head off what he supposed to be that southward movement that Sherman
afterward made, and that is known in history as "the march to the sea."
As soon as he quitted Chattanooga, Rosecrans occupied that place about
the middle of September.
It was apparently good policy for Rosecrans instantly and aggressively
to follow his foe, and he did so in spite of the fact that his three
corps were dangerously separated at a time of heavy rains, when the
roads were bad, streams out of their banks, marching difficult, and
promptitude of movement impossible. In the meantime Bragg had been
heavily reinforced by Longstreet's corps sent out by Lee to save
this situation. Thus strengthened Bragg turned about with intent to
assail his adversary, and perhaps to destroy him. On the nineteenth of
September the two armies met on the banks of Chickamauga creek. There
for two days raged one of the great battles of the war.
Rosecrans brought into the action about 55,000 men and Bragg had
perhaps 10,000 more. It was Bragg who made the attack. As the lines
lay, the Confederate right and the Federal left extended toward
Chattanooga.
Bragg's plan of battle was to fall upon the Federal left, crush it,
bend back the line, and place himself between the Federal army and
its base. There could have been no better plan of battle formed, but
it was not executed in the best fashion possible. Had Bragg fully
realized the superiority of Longstreet to his other corps commanders,
and still more the superiority of Longstreet's men who had fought at
Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam and Gettysburg, he would
have placed Longstreet upon his right, in order that the blow might
be delivered with all that was possible of crushing force. Instead of
that he assigned the force of General Leonidas Polk to that position.
Polk was a West Point graduate, but soon after graduation he had
become a clergyman of the Episcopal church, and for many years past
had been a bishop in that church. A fact that had more importance
perhaps, was that Polk's men had not been trained by the experience
of Lee's tremendous onslaughts to the best work of the soldier, and
unfortunately for Bragg, but fortunately for Rosecrans, that left
wing of the Federal army upon which the main assault was made, was
under command of General George H. Thomas, one of the most determined
fighters on either side during the war.
Under Polk the assault was made loosely, and without that perfect
concert of action which Longstreet, had he been in command, would have
brought to bear. Thomas met it with obstinate resistance, and when
opportunity offered, with counter attacks that greatly interfered with
Bragg's plans. Nevertheless, the fighting was obstinate and destructive
to both sides. In the end Polk succeeded in forcing Thomas's line
backwards for a time, but before nightfall the Federal general had
recovered the greater part of his ground, and when the first day's
fighting ended the position of the two armies was practically the same
that had existed in the morning.
About eleven o'clock on the next morning the battle was resumed with
fury. Polk again assailed Thomas, and Thomas urgently asked for
reinforcements with which to repel the assault. On that part of the
line the struggle continued for hours with varying and not unequal
success, the advantage lying on the whole with the Confederates. But
later in the day Longstreet, who commanded the right center of Bragg's
line, made a tremendous assault of that kind which had been rendered
familiar to the fighters in Virginia by repeated experience. He swept
everything before him. He made a gap in Rosecrans's line crushing
its center, separating its wings from each other and driving it into
confused retreat. Thomas alone held his force together, and fought the
matter out to a finish. In spite of the fact clearly apparent to him
that Rosecrans was defeated, and three fifths of his army destroyed,
Thomas continued the bloody contest with a fury that knew no flinching,
and hesitated at nothing of human sacrifice in the achievement of its
purposes. But for Thomas's obstinacy, skill and courage the Federal
defeat at Chickamauga would have been a repetition of the disaster at
Chancellorsville.
During the night Thomas succeeded in withdrawing his command, and
the Federal army fell back to Chattanooga, taking refuge behind the
fortifications there. Each army had lost in this struggle from 15,000
to 20,000 men. The exact figures are nowhere procurable.
Bragg had won a great victory, but he had not succeeded in regaining
possession of Chattanooga. His enemy held that strong, strategic
position. It was therefore his next task to besiege the foe there, and
either by fighting or by maneuvering to drive him out of the place.
Two mountain heights, the one known as Lookout mountain and the other
as Missionary Ridge, overlook the town, and command many of its
approaches. When the battle was over Bragg promptly advanced and seized
upon these heights. By doing so he succeeded in placing Chattanooga in
a state of siege, stopping the navigation of the river, and cutting off
all of Rosecrans's communications, with the exception of one highly
inadequate mud road.
It is a maxim of military science that the army which can besiege
a position can always capture it in the end unless the beleaguered
place is relieved from the outside. Chattanooga was relieved from the
outside in an exceedingly quiet, but exceedingly effective way. Ulysses
S. Grant--at last a major general in the regular army and in full
command of the western department--went thither to supersede Rosecrans
in command. The coming of this one silent and unostentatious man meant
more to the Federal forces in that quarter than the arrival of half
a dozen army corps would have signified. Grant got to Chattanooga on
the twenty-third of October, 1863, and set to work at once with his
practical common sense to meet and solve the problems of the situation.
He found the army half starved for lack of routes of communication with
its bases of supply. He instantly set his men at work to open a new
road which the facetious soldiers named the "cracker line," and which
connected Chattanooga with a point on the river to which steamboats
could come with abundant supplies. This relieved the Federal army in
Chattanooga of its condition as an army in a state of siege. It made of
it instead an army in the field, well fed, properly supplied, and ready
for march or battle, as its commander might direct.
Having thus relieved the distresses of the army he had been sent
to command, Grant's next thought was to employ that army in some
profitable way. The Confederates, strongly fortified, held Lookout
mountain and Missionary Ridge, and stretched their line for twelve
miles across the Chattanooga valley. Grant decided to dislodge them. He
could not do so with the forces assembled at Chattanooga, but at last
the authorities at Washington had recognized him as a man worthy to
command, and had placed the entire department under his control, and
all its armies were at his disposal. Grant believed in Sherman, and
mightily trusted him. At every point in his career where Sherman could
be called to his aid Grant summoned that commander, and employed his
genius as the most effective instrument for the accomplishment of his
own purposes. It is not too much to say that Sherman was to Grant quite
all that Stonewall Jackson was to Lee--a lieutenant to whom he might
assign the most difficult enterprises with full assurance that they
would be executed with all the skill, determination, valor and sagacity
that it was possible to bring to bear upon them as military operations.
So when Grant determined to dislodge the Confederates from Lookout
mountain and Missionary Ridge his first step was to summon Sherman to
join him with the corps then under Sherman's command.
Certain military necessities delayed Sherman's march, and he did not
reach the position at Chattanooga until the fifteenth of November.
His arrival swelled Grant's force to about 80,000 men, while Bragg's
army was weakened by the detachment of Longstreet with 20,000 men to
operate against Burnside, who was commanding at Knoxville, Tennessee.
The Confederate force in possession of Lookout mountain and Missionary
Ridge was thus considerably inferior to the army with which Grant
prepared to assail it. But the Confederates were strongly posted and on
a part of their line, at least, they were well entrenched.
Grant's plan of battle was simple, as his plans of battle usually were.
He ordered Sherman to carry Missionary Ridge, which constituted the
extreme right of the Confederate position, while Thomas and Hooker
should so far engage the remainder of the line as to prevent the
reinforcement of that point upon which his chief assault was to be
made. If he could accomplish this Bragg must either retreat, abandoning
his threat against Chattanooga, or he must seek some point at which
to give battle again with a force so far weakened by detachment as to
render battle a dangerous alternative for him.
Sherman advanced on the twenty-fourth of November. His assault was
repulsed and for the time unsuccessful. Hooker, in the meanwhile,
exceeded his orders, and did a good deal more fighting than Grant had
intended him to do. It was his assigned duty merely to engage that part
of the Confederate lines which lay in front of him, sufficiently to
prevent the sending of any force from it to reinforce the Confederate
right. But Hooker was by instinct a fighter at all times. And on this
occasion he pushed his men boldly into a fight that his commanding
officer had not intended. His force climbed to the extreme summit of
the mountain, passing a zone of mist and fog as they went. Having
reached the summit they routed the Confederates there and made
themselves masters of the heights. The fact that they passed through
this fog zone on their way up led to the poetic nicknaming of this
action as the "Battle above the Clouds." It was not, properly speaking,
a battle at all, and it was not above the clouds in the sense in which
that phrase impresses the ordinary mind.
On the twenty-fifth Grant pushed Thomas again into the fight, and
assailed the position on Missionary Ridge. A very gallant and very
vigorous action followed. It resulted in the Federals carrying the
Ridge, sweeping everything before them, and driving Bragg's army into
full retreat. He retired with what remained of his force to Dalton,
Georgia, and almost immediately afterward Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was
ordered to take command in that quarter in his stead.
The campaign had been dramatic in many of its features, and peculiarly
picturesque in some of them. It had cost the lives of from six to
ten thousand men on either side. It left the Federals masters of
Chattanooga, placing the Confederates in an uncertain defensive
position against which future operations were comparatively easy.