The Battle of Chattanooga was a major engagement of the American Civil War, from November 23rd to the 25th of 1863. Fought between a Union army of about 60,000 men under General Ulysses S. Grant and a Confederate force of approximately 40,000 under General Braxton Bragg.
Braggs served in the Confederate army as a brigadier general. Soon promoted to the rank of major general, then full general. He replaced General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard as commander of the Army of the Tennessee in June 1862.
Invading Kentucky in August 1862, he nearly succeeded in taking Louisville but was compelled to withdraw into Tennessee. At the Battle of Murfreesboro, or Stones River, he fought Union forces under General William Starke Rosecrans to a draw, but then withdrew his army.
Bragg faced Rosecrans at the Battle of Chickamauga, about 12 miles south of Chattanooga, on September 19th and 20th, 1863, and forced him back. The Union army withdrew across the state line to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Confederates laid siege and cut off Union supply lines and communications. Bragg's army was entrenched on Lookout Mountain*, 3 miles southwest of Chattanooga, and on parts of Missionary Ridge**, running parallel to Lookout Mountain.
It was decided that Grant should save the situation, and for this he was given another promotion. In mid-October Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton met Grant in Louisville, Kentucky, with new orders. Grant was to be supreme commander in the West, a post that had been unfilled since General Halleck was called to Washington, D.C. Reporting to him were General George H. Thomas, replacing Rosecrans as head of the Army of the Cumberland; General William T. Sherman, taking over Grant's old command, the Army of the Tennessee; and General Joseph Hooker, with 20,000 men sent west from the Army of the Potomac.
On October 27-28 Union forces seized Brown's Ferry on the Tennessee River, west of Chattanooga, restoring a supply route into the city. Troops of the XI and XII Corps, under the Union general Joseph Hooker, also seized the valley of Lookout Creek, west of Lookout Mountain. Grant then halted further operations until the arrival of four reinforcement divisions under General William Tecumseh Sherman.
On November 23 Union troops captured Orchard Knob, an elevation in the plain between Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge. Grant ordered an assault on Lookout Mountain at 8 AM on November 24 1863.
The Battle of Lookout Mountain, also known as the "Battle Above the Clouds," was fought when General Joseph Hooker, commanding the right wing of the Union forces, moved against the Confederate troops on Lookout Mountain. Less than 2000 Confederate soldiers held the slopes of the mountain but they couldn't stand against the three divisions of Hooker's army, which moved against them in an impenetrable fog. During the night, the Confederates withdrew their small garrison from the crest of the mountain. Skirmishers from Hooker's command, scaling the perpendicular cliffs before daylight, found the top of Lookout Mountain deserted. By the morning of November 25 Hooker had driven the Confederates from their positions.
The decisive phase of the battle began at 7 AM on November 25, when Sherman's force, consisting of six divisions, attacked Confederate entrenchments on the northern slopes of Missionary Ridge. Unable to make headway, however, Grant ordered General George Thomas to make a diversionary assault on the Confederate earthworks along the western base of the ridge. Simultaneously, Hooker's forces stormed the southern and eastern flanks of Missionary Ridge. Thomas's men, disregarding orders to advance no farther than the first line of earthworks, continued on up the steep slopes and, in one of the most remarkable charges in military history, carried the enemy fortifications along the crest. The panic-stricken Confederate troops fled in disorder. During the night the remnants of Bragg's army withdrew northward.
Grant's victory forced the Confederates to evacuate Tennessee and made possible Sherman's subsequent march through Georgia. Union casualties in the battle were about 5800; Confederate casualties, about 6700.
The battlefield was established as the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 1890.
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*Lookout Mountain is mainly in southeastern Tennessee and extending into Georgia and Alabama. The ridge is a narrow spur of the Cumberland Plateau and reaches its maximum elevation of more than 2000 ft above sea level in Tennessee. One of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War.
**Missionary Ridge is situated in southern Tennessee and northern Georgia and is about 10 miles long. The ridge lies southeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee, near Lookout Mountain. Now part of this ridge is included in the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.
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