by Ron Chernow
On the morning of November 24, Hooker flung parts of three divisions against Confederate forces on Lookout Mountain. The scene couldn’t have been more picturesque—or forbidding—for Union troops. The steep mountain was lined with chasms, rocks, and fallen trees and ringed with trenches and rifle pits. The battle was fought through sporadic haze, mist, and rain that at first veiled the upward movement of Hooker’s men. “But the sound of his artillery and musketry was heard incessantly,” wrote Grant, who watched from his command post at Orchard Knob.41 Clad in black hat and coat, his trousers tucked into Wellington boots, Grant squatted and wrote dispatches while balancing his order book on one knee, sending messages to reinforce Hooker and cut off any enemy retreat. At other moments, he sat on a stool, behind a log barrier, calmly watching the action. One British journalist recorded his peerless tranquillity: “There he stood in his plain citizen’s clothes looking through his double field-glasses apparently totally unmoved. I stood within a few feet of him and I could hardly believe that here was this famous commander, the model, it seemed to me, of a modest and homely but efficient Yankee general.”42 Grant always considered the pageantry of the Chattanooga fight beyond anything he had experienced, telling Washburne it was “the first battlefield I have ever seen where a plan could be followed and from one place the whole field be within one view.”43
Once Hooker ascended the western face, he circled Lookout Mountain to take the northern slope, driving away Confederate soldiers. The peak was high enough that clouds congregated at lower levels, with Hooker’s men intermittently visible above them; hence the colorful label attached to the conflict: the Battle Above the Clouds. Grant, who praised Hooker’s handling of the maneuver, denied that fierce fighting ever took place. “The battle of Lookout Mountain is one of the romances of the war,” he scoffed. “There was no such battle and no action even worthy to be called a battle on Lookout Mountain. It is all poetry.”44 When Hooker later heard such comments, he resented what he saw as an attempt to demean his achievement, saying he could “account for [it] in no other way than that [Grant] was in his cups.”45 Hooker had dexterously used feints and deceptions to coax rebel forces off the mountainside. As darkness descended, the sky was clear, a full moon shone—except for a lunar eclipse—and Union campfires dotted the slope in brilliant array. During the night, the last Confederate forces on Lookout Mountain melted away, rushing to the asylum of their comrades on Missionary Ridge. The next morning, Hooker’s men planted the American flag atop the summit, drawing universal hurrahs from Union troops down below.
On November 25, a bright and glorious day, Sherman’s army attacked the enemy, colliding with a small but proficient force under General Patrick Cleburne and absorbing numerous casualties. For many hours, the Army of the Tennessee made little headway, fighting fiercely at close range. Sherman was thus stymied in his quest for glory. “Go signal Grant,” he instructed a staff officer at midafternoon. “The orders were that I should get as many as possible in front of me, and God knows there are enough. They’ve been reinforcing all day.”46 At the southern end of Missionary Ridge, Joseph Hooker was delayed when rebels retreating from Lookout Mountain burned a key bridge across Chattanooga Creek, costing Hooker four precious hours.
Originally, Grant hoped Sherman would reap the lion’s share of glory at Chattanooga. But with Sherman and Hooker stalled at the far ends of Missionary Ridge, Grant turned his attention to George Thomas at the rebel center. He ordered Thomas, with his twenty-three thousand troops, to grab the base of Missionary Ridge and seize the first line of enemy rifle pits on the lower portion. He held modest expectations since the ridge was steep, well fortified, and seemingly impregnable. Union soldiers would have to march across a perilously exposed plain, then overtake the lowest rifle pits at the foot of the ridge. One hour after Grant gave the order to march, the slow-moving Thomas still had not complied. When he saw Thomas conversing with Thomas Wood, a division commander, Grant gave way to an uncommon moment of pique. Summoning Wood, he said, “I ordered your attack an hour ago. Why has it not been made?” “I have been ready for more than an hour,” Wood said defensively, “and can attack in five minutes after receiving the order.” Grant shot back: “I order you to attack.”47
Triggered by a signal—six consecutive cannon shots—nearly twenty-three thousand men sprang forward with lusty cheers. They moved with panache, urged on by rolling drums and bugle calls, their long, undulating columns and gleaming weapons providing a splendid spectacle in the afternoon sunshine. Fifty guns opened fire on them from the ridge. Far from being disheartened, as Grant had feared, Thomas’s army was stimulated to superior performance. Relegated to an ancillary role, they had something to prove and made quick work of the first rung of rifle pits. “The troops moved under fire with all the precision of veterans on parade,” an elated Grant informed Halleck.48 Many Confederate defenders stood in poor condition, one observer describing them as “rough and ragged men with no vestige of a uniform.”49 Grant had good reason to crow about his men. “The assaulting column advanced to the very rifle pits of the enemy and held their position firmly without wavering.”50 All the while, Grant maintained his nonchalant, no-nonsense manner. “He seems perfectly cool,” wrote William Wrenshall Smith, “and one could be with him for hours, and not know that any great movements were going on.”51
Then, as Grant watched through field glasses, something unexpected—indeed miraculous—happened. Three blue-coated regiments found themselves on a spur of the ridge hidden from enemy soldiers peering down from the top. As Confederates at the lower level started a panicky retreat up the mountainside, Union men, by a common impulse, began to clamber up after them, their regimental colors streaming in the wind. Many federals fled higher to avoid enemy fire. Before long eighteen thousand blue-clad soldiers raced helter-skelter up the steep slopes. According to one version of the battle, it was the lowly soldiers who first heeded the impulse to scamper upward and their superiors who belatedly followed. Bravery was suddenly the path of least resistance. The northerners taunted the fleeing rebels with derisory cries of “Chickamauga! Chickamauga!”—the humiliating defeat they sought to avenge.52 All the while, surging Union forces were saved from fire because Confederate marksmen feared they might accidentally spray with bullets their retreating comrades down below. Before long sixty regimental Union flags streaked up the mountainside toward the crest, chevrons of flying soldiers floating upward in an infectious outbreak of mass courage. As they scrambled hastily for cover, Confederate soldiers left behind a trail of cannon, wagons, horses, and supplies. One Union commander who reveled in the thrilling ascent was Phil Sheridan, who flapped his hat in the air and brandished his sword. “Forward, boys, forward!” he admonished his men. “We can go to the top . . . Come on, boys, give ’em hell!”53 At the mountain peak, it was young Arthur MacArthur Jr. of Wisconsin—father of World War II general Douglas MacArthur—who drove in the first regimental flag.
Agog, Grant later admitted he had never seen anything like this extemporaneous rout of the enemy. Originally he had expected his men to pause at the first trenches, regroup, then climb up the mountain in orderly stages, and he was initially disconcerted by the spontaneous upward push. “Thomas, who ordered those men up the ridge?” he demanded. “I don’t know,” said Thomas, his voice level. “I did not.”54 Not about to argue with such success, Grant clamped down hard on an unlit cigar and decided not to countermand the impulsive action. “The boys feel pretty good,” he observed. “Let them alone awhile.”55 He then gave orders for the entire line to storm the ridge. Entranced by the amazing occurrence in progress, Grant hurried off a message to Sherman. “Thomas has carried the hill and line in his immediate front. Now is your time to attack with vigor. DO SO!”56 By the end, ground observers saw one regimental color after another unfurled on the summit. Grant was astonished at how few casualties his men had endured. “I can account for this only on the theory that the enemy’s surprise at the audacity of such a
charge, caused confusion and purposeless aiming of their pieces,” he wrote.57
Once Grant saw the last Confederate defenses crumple, he spurred his horse to the front. He always considered Shiloh and Missionary Ridge his two most satisfying battles. As he rode along the ridgetop, he was cheered by jubilant troops with “tumultuous shouts,” said Dana, who described the storming of the ridge as “one of the greatest miracles in military history.”58 Grant thought Bragg might stand and fight, but he was already in headlong retreat, fleeing into nearby Georgia. “An Army never was whipped so badly as Bragg was,” exulted Grant, who regretted not having captured the opposing army and thought he could have done so had he known the geography better.59 Nonetheless, Grant had accomplished his foremost objective, pushing Bragg into Georgia and away from Burnside in Knoxville.
As befit a battle marked by theatrics, Bragg’s escape sketched a memorable tableau. “Bragg is in full retreat, burning his depots and bridges,” Dana told Stanton. “The Chickamauga Valley, for a distance of 10 miles, is full of the fires lighted in his flight.”60 One Union soldier recorded thousands of rebel soldiers fleeing in a disorderly rout down the rear slope of Missionary Ridge, jettisoning battle paraphernalia in their haste. “Gray clad men rushed wildly down the hill into the woods, tossing away knapsacks, muskets, and blankets as they ran.”61 For Braxton Bragg, the disgrace was total. “Bragg looked scared,” one Confederate soldier remarked. “He had put spurs to his horse, and was running like a scared dog . . . Poor fellow, he looked so hacked and whipped and mortified and chagrined at defeat.”62 When Bragg forwarded his resignation to Richmond, the Confederate government hastened to accept it.
Endearing himself to Grant, Sheridan and his men pursued Bragg to his supply depot at Chickamauga Station, a quick-witted decision that yielded a windfall in prisoners and weaponry. Ecstatically joyful, Sheridan straddled one cannon, waved his hat, and emitted a loud cheer. Luckily for Bragg, nightfall made it difficult to overtake the defeated rebels. Grant chased Bragg as far as Ringgold, Georgia, twenty miles southeast of Chattanooga. Ely Parker, a newcomer to Grant’s staff, was struck by the relentless way Grant rode, unfazed by bullets whistling around him. “When at Ringgold, we rode for half a mile in the face of the enemy, under an incessant fire of cannon and musketry . . . not once do I believe did it enter the general’s mind that he was in danger . . . he requires no escort beyond his staff . . . Roads are almost useless to him, for he takes short cuts through field and woods, and will swim his horse through almost any stream that obstructs his way . . . he will ride from breakfast until one or two in the morning, and that too without eating.”63
As was his wont, Grant proved generous in victory. When he and his officers trotted past a downtrodden contingent of enemy prisoners, he reacted with simple decency. “When General Grant reached the line of ragged, filthy, bloody, despairing prisoners . . . he lifted his hat and held it over his head until he passed the last man of that living funeral cortege,” recalled a prisoner. “He was the only officer in that whole train who recognized us as being on the face of the earth.”64 Once again the man badly stereotyped as a butcher showed more sensitivity toward his fallen adversaries than his colleagues.
Grant’s reputation zoomed to new heights after Chattanooga. Within a month, he had done what seemed impossible: he had gone from being besieged by opponents to ejecting them, and his victory had pried open more rebel territory to Union penetration. Grant and his colleagues had cleaned out the enemy from most of Tennessee, laying the groundwork for a critical incursion into Georgia. “The Slave aristocracy broken down,” trumpeted Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs. “The grandest stroke yet struck for our country.”65 In New York, George Templeton Strong pronounced the Chattanooga Campaign “the heaviest blow the country has yet dealt at rebellion.”66 Grant thought his victory had driven “a big nail in the Coffin of rebellion.”67 Southerners recognized that if they couldn’t hold Chattanooga, with its many natural advantages, they would have trouble resisting the Union juggernaut in future encounters.
For the first time Grant had taken elements of three Union armies—the Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Cumberland, and the Army of the Potomac—and merged them into a cohesive fighting force despite rivalries that sometimes strained relations between western and eastern soldiers. “So far as I can understand the subject,” wrote the historian John Lothrop Motley, “Ulysses Grant is at least equal to any general now living in any part of the world, and by far the first that our war has produced on either side.”68 As Grant reached a new apogee of fame, his praise was echoed in newspapers that had criticized the war effort, the New York Herald maintaining that “Gen. Grant is one of the great soldiers of the age . . . without an equal in the list of generals now alive.”69 The sweetest praise arrived in a letter from Washington: “I wish to tender you, and all under your command, my more than thanks—my profoundest gratitude—for the skill, courage, and perseverance, with which you and they, over so great difficulties, have effected that important object. God bless you all. A. Lincoln.”70
All along Grant had worried about Ambrose Burnside in Knoxville, having vowed to send him speedy relief after disposing of Bragg. On November 23, Burnside sent Grant an alarming report that he had only ten or twelve days of supplies left, at the expiration of which he would need to surrender to Longstreet. “Do not be forced into a Surrender by Short rations,” Grant beseeched him. “Take all the citizens have, to enable you to hold out yet a few days longer.”71 Grant decided to send twenty thousand soldiers to break the siege, one column consisting of Sherman and his men, who were exhausted from the tough assignment at Chattanooga. In a shrewd bit of psychological warfare, Grant outlined for Burnside the steps he had taken to raise the siege, deliberately allowing it to fall into Longstreet’s hands. The ruse worked: the day after receiving the letter, Longstreet gave orders to lift the Knoxville siege and return to Virginia, realizing Lincoln’s long-held dream of regaining control over eastern Tennessee with its strong pro-Unionist elements.
When Sherman arrived in Knoxville, he discovered that Grant had been badly bamboozled by Burnside, who had warned that his men faced starvation. Instead, Sherman found Burnside luxuriating amid plenty, with access to a fine herd of cattle. Burnside and his staff had taken up residence in a handsome mansion. Instead of finding bare cupboards, Sherman sat down to a generous dinner of roast turkey. When he told Burnside he expected to find him starving, the abashed Burnside confessed he had been able to obtain “a good supply of beef, bacon, and corn-meal” from the surrounding countryside.72
Hating to keep his army idle for extended periods, Grant immediately conceived new plans for taking Mobile. He wanted to steer his army down the Mississippi to New Orleans, then move east to Pascagoula in southeastern Mississippi and strike at Mobile and the Georgia and Alabama interiors. The idea was vintage Grant, moving beyond isolated battles to a boldly expansive blueprint for taking state after state and terminating hostilities. His great strength was that he thought in terms of sequence of battles. However meritorious, his plan was vetoed by Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck, who feared it might leave eastern Tennessee vulnerable and reverse recent success there.
By this point, Lincoln stood firmly in Grant’s corner, especially since his Tennessee victories had aided Republicans in carrying pivotal elections in Iowa and Ohio. “No man can feel more kindly and more grateful to you than the President,” Washburne told Grant.73 Once Lincoln received word that Chattanooga and Knoxville lay safely in Union hands, he advised the northern public to congregate in churches and praise the Lord “for this great advancement of the national cause.”74 After many hideous bloodbaths, Lincoln felt grateful that Knoxville was liberated without more slaughter. In Washington, politicians vied to decorate Grant, and both houses of Congress passed unanimous resolutions thanking him for the eastern Tennessee victories. On December 18, Lincoln asked Washburne to supervise the forging of a commemorative gold medal for Gra
nt while the citizens of Jo Daviess County decided to give him a diamond-hilted sword, the names of his victories engraved on its gold scabbard. For all his hand-wringing over the flawed generals running the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln hesitated to bring Grant east, reluctant to dislodge him from the scene of so many stunning victories: “I do not think it would do to bring Grant away from the West.”75
One reason Lincoln resisted any impulse to elevate Grant was the sudden chatter about Grant as a presidential candidate—perhaps inevitable for a conspicuously successful general. That November, Lincoln began to entertain more openly the idea of a second term, but his reelection, or even renomination, was no foregone conclusion. He had to reckon with the prospect that George McClellan might be the Democratic nominee, and he did not care to groom another possible military rival. The man banging the drum most loudly for Grant was James Gordon Bennett, the self-aggrandizing editor of the New York Herald, who editorialized that “the whole country looks up to [Grant] as the great genius who is to end this war, restore the Union and save us from the danger which the end of the war may bring upon us.”76