by H. W. Brands
He conducted a reconnaissance the next day. Riding out from Chattanooga with George Thomas and William F. Smith, the chief engineer of the Cumberland army, as well as some members of his staff, Grant crossed the Tennessee to the north bank and ventured west to Brown’s Ferry, a few miles downstream from Lookout Mountain, the height that commanded Chattanooga’s valley. Confederate pickets occupied the south bank. “We were within easy range,” Grant recalled. “They did not fire upon us nor seem to be disturbed by our presence. They must have seen that we were all commissioned officers. But, I suppose, they looked upon the garrison of Chattanooga as prisoners of war, feeding or starving themselves, and thought it would be inhuman to kill any of them except in self-defense.” (His surmise was correct. “We held him at our mercy,” Braxton Bragg subsequently reported to Jefferson Davis. “His destruction was only a question of time.”)
The complacency of the Confederates afforded Grant an opening. Weeks earlier Halleck had detached a force under Joseph Hooker from the Army of the Potomac and sent it west to reinforce Chattanooga. It had reached Bridgeport by the time Grant came through, but it waited there lest its advance to Chattanooga simply add to the strain on the supply line. Grant ordered Hooker to advance by a route south of the Tennessee, driving away such Confederates as he encountered. Meanwhile William Smith would float a contingent down the Tennessee from Chattanooga with pontoon boats, which would glide in the dark past the Confederates on Lookout Mountain and form the basis for a bridge across the river at Brown’s Ferry. A column from Chattanooga would march across and connect via Lookout Valley, west of Lookout Mountain, with Hooker’s force.
The operation proceeded to Grant’s entire satisfaction. The Confederates caught north of the new Union line and south of the river realized their isolation and surrendered. Their removal opened the river and the road on its north bank to Union transports and mule teams, which shortly established the “cracker line” the Chattanooga garrison had been crying for, and more. “In a week the troops were receiving full rations,” Grant recalled. “It is hard for anyone not an eyewitness to realize the relief this brought. The men were soon reclothed and also well fed; an abundance of ammunition was brought up, and a cheerfulness prevailed not before enjoyed in many weeks.”
Yet Chattanooga remained besieged. The Confederate positions approached so near the Union defenses that the troops of the two sides were within speaking distance. They often did speak and otherwise observed a comity at striking odds with the larger conflict. One day Grant examined the Union troops along Chattanooga Creek, south of the city. “When I came to the camp of the picket guard of our side, I heard the call, ‘Turn out guard for the commanding general,’ ” he remembered. “I replied, ‘Never mind the guard,’ and they were dismissed and went back to their tents. Just back of these, and about equally distant from the creek, were the guards of the Confederate pickets. The sentinel on their post called out in like manner, ‘Turn out the guard for the commanding general,’ and, I believe, added, ‘General Grant.’ Their line in a moment front-faced to the north, facing me, and gave a salute, which I returned.”
The informal ceasefire grew even stranger. A tree had fallen across the creek at one point near which soldiers from both sides drew water. Some Confederates from James Longstreet’s corps, in blue uniforms nearly the same shade as those of Grant’s troops, camped there. Grant, again inspecting the Union lines, saw a blue-coated soldier sitting on the log. “I rode up to him, commenced conversing with him, and asked whose corps he belonged to. He was very polite, and, touching his hat to me, said he belonged to General Longstreet’s corps.” Grant, hiding his surprise and perhaps embarrassment, nonchalantly continued the conversation. “I asked him a few questions—but not with a view of gaining any particular information—all of which he answered, and I rode off.”
Chattanooga was but half of Grant’s Tennessee challenge. Farther up the Tennessee River, Ambrose Burnside’s army anchored eastern Tennessee for the Union, but problematically. Burnside’s difficulties of provision were reported similar to those Thomas had experienced at Chattanooga, and they rendered his prospects doubtful. Yet the government in Washington considered it imperative that he hang on. The mountaineers of eastern Tennessee favored the Union, and Lincoln was loath to let them down. The valley of eastern Tennessee formed a natural corridor between Georgia and Virginia; control of the valley would tighten the screws on the Confederacy still further. Conversely the loss of the valley would endanger Nashville and possibly Kentucky and western Virginia. “If we can hold Chattanooga and East Tennessee, I think the rebellion must dwindle and die,” Lincoln wrote William Rosecrans before the latter’s dismissal. “I think you and Burnside can do this; and hence doing so is your main object.”
After Grant secured Chattanooga from starvation and surrender, the attention of the government centered on Burnside. So did the attention of the Confederates. Bragg sent Longstreet and twenty thousand troops up the river to threaten Burnside. Grant was tempted to reinforce Burnside but realized that, until the supply problem was solved, reinforcements would only weaken Burnside’s garrison. “There was no relief possible for him except by expelling the enemy from Missionary Ridge and about Chattanooga,” Grant explained afterward. In the meantime he ordered Burnside to stand fast. “I do not know how to impress on you the necessity of holding on to East Tennessee, in strong enough terms,” he wrote.
To drive off Bragg, Grant summoned Sherman. “Drop everything east of Bear Creek and move with your entire force towards Stevenson,” Grant wrote Sherman in late October, referring to a railroad town in northeastern Alabama. Sherman had marched his army from Vicksburg up the Mississippi to Memphis and from there had been working his way east along the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, rebuilding and defending the line as he went. Grant determined that the danger to eastern Tennessee required risking the railroad and other recent gains in the western part of his theater. “The enemy are evidently moving a large force towards Cleveland”—a rail town northeast of Chattanooga—“and may break through our lines and move on Nashville,” he told Sherman. “With your forces here before the enemy cross the Tennessee, we could turn their position so as to force them back and save the probability of a move northward this winter.”
Sherman later recollected the circumstances of his receiving Grant’s message, which traveled circuitously on account of disrupted telegraph traffic. “As I sat on the porch of a house I was approached by a dirty, black-haired individual with mixed dress and strange demeanor, who inquired for me,” Sherman said. “The bearer of this message was Corporal Pike, who described to me, in his peculiar way, that General Crook”—the commander at Huntsville, Alabama, the relay point for Grant’s telegrams—“had sent him in a canoe; that he had pulled down the Tennessee River, over Muscle Shoals, was fired at all the way by guerrillas, but on reaching Tuscumbia he had providentially found it in possession of our troops. He had reported to General Blair, who sent him on to me.” Corporal Pike apparently thrived on danger; he subsequently asked the impressed Sherman for a hazardous assignment that would make him a hero. Sherman told him about a railroad bridge behind Confederate lines that ought to be burned. “I explained to Pike that the chances were three to one that he would be caught and hanged,” Sherman recalled. “But the greater the danger, the greater seemed to be his desire to attempt it.” Pike disappeared into enemy territory and Sherman lost touch with him. As the bridge wasn’t burned, Sherman assumed Pike had been captured and executed. But he turned up two years later in South Carolina while Sherman was marching through. “Pike gave me a graphic narrative of his adventures, which would have filled a volume; told me how he had made two attempts to burn the bridge and failed, and said that at the time of our entering Columbia he was a prisoner in the hands of the rebels, under trial for his life, but in the confusion of their retreat he made his escape and got into our lines, where he was again made a prisoner because of his looks.” Sherman cleaned him up and put him back into servic
e as a courier.
Sherman responded to Grant’s call with his usual energy. He suspended rail work, gathered his available troops and hastened east. He personally reached Bridgeport on November 13, with his troops trailing by various roads. A fresh message from Grant awaited him. “Leave directions for your command and come up here yourself,” Grant said. “Telegraph when you start and I will send a horse to Kelly’s Ferry for you.”
Grant meanwhile informed Burnside that aid was coming. “Sherman’s advance has reached Bridgeport,” Grant wrote. “His whole force will be ready to move from there by Tuesday”—November 17. “If you can hold Longstreet in check until he gets up, or by skirmishing and falling back can avoid serious loss to yourself and gain time, I will be able to force the enemy back from here and place a force between Longstreet and Bragg that must inevitably make the former take to the mountain passes by every available road to get back to supplies.”
Grant reassured the administration in Washington that Burnside would receive help. Lincoln and the War Department were growing frantic over the danger to eastern Tennessee. Stanton’s agent Dana had gone to Knoxville, and he reported that Burnside was on the verge of withdrawing his force. Halleck wrote Burnside telling him to hold his ground. “If you retreat now it will be disastrous to the campaign,” Halleck said. With the next stroke of his pen he wrote Grant regarding Burnside: “I fear he will not fight, although strongly urged to do so. Unless you can give him immediate assistance he will surrender his position to the enemy.… Immediate aid from you is now of vital importance.”
Grant redoubled his efforts. “I am pushing everything to give General Burnside early aid,” he told Halleck. “I have impressed on him in the strongest terms the necessity of holding on to his position. General Sherman’s troops are now at Bridgeport. They will march tomorrow and an effort will be made to get a column between Bragg and Longstreet as soon as possible.”
He sent a new message to Burnside, conveying more confidence than perhaps he felt and certainly more than Halleck and Lincoln did. “So far you are doing exactly what appears to me right,” he told Burnside. He added a stiffener, though: “I want the enemy’s progress retarded at every foot, all it can be, only giving up each place when it becomes evident that it cannot longer be held without endangering your force to capture.” And he said that help was closer than ever. “Sherman moved this morning from Bridgeport with one division. The remainder of his command moves in the morning. There will be no halt until a severe battle is fought or the railroads cut supplying the enemy.”
Grant made a habit of exuding confidence. Adam Badeau recalled of this period: “Grant was always sanguine, amid the greatest difficulties and dangers.” Charles Dana later observed, “There was the greatest hopefulness everywhere.” Grant himself told Halleck that a bold stroke by Bragg against Burnside might lead to a setback but that it would be temporary. “I think the rebel force making such a movement would be totally annihilated,” he said.
He was nervous all the same, as he later admitted to Halleck. “I felt restless beyond anything I had before experienced in this war, at my inability to either move to reinforce Burnside or to attack the enemy in his position, to make him feel the necessity of retaining at Chattanooga all his troops. I was forced to leave Burnside to contend alone against vastly superior forces until Sherman could arrive with his men and means of transportation.”
When Sherman reached Chattanooga, he saw what Grant had to be nervous about. He, Grant and Thomas walked to the edge of the city to examine their position. “We had a magnificent view of the panorama,” Sherman remembered. “Lookout Mountain, with its rebel flags and batteries, stood out boldly, and an occasional shot fired toward Wauhatchee or Moccasin Point gave life to the scene.… All along Missionary Ridge were the tents of the rebel beleaguering force; the lines of trench from Lookout up toward the Chickamauga were plainly visible; and rebel sentinels, in a continuous chain, were walking their posts in plain view.” Sherman turned to his commander. “Why, General Grant, you are besieged,” he said. Grant replied, “It is too true.” Sherman retrospectively added: “Up to that moment I had no idea that things were so bad.”
But Grant had been reckoning how to make things better. With his field glasses he could see that the Confederates were thinly placed on the north end of Missionary Ridge and near the mouth of Chickamauga Creek. This weakness afforded the opening he sought. “Every arrangement is now made to throw Sherman’s force across the river just at and below the mouth of Chickamauga Creek, as soon as it arrives,” he told Burnside by way of explaining what must be done before reinforcements could be sent north. “Thomas will attack on his left at the same time and together it is expected to carry Missionary Ridge and from there push a force on the railroad between Cleveland and Dalton. Hooker will at the same time attack and, if he can, carry Lookout Mountain.”
Grant intended to attack on November 21, a Saturday, and promised Burnside he would do so. Burnside was more beset than ever; Longstreet’s approach had driven him back and cut his telegraph lines. “If you can communicate with General Burnside, say to him that our attack on Bragg will commence in the morning,” Grant wrote on that Friday to Orlando Willcox, who had the command now closest to Burnside. “If successful, such a move will be made as, I think, will relieve East Tennessee, if he can hold out.”
But the bad roads and two days’ downpour postponed the start. “It will be impossible to attack Bragg before Monday,” Grant wrote Halleck on Saturday afternoon. The mud bogged down Sherman too; even on Monday his men weren’t quite in place. Yet Grant decided to go ahead.
“It was the beginning of the most spectacular military operations I ever saw,” Charles Dana remembered. “Our army lay to the south and east of the town of Chattanooga, the river being at our back. Facing us, in a great half circle, and high above us on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, were the Confederates. Our problem was to drive them from these heights.” In most battles even the commanding general could see only a portion of the field, the rest being obscured by terrain, vegetation, distance or weather. The field at Chattanooga, by contrast, formed a natural amphitheater, permitting Grant and his staff to view almost every action. Dana stuck close to Grant and shared his view.
The battle opened with a ground-clearing action in Grant’s immediate front. Three of Thomas’s brigades moved rapidly forward against Confederates guarding two detached hills below Missionary Ridge. Their close order and precise discipline apparently lulled the enemy. “Until we opened fire, prisoners assert that they thought the whole movement was a review and general drill,” Montgomery Meigs, Grant’s quartermaster general, reported. “And then it was too late to send to their camps for reinforcements, and they were overwhelmed by force of numbers.” The Confederates inflicted serious damage on the Federals, killing or wounding more than a thousand, but were driven back with heavy losses of their own. By Monday evening the hills had been secured.
That night Sherman struggled to get his men across the river for the assault on Missionary Ridge. The first wave of boats reached the south bank in the blackness before dawn; Sherman’s men quickly overpowered the Confederate pickets and established a bridgehead. While some of the boats and a small steamer ferried more of the troops, other boats began to be formed into a bridge. Dana detached from Grant to watch the crossing. “It was marvelous with what vigor the work went on,” he wrote. “Sherman told me he had never seen anything done so quietly and so well.” The bridge spanned more than thirteen hundred feet of a river that flowed swiftly in the main channel, yet by early afternoon it was complete, and in a short space of time the rest of Sherman’s army was marching across.
Without so much as pausing for breath they assaulted the north end of Missionary Ridge. This was the lightly defended portion of the height, and Sherman captured it with little loss. He brought up additional troops and artillery—the guns being dragged by hand—under the cover of rain and low clouds, which prevented Bragg from appreciating wh
at Sherman was doing. When Bragg did catch on, he ordered a counterattack, but Sherman beat it back.
Hooker’s actions on Grant’s right complemented those of Thomas in the center and Sherman on the left. Hooker’s troops captured a bridge over Lookout Creek and approached the base of Lookout Mountain. His orders were conditional—“Hooker will attack Lookout and carry it if possible,” Grant explained to Halleck—but his men seemed not to give the condition a thought. They barely slowed at the base of the mountain and headed straight up. Confederate infantry manned rifle pits directly above them and Confederate guns commanded the mountaintop. But Hooker’s men fought their way to, through and over the Confederate positions and gained the upper slopes. As fighting continued into the afternoon they dug themselves in; at four o’clock Hooker sent word that his position was secure. Grant nonetheless sent a fresh brigade from the city to bolster him. Clouds had blocked the view from below for much of the day, but after nightfall the sky cleared. “A full moon made the battlefield as plain to us in the valley as if it were day, the blaze of their camp fires and the flashes of their guns displaying brilliantly their position and the progress of their advance,” Charles Dana recalled.
Grant made time that evening to telegraph Washington. “The fight today progressed favorably,” he said. “Sherman carried the end of Missionary Ridge, and his right is now at the Tunnel”—a railroad tunnel through the ridge—“and left at Chickamauga Creek. Troops from Lookout Valley carried the point of the Mountain and now hold the eastern slope and point high up. I cannot yet tell the amount of casualties but our loss is not heavy. Hooker reports 2000 prisoners taken, besides which a small number have fallen into our hands from Missionary Ridge.”