Generals and their Chickamaugas

I don’t know if you’ll need a map of the Chattanooga area to follow this post or not, but here is one, just in case.  Good luck!

We slept in late this morning.  But then, we always do, unless we have church or I wake up Mona with an arm slap across the face. 

After breakfast and packing our picnic out the door we went to Ringold, Georgia, about 10 miles south of Graysville. There was a Civil War skirmish at Graysville but I’d need a local historian to help me find it.  And there was supposed to be a library in Ringold.

There are small skirmish and battle sites all over this area of Tennessee and Georgia.  After all, Rosecrans Union and Braggs Confederate Armies fought one another here for half a year. Chattanooga was that important to both sides. Railroads and rivers.

Well, there was no library but there was Justin (Judd) who works in a local produce stand.  Judd is also a local Civil War amateur historian and Son of the Confederacy. Anyone with an ancestor who fought in the Civil War can apply to join the Sons or Daughters of either the Union or Confederate Veterans. They discuss history, fellowship around that history and often help maintain local Civil War sites.

Judd told us about the Ringold Gap battles that saved the Confederate Army when Bragg ultimately had to retreat toward Atlanta.

He told us of the Ringold Railroad station which received lots of battle damage, and the burning of Ringold when Sherman left it to head on to Atlanta, and the Sea.

Judd was proud of the fact that U S Grant, who became President just several years later, stayed at the Whitman House, one of the few buildings not burned.

But Judd was especially proud of the site just down the road from his produce stand ,where THE General, the steam engine stolen by the Union ‘Andrew’s Raiders’ ran out of fuel on its dash toward Chattanooga from behind enemy lines in 1862. A sabotage attack by American spies that failed to destroy the Western and Atlantic railroad line from Atlanta to Chattanooga.

Don't remember this story?  Think back. Disney made a movie about it that won some historic acclaim.

This is the same line that runs right beside our church parking lot about 10 miles farther north of the 1862 capture site. The same line that carries many trains a night, north and south, over a crossing about half a mile from our bed all night long.  Think ‘HORNS’. Not bells or whistles. HORNS. Thank God for double pane coach windows!

We left Ringold for the 20 minute ride to the Chickamauga Battlefield National Park.  We visited the visitor’s Center first and learned something really interesting.  I hadn’t seen signs in bathrooms that read, “No bodily washing allowed in our sinks. No nudity: change clothes in stalls with doors closed” since I’d visited the potties in Penn Station, Manhattan, or select library toilets in Philadelphia.

We just went outside to have lunch

We were told by a ranger that these are indeed serious problems here.  OK, we thought maybe re-enactors do this when they come to the park.  No, she said, re-enactors don’t change clothes that often.  The park problems were caused by the yuppie bikers and joggers who end a run/ride and then need to change before going to the office. But it all works out, she said.  Now they just carry rinse water and strip (totally sometimes)  in the parking lot.

So back in 1862…

Our last visit on this journey with Rosecrans and Bragg had been at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where I toured the battlefield while Mona visited with Cousin Myra. Stone’s River, at Murfreesboro, was where Bragg could not stop Rosecrans’ advance south from Nashville. Union General Rosecrans had taken Chattanooga from Confederate Bragg at the Battle of the Clouds, or Lookout Mountain in November 1862 and now Bragg was coming north to take Chattanooga back.

You will find a collection of pictures on my Facebook photo album collection of the battle of Lookout Mountain that we took when we motored down this way in January to pick up FROG in Mobile from the Hickman's. They are pretty accurate since the battle happened in November and it was a cold wet day for us on top of the mount as well.

So Rosecrans moved his army out of his defenses around the city and marched toward Lafayette and Ringold, Georgia to meet Bragg.  Bragg met him first in an unplanned series of skirmishes, along the Chickamauga Creek. The battle was on.

Three days of awful fighting, just like the worst seen at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on.  More astronomical tallies of American dead, wounded, missing.  More makeshift hospitals on both sides caring for maimed and dying men, some even a year after the battle.

The full collection of my photos from today are on Facebook.

The first days fight was a bit of a draw.  Many dead on both sides, armies pretty much in place planning and setting up defenses at sundown.

The second day started well for the Union as they repulsed several attacks on their flanks but stayed very much in their defensive positions.

The third day was also full of heavy fighting with small gains for the Confederates, but remember, the Union had many more human resources (men and boys) to recruit AND conscript (the Union draft began in July 1863) into the army than the rebels had. Then the worst that could have happened, did happen, for the Union.

Union General Rosecrans sent a message in error to one of his center line commanders to move out of position just as Confederate General Longstreet, famously called by Robert E Lee earlier in the war, ‘My Old Warhorse’, sent his 11,000 men into that very center, now empty of any union soldiers.

It was a rout.  The entire Union right fell apart and 2/3rds of Rosecrans army was now running, many with weapons and packs thrown down so they could run faster, all the way back the 20 miles or so to Chattanooga.

Only Wilder’s Brigade and some cavalry held a piece of high ground on the Union right long enough to allow the running soldiers to out run the Rebels.

The afternoon would have been entirely lost to the Union, and the army with it, had not General Thomas, a Virginian who decided in 1861 to fight for the Union and was shut off by his entire Virginia family as a result, organized a solid defense on a hill at the far left of the former Union line called ‘Snodgrass’ for the family who owned some of it.  Here he stopped the Rebel advance cold, with many close calls as Rebel charge after charge came up the hill only to be driven back at the last moment.

 Rosecrans Army, most of it, got away. Several thousand were captured and ended up being sent to Andersonville Prison in Southern Georgia where 8 out of 10 died in the next year.

Many key officers and very good men on both sides were dead on the field. Thomas was promoted. Rosecrans was sacked. Grant was given his army.

And that’s where we’ll pick up the story tomorrow as Mona and I visit Missionary Ridge, the hilly line to the east of Chattanooga that Bragg use to partly lay siege to the Union Army.

There will be some libraries tomorrow, too. And Cherokee Chief John Ross’s house south of Chattanooga, if we can find it. And, if Mona’s good, maybe another Steak and Shake like we enjoyed today?  YES! We are sharing those high fat/calorie meals and sometimes they are just salads!! With small shakes halved, of course.

-Ken