BGuthrie Photos: GA -- Chickamauga Natl Military Park -- Visitor Center

GA -- Chickamauga Natl Military Park -- Visitor Center:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. CHICKC_110913_001.JPG: Historic Plaques and Markers: Battlefield plaques document positions and movements. On August 19, 1890, the US Congress established the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park for the purpose of "preserving and suitably marking for historical and professional military study the fields of some of the most remarkable maneuvers and most brilliant fighting in the war of the rebellion..." The three park commissioners, all veterans of Chickamauga or Chattanooga, placed hundreds of cast-iron plaques and other markers on the battlefields in the early 1890s. Each plaque identifies the location of a particular army, corps, division, brigade or artillery battery at a specific time. The plaques also describe military actions. Hundreds of veterans contributed information for the plaques, and retraced their steps to determine the exact locations of their units. Today the plaques remain valuable tools for those who seek to understand in detail how these complex battles were fought. Today you will find several types of historic plaques and markers on the Chickamauga and Chattanooga battlefields: * Blue plaques mark the positions of Union units. * Red plaques mark the positions of Confederate units. * Cannon mark the positions of artillery batteries. * Fingerboards indicate directions, locations, or landmarks. * Large cannonball pyramids stacked 15-high mark the spots where brigade commanders were killed. * Small cannonball pyramids stacked 7-high mark headquarters sites.
2. CHICKC_110913_005.JPG: Battlefield Monuments: Hundreds of monuments commemorate Union and Confederate units More than 600 stone and bronze monuments were erected on the battlefields here between 1890 and 1930. Chickamauga and Chattanooga veterans designed and placed most of them under the direction of the Park Commissioners. Funding was provided by the U.S. Government, the states, and veterans' organizations. The park's monuments are remarkable not only for their artistic and commemorative value, but for the information they provide. At Chickamauga, Union regimental monuments identify the places where units saw their heaviest fighting. Confederate monuments mark their farthest points of advance. Of special interest are the bronze bas-relief plaques attached to many monuments. These depict battle scenes based on veterans' eyewitness accounts. Because there are no photographs of the fighting, these plaques are among the best visual records of the battles.
3. CHICKC_110913_022.JPG: Field Artillery: These guns are among the types used here in 1863. Artillery, together with infantry and cavalry, was one of the most important branches of a Civil War army. The big guns could easily devastate assaulting infantrymen, who often advanced in mass formations, shoulder-to-shoulder. At Chickamauga, artillery batteries were handicapped by woods and undergrowth which limited visibility and maneuverability. The guns were most effective when used behind breastworks overlooking open fields. In front of you are examples of six types of muzzle-loading field guns used at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. The iron and bronze tubes are authentic Civil War pieces; the carriages are reproductions. More than 200 other cannon visible on the battlefield today were placed by veterans in the 1890s. These guns mark the positions of batteries during the fighting. Bridges' Independent Company of Illinois Light Artillery drills in camp at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in the spring of 1863. The Union battery later fought in the Battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. An experienced six-man crew could fire a field gun up to four times a minute, following a strict procedure. Note the sequence demonstrations in the photo: the gun crew on the far left begins to load, while the crew on the far right stands ready to fire.
4. CHICKC_110913_034.JPG: Building the Monuments: Civil War Veterans took up the cause of memorializing the men and military units that fought at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. The federal commission that oversaw development of the first military park invited state governments to fund, design, locate, and construct monuments. State and Federal cooperation fostered a sense of ownership in the national park for the states and their respective veterans. Between 1893 and 1910, more than 1,400 commemorative features were erected. Each tells a story, and each represents a memory. Each stands as a silent sentinel to courage and determination, fear and horror, and the life-and-death struggles of soldiers and nations. Twelve Years In The Making: Indiana and Illinois veterans of the brigade of Colonel John T. Wilder began taking subscriptions for their monument in 1892. Unlike other monuments, the Wilder Memorial was funded privately, without state or federal support. By 1893, the monument had been raised 60 feet, but construction halted abruptly when a bank failed, losing the private contributions. Four more years would pass before the project was revived. The exterior was completed in time for the September 1899 dedication of other Indiana monuments, but the memorial remained unfinished until 1903, when an interior stairway was installed. Men entitled to ... special veneration may have monuments erects to their memories, without criticism and with rather the feeling of comradeship. -- Gen. William S. Rosecrans, USA, September, 1889 In 1896, four maps chronicling the battle of Chickamauga by dates and times and one map detailing the action at Chattanooga were published by the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park Commission. Creating accurate maps of the battle had been difficult and tedious. Because of the ebb and flow of fighting, the precise locations of battle lines were often disputed. Veterans walked the battlefield and participated in reconstructing the action from official reports. The first monuments erected at Chickamauga commemorate the participation of Regular Army units in the battle. The nine granite monuments were installed in 1893 and paid for by the United States. The Federal Governnment's leadership and example encouraged states to authorize commissions and appropriations that produced a wave of monument construction during the next two years. Ohio was the first state to appropriate money for monuments, setting aside $95,000 in 1891. Four years later, at the time of the park's dedication, 56 monuments and 53 granite troop-position markers attested to the Buckeye State's significant presence on the battlefields. The Georgia Monument under construction in 1899, commemorates all those branches of service -- artillery, cavalry, and infantry. The colorbearer who crowns the monument boldly points the way to Chattanooga. No Confederate monuments stood upon the battlefield at the time of the 1895 park dedication. Tennessee was the first Confederate state to construction monuments and markers. The Volunteer State dedicated its memorials in 1898. Architectural drawings for the Wilder Brigade Memorial reflect building styles popular in the late 19th century. The 85-foot tower, constructed of local Chickamauga limestone, looks much like a medieval castle turret. Final cost of the monument was $9,714.27. Motifs and Markers: Monuments including depictions of acorns recall the indomitable stand of Major General George H. Thomas's 14th Corps at Chickamauga. Thomas's men repelled repeated Confederate assaults, earning the reputation of standing like a stately oak in the fiercest storm. In 1864, the men of the 14th Corps adopted the acorn as their badge for the remainder of the war. Cast-iron historical tablets precisely identify troop movements and positions at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. Produced locally, nearly 700 of these tablets were researched, written, and placed by Union and Confederate veterans, working under the direction of the National Military Park Commission. Shell pyramids stand where eight brigade commanders fell mortally wounded at Chickamauga. Smaller shell pyramids mark the sites of army or corps headquarters. Veterans identified all of these locations.
5. CHICKC_110913_046.JPG: Creating the First National Military Park: In 1890, the battlefields of Chickamauga and Chattanooga became the nation's first official military park. President Benjamin Harrison signed the designation into law on August 19 -- five years before a similar status was conferred on Gettysburg, and 26 years before the National Park Service was established. Civil War veterans, then at the apex of political power, had spearheaded the legislation through Congress. Inspired by fervent patriotism and a desire for commemoration, the bill exemplified reconciliation between North and South. It passed the House of Representatives in only 23 minutes and met no opposition in the Senate, whose members included seven veterans who had fought at Chickamauga. The Birth of Historic-Site Preservation: The 1890 national military park legislation set the United States government on a course of preserving historic sites. The act defined four primary goals: preservation, through federal acquisition of thousands of acres of battlefield land; education, through identifying lines of battle and troop movements; commemoration, through establishing monuments to the valor of North and South; and access, through controlling roads leading to the battlefields, opening new roads, and repairing historic traces. By 1895, the government had acquired nearly 10 square miles of land at Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge. Ohio Congressman Charles H. Grosvenor introduced a bill in the House of Representatives proposing a national military park in May 1890 -- 27 years after the battle in which he had served as the colonel of an infantry regiment. Henry Van Ness Boynton, a former lieutenant colonel of the 35th Ohio Infantry and a Medal of Honor winner at Missionary Ridge, drafted the bill introduced by Congressman Grosvenor and then served as the first government historian on the park's original commission. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That for the purposes of preserving and suitably marking for historical and professional military study the fields of some of the most remarkable maneuvers and most brilliant fighting in the war of the rebellion...
6. CHICKC_110913_048.JPG: The Legacy of the Civil War: If Americans could be described as a people of plenty, Southerners for a century could be more accurately described as a people of poverty. -- C. Vann Woodward, 1986 The war that preserved the Union did not bring political unity. The Congress, dominated by Northern Radicals, exacted vengeance and imposed a harsh "Reconstruction" on Southern states that refused to accept the war's verdict. Economically, the North emerged as an industrial power, while much of the South, wrecked by invading armies and stripped of slave labor, sank into rural poverty. Racially, emancipation freed 4,000,000 enslaved Africans, but equality eluded blacks both north and south. Peace did, however, lay the foundation for America's new nationalism and its entrance upon the world stage as an economic, industrial, and military behemoth. Yet despite these advances, women could not vote, capitalists crushed labor, monopolies cheated consumers, poverty disheartened immigrants, and racial segregation became the law of the land. The Civil War had settled the questions of slavery and states' rights. Reunited, the nation was poised to pursue its destiny. Steve replaced iron in America's infrastructure during the last half of the 19th century, By 1890, the United States had become the world's largest steel producer, and US Steel had become the nation's first billion-dollar corporation. "A splendid little war. " -- Secretary of State John Hay, 1898 Asserting a new Manifest Destiny and proclaiming "Expand or Explode," the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, seizing Cuba and the Philippines in 113 days. The South patriotically embraced America's venture into imperialism. Camp George H. Thomas, located in the Chickamauga battlefield, became a staging area for nearly 70,000 eager recruits. Railroads made the United States an industrial giant, speeding raw materials to factories and opening markets for manufactured goods. At the end of the Civil War, the country had 35,000 miles of railway. By the century's end, five transcontinental lines and nearly 193,000 miles of railway -- more than in all of Europe -- crisscrossed the nation. Free But Not Equal: The Civil War decreed freedom but did not establish equality. African Americans continued to struggle for another century, hampered by legal and social restrictions that relegated them to the status of second-class citizens in both the North and South. Black leaders, influenced by regional inequities and the postwar reality of emancipation, disagreed on the role and future of African Americans. Defining equality became the subject of debate. We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong -- this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty, and we must follow it. -- W.E.B. Du Bois, 1905 New England native W.E.B. Du Bois advocated black empowerment through political power, civil rights, and higher education. The first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Du Bois demanded social -- as well as economic -- equality. "We will not be satisfied to take one jot or title less than our full manhood rights," declared Du Bois in 1902. More than half a century would pass after Du Bois issued this ultimatum before civil rights became a reality. Any movement for the elevation of the Southern Negro in order to be successful must have... the cooperation of Southern whites. They control government and own the property -- whatever benefits the black man benefits the white man. -- Booker T Washington, July 16, 1884 Former slave Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, advocated education in the trades and agriculture as the future [???] for blacks in the South. Sometimes disparaged as the "Great Accommodator," Washington was willing to sacrifice social inequity and accept voting restrictions, in exchange for economic progress. "In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers," Washington eulogized [???] at the Cotton States Exposition in 1893 [???], "yet one as the hand in all things oriented to mutual progress." The doctrine of "separate but equal" was legitimized by the US Supreme Court in 1896. Nearly 60 years passed before the Court reversed itself in 1954 and declared that segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Equality finally became the law of the land -- nearly 100 years after the Civil War -- with passage of the 1964 Civil Rights legislation. Sharecropping -- farming land owned by someone else for a share of the crop -- enchained millions of black and white Southerners to the soil in the decades following the Civil War. Few could escape this economic slavery. At the turn of the century, per capita wealth in the South was half the national average, and per capita income about 40 percent lower than elsewhere in the nation. Voting Rights: The former Confederate states could not regain representatives in the US Congress until they had amended their state constitutions to guarantee full suffrage to former slaves, and until they had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution -- which granted ex-slaves rights as citizens. By 1868, almost 703,000 black men had registered to vote in the Reconstructed states. With the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, black suffrage became federal law. But black participation in elections withered by the turn of the century, as whites gradually constricted voting through poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy laws. For example, in 1900 in Alabama, only 3,000 of 181,471 African-American men of voting age were registered.
7. CHICKC_110913_076.JPG: Reconciliation and Reunions: In 1889, 26 years after the bloodiest two-day battle of the Civil War, veterans met again at Chickamauga by the "River of Death," in a grand reunion of the two once-hostile armies. Twelve thousand people attended the 1889 reunion barbecue at Crawfish Springs. Their meeting formally launched the effort to preserve and memorialize the battlefield at Chickamauga as a "shrine for patriotic devotion for the future generations of American youth." The 50th anniversary of the Battle of Chickamauga occurred in 1913. In September, the 17th US Infantry staged an elaborate reenactment for Union veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. For most veterans, now in their late sixties and early seventies, the rigors of travel by horse and train made this their last celebration held at the battlefield. The United Confederate Veterans celebrated the 50th anniversary of the battle not in September but in May, the month during which much of the old Confederacy conducted Memorial Day observances beginning in 1866. It took great men to win that battle, but it takes greater men still, I was say morally greater, to wipe away all the ill feeling which naturally grows out of such a contest. -- Major General William S. Rosecrans, USA, September 1889 The Society of the Army of the Cumberland, Chattanooga, 1908: Leaders of this Union veterans' group conceived the idea of a national military park in 1889. The venerable Chickamauga hero John T. Wilder (front row, third from right) served as the first president of the Joint Chickamauga Memorial Association -- an organization founded by this society and the United Confederate Veterans. The Lost Cause: In economic and political shambles after the war, the South had also lost its social and cultural bearings. During the 20 years after the war, Southerners mourned and attempted to reconcile themselves to their loss. Many people asserted that secession had been constitutional, that the war had not been fought to preserve slavery. Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson were revered as noble heroes. Popular, patriotic celebration of the war grew during the last two decades of the 19th century, spurred in part by the united efforts of North and South to preserve and commemorate the battlefields at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. The Confederate battle flag, like this one sewn by Mrs. Mary Bachman Anderson, waved proudly at many reunions. To many Southerners, it represented an honorable struggle for self-determination and states' rights. For other Americans, the controversial battle flag became a symbol of the perpetuation of racism. Carving canes was a popular pastime of the late 19th century. Quartermaster Sergeant B.F. Shepard, 96th Illinois Infantry, recorded events from his military service on this sapling cut from the banks of the Tennessee River. He was wounded at Chickamauga on September 20, 1863. "These bullet holes were received in the Battle of Chicmauga [sic] Sept. 20, 1863 Sergt. T.J. Duckett, Col 1 3rd SC" Artifacts kept war memories alive. This high-crowned, beehive-style slouch hat, worn by South Carolinian Sgt. TJ Dockett at Chattanooga and many reunions, served as a reminder that the differences between life and death on the battlefield was sometimes a matter of inches.
8. CHICKC_110913_139.JPG: On to Atlanta... William Tecumseh Sherman succeeded Grant as commander of the North's western army. He assigned target -- Atlanta. Before marching on Atlanta, Sherman needed to develop a supply system to sustain his army during its campaign into Georgia. Selecting Chattanooga as his largest and southernmost depot, Sherman first concentrated upon improving railroad bridges and lines leading west and northwest. By early spring 1864, 130 rail cars, each carrying 10 tons of freight, reached Chattanooga daily. Soon, wharves, warehouses, and stables were filled with a six-month supply of arms, animals, and provisions. On May 3, 1864, Sherman commenced the campaign with an army of 113,000 men. Through a series of skillful flanking maneuvers, successful battles, and siege operations, Sherman forced the Confederate army defending Atlanta to abandon the city on September 1. The Confederate heartland had been pierced, the end of the war just eight months away. So Atlanta is ours and fairly won... Since May 5, we have been in one constant battle or skirmish, and need rest. -- Maj. Gen. William T Sherman, USA, September 1, 1864
9. CHICKC_110913_151.JPG: June 1863: Prelude to Battle: The Campaign for Chattanooga: ... give the finishing blow to the rebellion. -- US Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton There had been a lull in the war in Middle Tennessee for six months. Since the Union army's New Year's victory at Stones River near Murfreesboro, the Federals had remained in winter quarters while the Confederates rested behind their Duck River defense line. Restless for action, the Lincoln administration pleaded with and prodded the Union commander, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, to move. Rosecrans resisted, arguing he needed more food, more men, more ammunition, more animals, and more cooperation from Union forces to his left and right. "I believe the most fatal errors of this war," Rosecrans argued, "have begun in an impatient desire of success, that would not make time to get ready." Finally, in late June 1863, Rosecrans conducted a brilliant flanking maneuver that forced the Confederates to abandon virtually all of Tennessee -- except Chattanooga. Fortress Rosecrans, Murfreesboro, Tennessee: In the spring of 1863, Rosecrans had an elaborate series of interconnected earth and wooden fortifications constructed to protect his forward supply base at Murfreesboro. Located astride the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, the 200-acre Fortress Rosecrans enclosed warehouses of food, clothing, ammunition, and other supplies. Today, a portion of Fortress Rosecrans is preserved as part of Stones River National Battlefield. Sharp fighting at Liberty Gap and Hoover's Gap propelled the Union army through the mountain passes northwest of Chattanooga. This fighting ...
10. CHICKC_110913_152.JPG: The Two Armies Two of the most eccentric commanders of the Civil War opposed each other in the campaign for Chattanooga. Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans worked late hours, bored his subordinates as a tireless talker, and kept his own personal Catholic priest on his staff. Confederate General Braxton Bragg had a fiery temper, an affinity for casting blame, and a supporter in Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Both Rosecrans and Bragg had graduated from West Point, and both had finished fifth in their respective classes. There the similarities ended. Rosecrans, 44, had never lost a battle to the Confederates. The 46-year-old Bragg had never won. Army of the Cumberland: Rosecrans' perceptions were acute and often intuitively clear. His fertility was great. He lacked poise... and there was the fatal defect... to be swept away by excitement and to lose all efficient control of himself and of others in ... crises." -- Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, USA Named after the river that drains much of Middle Tennessee, the Union Army of the Cumberland was established late in October 1862, with Maj. Gen. William Starke Rosecrans in command. Its area of responsibility included all of Tennessee east of the Tennessee River, as well as northern Alabama and northern Georgia. Its first victory, the Battle of Stones River (December 31, 1862 - January 2, 1863), secured control of Nashville and much of Middle Tennessee for the Union. The men, mostly from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Kentucky, adored their leader. "Old Rosy" inspired trust, confidence, and loyalty -- his army was largely free from the internal machination and discord that hampered his opponent. "If there was a characteristic of our army in which we felt pride," wrote a Union officer, "it was in the fact that we never had an dissensions or cross purposes to distract the harmonious execution of the orders of our commanding officers." Army of Tennessee: General Bragg as a military man... is wanting in imagination... [W]hen he meets the unexpected, it overwhelms hmim because he has not been able to foresee, and then he will lean upon the advice of a drunmer boy. -- Maj. Gen. Simon Buckner, CSA Named after the state of Tennessee, the main Confederate force operating in the western theater was a hard-luck army. At Shiloh, a first-day victory turned to second-day defeat. At Perryville, a tactical win ended in withdrawal. At Murfreesboro, a hopeful new year opened with another defeat. For these men mostly from Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, "three losses -- no wins" defined their army of the heartland. Its embattled and embittered leader, Gen. Braxton Bragg, was resented for his harsh discipline, branded as an incompetent by some of his subordinates, and vilified by his soldiers, the press, and the Southern populace for his defeats and retreats. "Bragg is not fit for a general," observed one despondent Confederate. "I think he will do us more damage than the enemy." Bragg's disrespectful lieutenants openly rebelled and conspired for his ouster. Yet Confederate President Jefferson Davis, with few viable options for replacement, retained him in command.
11. CHICKC_110913_162.JPG: August 16 - September 9, 1863: A Campaign into the Mountains: "I think we shall deceive the enemy." -- Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, USA "I am utterly broken down..." -- Gen. Braxton Bragg, CSA Rosecrans conquered the mountains and deceived the enemy in one of the most brilliant flanking maneuvers of the war. The [???] three-week campaign spread nearly 60,000 men over a 40-mile front, completely baffling the Confederate commanders. On September 9, Rosecrans jubilantly wrote the War Department: "Chattanooga is ours without a struggle, and East Tennessee is free." Mountains blocked every military approach to the rail hub at Chattanooga. The Confederates considered the mountains their allies. The vast, rugged wilderness would confine the enemy to miserable roads, constricted passes, and nearly impossible lines of supply. As one Southerner observed, "If we can't whip them with the advantages of river and the mountain-locked passes on the right and left of Chattanooga, where is the place we can?" The mountains failed to intimidate Union General Rosecrans. The wily strategist divided his army into three columns. Launching one column from the north, it brashly and aggressively approached the city, convincing the Confederates it was the real threat. But it was only a decoy. Over half of the Union army was secretly swinging in from the west and south of Chattanooga -- using the mountains as cover -- to threaten the Confederate supply line from Atlanta. Learning of these movements and threats, General Bragg abandoned Chattanooga on September 9 without firing a shot.
12. CHICKC_110913_180.JPG: Officer's Tent: Long hours of a colonel or general's time, even on campaign, were spent in a setting more like an office than a battlefield. They and a small number of staff officers prepared, reviewed, and approved an array of army forms and correspondence that showed the strength of the unit, the condition of its arms and ammunition, and the amounts of food and other supplies the troops needed. An officer's headquarters was a traveling office with portable desks and boxes of records. In addition to these daily duties, the officer inspected the camps and picket lines, trained and drilled the men, and led them into battle. ... a heavy load of responsibility on my shoulders ... a very difficult matter to keep the several commands supplied with rations, forage, &c, &c..." -- Brig. Gen. William H. Lytle, USA [He did at Chickamauga, BTW] Officers were allowed a limited quantity of baggage based on weight; the higher graded the office, the more baggage allowed. For their nighttime conform in camp, officers could purchase one of many styles of portable cot. This lightweight model folded and rolled compactly and the stools could be used separately for seating when not supporting the cot. During active campaigning, an officer's baggage might be severely reduced and separate movement of the troops and baggage wagons sometimes reduced the officer to sleeping on the ground with his men. Union Col. Philemon P. Baldwin, who was killed at Chickamauga on September 19, 1863, while commanding a brigade in the Winfrey Field area, owned this lap desk. Likely carried by a member of his staff, the desk and the paper, pens, and ink it contained would have been used to produce messages and orders while on the march. Drums, and increasingly bugles, helped officers communicate in camp and on the battlefield. Calls repeated orders to fall in, march, fire, and cease-fire. Other calls regulated the soldier's day by announcing drill, sick call, and meal times. This bugle was used by the bugler assigned to Union Brig. Gen. August von Willich. Willich's Brigade fought at Chickamauga in the area of the Winsfrey and Kelly fields, and helped break the Confederate line two months later on Missionary Ridge. This company field desk was used by Company H, 40th Ohio, and was originally preserved by 1st Lt. George D. Stone of the company. The 40th Ohio fought on Horseshoe Ridge west of the Snodgrass farmstead on the afternoon of September 20, 1863. The desk was used by the company officers to protect and organize the many documents and records necessary to account for the company's men and equipment. It was carried in one of the regimental baggage wagons. This surveying instrument belongs to Aristide Gerard, lieutenant colonel and colonel of the 13th Louisiana Infantry. The 13th Louisiana fought at both Chickamauga and Chattanooga, but Gerard was not present, having been assigned to service in western Louisiana.
13. CHICKC_110913_196.JPG: Moving Men and Materiel: August 16 - September 12: Daunting barriers confronted General Rosecrans -- the rugged Cumberland, Sand, and Lookout mountain ranges north and west of Chattanooga. To surmount them, 50,000 infantrymen endured 90-degree temperatures and ankle-deep dust as they tramped along narrow mountain passages. Nearly 9,000 calvalrymen and their mounts clambered over steep, dangerous pathways. Doubled teams tugged 200 cannons up precipitous slopes. Thousands of mules pulled 4,000 wagons that hauled 45 days of supplies and caught enough ammunition to fight two battles. The three-week Federal trek over the formidable Cumberlands represents one of the war's greatest logistical feats. August 23 - September 20: The Confederacy countered with its own logistical miracle. Utilizing sixteen rail lines, the South transported more than 20,000 reinforcements from Mississippi, east Tennessee, and Virginia -- some coming 900 miles by train. Many of these men arrived just in time to bolster General Bragg's ranks at Chickamauga.
14. CHICKC_110913_202.JPG: Traveling forges proved crucial during the Union's three-week journey through mountainous terrain. The jostling of heavy wagons rolling over rough roads caused hundreds of breakdowns demanding on-the-stop repairs.
15. CHICKC_110913_209.JPG: Luring the Prey: September 10-17: [We] backed to the last jumping-off place and could go back no further with any hope of success. -- Gen. Braxton Bragg, CSA Outgeneraled, outflanked, and outnumbered, the Confederate commander Braxton Bragg had abandoned Chattanooga and East Tennessee without a battle. Nothing had gone well well for General Bragg, but he saw a chance to retaliate. The enemy's front was overextended: mountains and valleys separated the three Union columns operating south and west of Chattanooga, leaving them too far apart to provide mutual support. To worsen the Federal exposure, Bragg resorted to deception -- he spread rumors that his army was in disarray and retreat. As an overconfident Union army chased this mirage, its isolated corps became more vulnerable. Bragg had lured his prey. Now he needed to spring his trap. Troops from James Longstreet's corps, detached from Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia, arrived in north Georgia, as desperate Confederate authorities, alarmed by the abandonment of Chattanooga, began reinforcing Bragg's army. By mid-September, Bragg's forces had increased in strength from 45,000 to 60,000. Now outnumbering the enemy, General Bragg planned to attack.
16. CHICKC_110913_213.JPG: Spoiling the Strategy: September 9-18: General Bragg seemed to know always what ought to be done, to possess the decision and the will to order it to be done, but, by some strange lack of gift... he could not do it himself and he could not make others do it." -- Lt. Col. Archer Anderson, CSA Braxton Bragg's plan was excellent -- concentrate the Confederate army at the north end of McLemore's Cove, strike an exposed Union column of twenty thousand men before support could arrive, and cut off Federal escape routes to Chattanooga through the gaps of Missionary Ridge. Delays, however, ruined Bragg's surprise. Inept execution of his plans by subordinate generals spoiled the Confederates' opportunity to pounce upon the scrattered Union army. September 10 and 13, Bragg's lieutenants failed to attack due to poor communication, ineffectual coordination, or lackluster resolve. Meanwhile, the Federals gained advantage from this Confederate ineptitude, heeding the warning of the enemy's presence and racing to reunite a scattered army.
17. CHICKC_110913_220.JPG: Setting the Stage for the Clash of the 19th: (1) McLemore's Cove is a broad valley on the east side of Lookout Mountain. Here, on September 10-11, General Bragg hoped to strike at the head of Rosecran's central column. When Bragg failed, the Union column withdrew to the safety of Lookout Mountain, where it awaited other consolidating Federal forces. (2) Near Lee & Gordon's Mills, 16 miles south of Chattanooga, Bragg ordered an attack against another isolated Federal column on September 15, but his commander disobeyed orders and missed the opportunity. (3) General Bragg's strategy for September 18 was to press his across Reed's Bridge, Alexander's Bridge, and Thedford's Ford, cut the Union army off and keep it from retreating back to Chattanooga. He would then attack the Union left at Lee & Gordon's Mills and crush the Federals against the mountains. (4) During the night of the 18th and 19th, most of Bragg's Confederates crossed the creek. Meanwhile, unbeknown to Bragg, General Rosecrans -- who had been concentrating his army for the past four days and who sensed his left flank in danger -- positioned Maj. Gen. George Thoma's corps astride the Lafayette Road, extending his line three and one-half miles north of Lee & Gordon's Mills.
18. CHICKC_110913_227.JPG: Battling Without a Decision: September 19, 7am-7pm: ... whistling, seething, crackling bullets, the piercing, screaming fragments of shells, the whirring sound of shrapnel and the savage shower of canister, mingled with the fierce answering yells of defiance, all united in one horrible sound. -- Col. Thomas Berry, CSA Confusion reigned as the thick forest made it almost impossible to see. Neither army knew much about the positions and movements of the other. "I was totally ignorant," recalled a frustrated Union general, and "found myself embarrassed for the want of information." The battle opened on the Union left with a misguided Federal attempt to capture a Confederate brigade. The surprised Southerners responded with force, hurtling attack after attack, progressing from north to south, eventually extending the battle lines for more than three miles nearly parallel to the Lafayette Road. Smoke, noise, scattered fires, and the trees themselves crippled the orderly formations of both armies. The fighting "very much resembled guerrilla warfare on a vast scale, in which one army was bushwhacking the other." At day's end, neither side had gained any advantage. All knew the morning would bring more bloody butchery.
19. CHICKC_110913_234.JPG: A Soldier's Fight: Dear brother and sister I sent myself behind a bluff to protect me from the Yankee bums that have been a whirling a round us in grand stile this morning. -- Cpl. Milton Berrett, 3rd Battalion Georgia Sharpshooters, Wofford's Brigade The winding roads were full of lost staff-officers. The commander of a regiment rarely saw both flanks of his command at once. Even companies became broken in the thickets, and taking different directions were lost to each other. -- Lt. Albion W. Tourgee, 105th Ohio Infantry, J. [???] King's Brigade Bang go the rebel guns and whiz and screech go the shells over and around us... The smoke so utterly obscured us from the Enemy that he could not aim with any precision, otherwise we would have suffered more... -- Sgt. Maj. Levi A. Ross, 86th Illinois Infantry, McCook's Brigade We advanced slowly, repeating "Surrender, boys, we've got you." Our opponents finally began lowering their guns, which we took and three behind us. Then at once we became friends and began a frenzied trading of tobacco for coffee. -- Pvt. [???] 54th Virginia Infantry, Trigg's Brigade There was but fore men in our Company when we Quit fighting asunday evening. There was about fiftey houls shot through our flag. -- Pvt. Benjamin Mabrey, 82nd Indiana Infantry, Connell's Brigade
20. CHICKC_110913_241.JPG: Union Soldier: At daybreak a breastwork of logs and rails was commenced which was taken up on my right and left... -- Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen, USA The mostly wooded terrain on which the Battle of Chickamauga was fought encouraged the construction of simple but effective field fortifications. Union soldiers, fighting mostly on the defensive on September 20, stacked limbs, logs, rocks, and fence rails, and also used the few available axes to cut down trees to erect breastworks. Rarely taller that knee to waist high, these "log words" or "log barricades" provided protection to soldiers lying, kneeling, or crouching behind them. The works allowed Union troops to repulse most Confederate attacks. The advantage of these field works, however, could not overcome mistakes in command made by senior Union leaders.
21. CHICKC_110913_252.JPG: A New Weapon -- the Spencer Rifle: ... it actually seemed a pity to kill men so. They fell in heaps, and I had it in my heart to order the firing to cease, to end the awful sight. -- Col. John T. Wilder, Brigade Commander, Army of the Cumberland, USA Rapid loading, rapid firing, and deadly accuracy combined to make the Spencer rifle a coveted new weapon. Less than 1 percent of the men who fought at Chickamauga carried Spencer rifles, but the introduction of approximately 2,000 Spencer rifles posed an especially lethal threat to troops still attacking in traditional massed formations. During the first day's battle at Chickamauga, Col. John Wilder's brigade annihilated a Confederate charge. As a soldier in the 72nd Indiana recalled, "in two minutes there is not a man... seen upon his feet in our front." Private John Munson, Wilder' [sic] brigade. After a demonstration of the Spencer rifle, Wilder and his men sought the new weapon, even agreeing to privately purchase them, if necessary. The $35 rifle cost the equivalent of about three months' pay for a private. In May 1863, the army began to issue government-owned Spencers to Wilder's men.
22. CHICKC_110913_255.JPG: A Sleepless Night: September 20: 12 midnight to 5am: Neither Bragg nor Rosecrans rested following the first day's fight. With the arrival of General Longstreet, Bragg reorganized his command into two wings, preparing for a hammer blow to the enemy's left flank. Rosecrans, whose men spent the night building breastworks, anticipated Bragg's intent. The Union commander quietly shifted troops from other sectors to reinforce his vulnerable left. By strengthening one end of his line, however, Rosecrans had weakened another. In addition, the Federals were outnumbered by 8,000 men -- the result of Longstreet's command having arrived to reinforce Bragg. As Union Maj. Philip Sheridan later aptly surmised, "We were in a bad strait unquestionably."
23. CHICKC_110913_268.JPG: Lt. Gen. James Longstreet by Howard Chandler Christy Longstreet Exploits the Gap: They have fought their last man... and he is running. -- Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, CSA The battle was already a day old when Lt. Gen. James Longstreet arrived at Bragg's headquarters one hour before midnight on the 19th. The veteran corps commander only recently had convinced Robert E. Lee to release him from Virginia to fight in Tennessee, fearing "if it is put off any longer we shall be too late." To take advantage of Longstreet's seniority and experience, Bragg reorganized his army, placing "Old Pete" in command of his left wing. Longstreet commenced arranging his attack force, placing 18,000 men in a compact formation of multiple lines, hiding them in the forest about 700 yards from the enemy. Twelve hours after joining Bragg's army, Longstreet rolled forward and unexpectedly exploited the accidental break in the Union line. In minutes, hundreds of horrified Federals were routed, and many surrendered. Within an hour, nearly a third of the Union army had been driven from the field. "They scattered to the four winds," recalled a jubilant Alabama soldiers. "It was the quickest and prettiest fight I ever saw." With the Union right and center destroyed, Longstreet now turned his legions in pursuit of the fleeing Federals, many of whom were taking new positions near Snodgrass Hill. Longstreet first fought in the western theater at Chickamauga. He was later defeated attempting to besiege Knoxville. He and his men returned to Virginia to rejoin General Lee for the spring campaign of 1864.
24. CHICKC_110913_270.JPG: Moments of Decision: September 20 A Deadly Delay -- 5am-9:30am: By [Polk's delay] we have lost the opportunity of crushing Rosecrans and retaking Chattanooga... I am not responsible for it and will not bear it. -- Gen. Braxton Bragg, CSA General Bragg's battle plan called for striking the Union left at dawn. He selected his right wing commander, Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk, to carry out the assignment. Unfortunately, no one informed corps commander DH Hill, whose men had not eaten for nearly two days. At daybreak, nothing happened, because Hill was feeding his men. "Hour after hour passed," recalled one Confederate officer. "Various were the surmises as to the cause of the delay." The Confederate right finally lurched forward at 9:45am, four hours after Bragg had intended the attack. The delay enabled the Federals to extend and strengthen their left, reducing Bragg's opportunity for success. A Fateful Error -- 11am-1pm: ... the first thing I saw was General Rosecrans crossing himself -- he is a very devout Catholic. "Hello!" I said to myself, "if the general is crossing himself, we are in a desperate situation." -- US Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana General Rosecrans's day began well. Troops had bolstered his left, breastworks protected his line, and he had correctly surmised Bragg's intentions, thus repulsing violent Confederate attacks against his left in the late morning. Suddenly, believing a gap had developed in his right center, the fatigued and mentally exhausted Rosecrans ordered a shift in troop positions to plug the hole. Rosecrans had made a fatal mistake. No gap existed. The redeployment he had ordered, however, created a quarter-mile hole in the federal right center. Purely by coincidence, Longstreet's massed Confederates attacked precisely when and where the hole developed. In panic and chaos, the center and right of the Union line crumbled. Swept away in the rout were Rosecrans and four division commanders.
25. CHICKC_110913_295.JPG: Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, artist unknown
26. CHICKC_110913_299.JPG: September 20, 1pm-7pm: Fierce Fighting at Snodgrass Hill: After smashing the Federal right and center, Longstreet's victorious Confederates shifted their momentum toward the only resistance that remained -- the Union defenders of Snodgrass Hill and Horseshoe Ridge. Here, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas posted his corps and the rallied remnants of the Federal army. "You must hold this position at all hazards," Thomas urged his soldiers. The men in the ranks -- both North and South -- knew the battle's climax was at hand. "Every man's duty was plain," recalled a Union officer, "and he did it without much instruction or interference." The Confederate' resolve was remarkable: "There was that peculiar fierceness [in the assault] that men show when they realize that the supreme opportunity has presented itself, and are determined not to let it slip." For over five hours, the Southerners hammered Thomas's position. Ammunition ran low, forcing the Federals at times to defend the crest with savage bayonet charges. Longstreet hurled 25 assaults against these slops, but none succeeded in taking the Union position.
27. CHICKC_110913_315.JPG: The Ninth Ohio Infantry charges the brigade of Joseph Kershaw's South Carolinians on the slopes of Snodgrass Hill, September 20, 1863
28. CHICKC_110913_316.JPG: Thomas Stands Firm: September 20, 1pm-7pm: The self-control and coolness of Thomas under fire... is absolutely superior... I did not believe that human nature was capable of it. -- William Shanks, reporter, New York Herald The only Union corps commander who had not fled the battlefield was Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. The burly Virginian, who had remained loyal to the North following his state's secession, held the Federal army's fate in his hands. Nearly 25,000 men -- or about half of the Union army -- rallied around "Old Pap" Thomas at Snodgrass Hill and stood firm on the Federal left. Here, he fended off repeated attacks by 11 brigades of the Confederate army. Thomas's courage, determination, and personal presence inspired his officers and men to make one of the most remarkable defenses of the war. When James Garfield, General Rosecrans's chief-of-staff, arrived with orders to withdraw, Thomas refused, growling: "This position must be held until night." An impressed Garfield then dispatched a message to Rosecrans in Chattanooga, stating that Thomas was "standing like a rock." For the rest of his life, Thomas would be heralded as the "Rock of Chickamauga." A succession of low hills around the Snodgrass house became Thomas's final position of defense. Here "the Army of Tennessee lost its elan... [while] the Army of the Cumberland discovered its own latent power."
29. CHICKC_110913_330.JPG: Confederate Soldier: The brigade advanced upon the enemy's lines ... posted behind breastworks erected of logs and rail picketing, covered with green brush. Their position was naturally strong, and ... almost impregnable. -- Col. George H. Nixon, 48th Tennessee Confederate forces spent most of the battle on the attack. While Chickamauga's forest often allowed them to get within 200 yards of the enemy before being fired upon, the Federals used the same forest for cover, and increasingly, for material to construct simple field fortifications. Most Confederate assaults were repulsed. The soldiers' experience with field fortifications at Chickamauga led to even more elaborate works becoming common features on battlefields in the last year of the war. Axes, shovels, and picks, the tools necessary to truly fortify a position, became nearly as important to the soldier as his rifle musket.
30. CHICKC_110913_343.JPG: Diary of John William Pate, Co. H, 2nd Regiment, Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, USA Private Pate's entry for September 20, 1863, sums up the Union army's retreat: "Held our position untill late. Fell back for a better one." Twenty percent of the men of the 2nd Kentucky were killed or wounded at Chickamauga.
31. CHICKC_110913_366.JPG: "War Logs" Tree trunks and stumps caught fragments of shells and bullets. In the years after the war, veterans and farmers collected them as relics of the battle. One log with an embedded shell fragment was later carved into the shape of an urn and inscribed, "From Snodgrass Farm Chickamauga Battle Fought Sept 19-20-21 1863"
32. CHICKC_110913_372.JPG: The Cost of Battle: Chickamauga -- called "River of Death" by the Cherokee -- had earned its nickname. The battle's human toll was staggering -- more than 34,000 killed, wounded, or missing. Chickamauga was the bloodiest battle in the western theater, and the bloodiest two-day battle of the Civil War. Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee described the carnage: "Men were lying where they fell, shot in every conceivable part of the body. Some of them their entrails torn out and still hanging to them and piled up on the ground beside them, and they still alive. Some with their jaw torn off, and hanging by a fragment of skin to their cheeks, with their tongues lolling out of their mouth, and they trying to talk. Some with both eyes shot out, with one eye hanging down on their cheek..." Chickamauga -- for both North and South -- epitomized "the horrid indecency of death." Confederate casualties: 18,454 Killed: 2,312 Wounded: 14,674 Missing: 1,468 Union casualties: 16,170 Killed: 1,657 Wounded: 9,756 Missing: 4,757 Casualties at Chickamauga cost each side 28 percent of their forces. Eighteen particularly hard-hit Confederate regiments suffered casualties of over 45 percent.
33. CHICKC_110913_381.JPG: The Campaign After Chickamauga: September 21- November 27, 1863: The Confederate victory of Chickamauga was incomplete. The Union army had been driven from the battlefield -- but not destroyed. It had escaped and re-occupied Chattanooga, the original objective. Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest had urged an aggressive pursuit on September 21, but Braxton delayed. "Every hour was worth a thousand men," Forrest complained, as he watched the Federal army fortifying the town. Chickamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run... Our soldiers turned and fled. It was wholesale panic. -- US Assistant Secretary of War, Charles A. Dana, September 20, 1863 Despite Forrest's personal entreaties, Bragg sensed no urgency, arguing his army was exhausted, disorganized, and lacking supplied and horses. As the frustrated Forrest saw opportunities pass, he bellowed with disgust, "What does [Bragg] fight battles for?" Two weeks later, Bragg's subordinates demanded his removal. "I am convinced that nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander," wrote a dejected James Longstreet. But Confederate President Jefferson Davis refused. Two months after Chickamauga, Bragg lost the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and Chattanooga belonged to the Federals. Whatever may have been accomplished heretofore, it is now certain that the fruits of victory of the Chickamauga [battle] have now escaped our grasp. -- [???] Letter from Polk to Jefferson Davis, October 4, 1863
34. CHICKC_110913_390.JPG: General Bragg moved up to Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain by September 24, effectively cutting the Federal supply line into Chattanooga. Bragg then commenced a new plan -- a siege to starve the Union army into submission. "We held him at our mercy," boasted Bragg, "and his destruction was only a question of time." Longstreet's sharpshooters attacking a Federal train west of Chattanooga, October 1863.
35. CHICKC_110913_392.JPG: The Union army retreated to Chattanooga and fortified the city following the defeat at Chickamauga. Although faced with near starvation, the Federals persevered for eight weeks while they awaited supplies and reinforcements. "If [they] can only maintain this position," proclaimed President Lincoln, "the rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in its vitals."
36. CHICKC_110913_412.JPG: James Walker's Battle of Chickamauga is part of the Army Art Collection and is on loan courtesy of the National Museum of the US Army. James Walker wrote the US Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs in August of 1864 seeking to be commissioned to produce historical pictures of the military engagements around Chattanooga. In his letter to Meigs, Walker states, "I have spent the last six or seven months with the Army of the Cumberland, and have made careful studies of the different battlegrounds." Walker offers the names of the commanding officers whom he interviewed as proof of his knowledge of the subject and states, "I am confident that I can give our people in the North a better idea of what has been accomplished by our brave Army down there than any report that can be written." Meigs commissioned the series which included the paintings Battle of Chickamauga and Battle of Lookout Mountain. Completed in 1864 , after an exhaustive study of the terrain and military maneuvers, James Walker's Battle of Chickamauga depicts actions on Snodgrass Hill and Horseshoe Ridge on September 20, 1863. The left foreground shows the men of Harker's Brigade engaged with Confederates as reinforcements from Whitaker's and Mitchell's brigades rush to lengthen the line of defense in the distant right. General George H. Thomas, who received the nickname "Rock of Chickamauga" for maintaining the Union line that day, is depicted on horseback surrounded by his staff and escort in the left center of the painting.
37. CHICKC_110913_454.JPG: Thomas and his escorts
38. CHICKC_110913_502.JPG: Causes of the Civil War: The question of negro slavery has been the apple of discord in the government of the United States since its foundation.... We have dissolved the late Union chiefly because of the negro quarrel. -- Robert Handy Smith, Alabama congressman, Provisional Confederate Congress, March 1861 Why did Americans, who spoke the same language, begin killing each other? Why did a country that abided by one Constitution descend into chaos and tear itself apart? Why did North and South -- which had struggled together for liberty and independence -- collapse into civil war? The causes of the Civil War are complex and varied, but one theme recurs in debate after debate -- slavery. Because of slavery, the United States in the mid-1800s faced an unsettled future. Should the Union be a slave-holding republic with pockets of freedom? Or should the nation be a free republic with pockets of slavery? Or even more extreme -- should slavery be abolished? Regardless of perspective, Americans North and South held beliefs strong enough to plunge the nation into a conflict that claimed nearly 620,000 lives -- the bloodiest war in American history. Why? Am I not a man and brother? Property versus humanity was a central question in the struggle over slavery. By legal definition, a slave is property -- a material possession purchased, inherited, owned. This dramatic symbol, vigorously displayed by Northern abolitionists, challenged the assertion of property. The Terror in Africa: Africa was the primary source of slaves for European nations colonizing the Western Hemisphere. Africans themselves engaged in the lucrative slave trade, often kidnapping defenseless victims to exchange for cloth, liquor, or guns. The first slaves in British America arrived in Jamestown in 1619 aboard a Dutch vessel. Importing slaves continued for nearly 200 years until outlawed in 1807. US slave trade, 1830: Antislavery illustrations like this helped destroy harmony between North and South by highlighting whips and shackled women and children -- the most incendiary symbols of slavery. Southerners railed at these "distortions," claiming that slaves were better fed, housed, clothed, and in better health than impoverished wage earners in the North.
39. CHICKC_110913_506.JPG: We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1820 The Founding Fathers faced a dilemma -- how should they deal with slavery? The new republic cherished the assertion of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," yet many founders, including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, owned slaves, and slavery was legal in every colony in 1776. This troubling disparity shadowed the Constitutional Convention, but resolving slavery remained secondary to forming an effective central government. Nowhere in the Constitution do the words "slave" or "slavery" appear. Several important provisions in the Constitution do, however, specifically protect slavery. The Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Rights also protect private property -- and a slave is property. The Constitution thus sanctioned and perpetuated the institution, and laid the foundation for contentious Congressional compromises and controversial Supreme Court decisions. Runaway slave advertisement: Hundreds of advertisements like this appeared in newspapers, placed by owners hoping to regain "lost" property. Skilled slaves drew higher rewards than field hands, reflecting an owner's potential losses of money and labor. By the 19th century, bounty hunters who specialized in returning fugitive slaves received generous rewards. The slave Isaac Jefferson, blacksmith at Monticello, ca 1850: Thomas Jefferson's passion for liberty classed with his economic embrace of slavery. As a Virginia farmer, he depended upon slave labor to cultivate his extensive agricultural holdings and to maintain his home, Monticello. Yet in 1786, he declared, "What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment or death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose." Notice of slave auction, 1859: Slavery was big business. Although importation ended after 1807, demand for slaves increased as Southern agriculture expanded and required more labor. Cotton output tripled in the decade after the War of 1812, and transfers of slaves -- with many sold from the Upper South into the Mississippi Delta and Gulf States -- averaged more than 200,000 per decade between 1820 and the Civil War. Slave owners amassed great wealth as the slave population doubled every 26 years during the heyday of King Cotton.
40. CHICKC_110913_511.JPG: I hold that in the present state of civilization the relation now existing in the slave-holding states between the two [races] is, instead of an evil, a good -- a positive good. -- Senator John C. Calhoun, South Carolina The cry of states' rights reverberated across the South in the decades preceding Civil War. Proponents argued that the Federal Government represented a voluntary union of the individual states. Any state had the constitutional right to separate from this union if the central government overstepped its authority. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina asserted that any infringement on a Southerner's right to own property (slaves) warranted the ultimate exercise of states' rights -- secession. Whenever a law, legislative compromise, or congressional or Presidential election threatened the South's position with the Union, "states' rights" became the rallying cry of Southern leaders. Ironically, maintaining power in the Federal Government was the South's best strategy. Through its leverage on the President, the Supreme Court, and the Senate, the South had protected its interests. Engravings from the pamphlet Bible Defense of Slavery, 1853: As Northern abolitionists hurled vitriolic attacks against the South, the slave aristocracy argued that it had rescued the infidel African from barbarism and cannibalism. Senator James Hammond of South Carolina declared: "In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life ... It constitutes the very mudsill of society." Without it, Hammond concluded, you would not have the class "which leads progress, civilization, and refinement." Brooks caning Sumner: Heated arguments over slavery stained the Capitol floor with blood on May 22, 1856. South Carolina congressman William Brooks clubbed the outspoken abolitionist Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner after Sumner verbally assaulted the South in a two-day speech. "Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves?" asked the New York Evening Post. Responded the Richmond Enquirer, "[Abolitionists] have been suffered too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission." Abolitionists' notice, 1851: Capturing escaped slaves north of the Mason-Dixon Line further inflamed passions. In the Compromise of 1850, California entered the Union as a free state, but Congress strengthened a federal law that required the return of fugitive slaves from anywhere in the country. With a slave's value averaging between $1,200 and $1,800, the South trumpeted the law as a legal means of protecting property. Northerners defied the action, exercising their own "states' rights" by passing additional personal liberty laws and organizing vigilante groups to prevent the recovery of escaped slaves.
41. CHICKC_110913_522.JPG: Westward Expansion fueled the battle over slavery. During the 1840s, the country grew by two-thirds with the annexation of Texas, the seizure of much of what had been Mexican territory, including California, and the determination of the Oregon boundary. As Americans moved west to these new territories, would slavery be permitted or excluded? Southern leaders demanded slavery's extension. Opening these territories to slavery, a Georgia newspaper editor determined, would "secure to the South the balance of power... for all coming time [and] give to her the control in the operations of the Government." Most white Northerners did not object to slavery where it existed in the South, but they agreed with Connecticut congressman Gideon Welles who opposed slavery's expansion. "The time has come," thundered Welles, "when the Northern democracy should make a stand... [We must] satisfy the northern people... that we are not to extend the institution of slavery..." Agreement seemed improbably. Could compromise conquer contempt? The Kansas Free State battery, Topeka, 1856: Civil War erupted in Kansas five years before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. In an experiment entitled "popular sovereignty," adopted by Congress in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, settlers residing in a new territory could determine for themselves whether to adopt or exclude slavery in their state constitution. The experiment disintegrated into bloody butchery in Kansas as antislavery and proslavery forces attempted to influence the final outcome. Southerners denounced this 1856 antislavery political propaganda. "There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery," opined Senator Robert MT Hunter of Virginia. Northerners championed these statistics of proof of free labor's superiority to slave labor. Slavery was the foe "to our democratic politics in the State, our democratic culture in the school, our democratic work in the community," claimed Massachusetts abolitionist clergymen Theodore Parker. John Brown, 1856: Fiery abolitionist John Brown, believing God had called upon him to destroy slavery, attacked the United States armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia to obtain weapons for his war. Brown's raid failed, but in his subsequent trial and execution, he became an antislavery martyr. Southerners vilified Brown. "So perish all such enemies of Virginia! All such enemies of Union! All such foes of the human race!" shouted Virginian JTL Preston at Brown's hanging. I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood. -- Brown's final note, handed to his jailer, December 2, 1859 In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank God. -- William Lloyd Garrison Abolitionists -- a small but vocal minority -- were the South's greatest enemy. They believed slave owners were sinners and that slavery was a violation of human rights. For 30 years, abolitionists had blasted slavery and the South through newspapers, prayer meetings, political rallies, and literature. Most white Northerners did not oppose slavery where it existed in the South, but slowly opinion changed. When Harriet Beecher Stowe's gripping novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published in 1852, it sold more than 300,000 copies in its first year and became the most popular antislavery publication. Although white Northerners began to oppose the institution of slavery on moral grounds, few embraced equal rights for blacks.
42. CHICKC_110913_523.JPG: Politics in the Election of 1860 erupted over slavery. After a decade of divisive debate, the oracle of South Carolina, the Charleston Mercury, declared: "The North and South... are not only two peoples, but they are rival, hostile Peoples." Nothing frightened the Southern aristocracy more than losing control of the Federal Government. The meteoric ascent of Abraham Lincoln and the Northern Republican party -- which opposed expansion of slavery into the western territories -- threatened the balance of power. "No other 'overt act' can so imperatively demand resistance on our part," a North Carolina congressman declared, "as the simple election of their candidate." Lincoln won. The first Republican President captured only 40 percent of the popular vote, but his majority showing in the more populous Northern states provided a comfortable electoral vote advantage. "The great revolution has actually taken place," wrote Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, whose father and grandfather had served as President. "The country has once and for all thrown off the domination of the Slaveholders." Slave population of the Southern states, 1860: Slaves were concentrated mostly on large farms and small plantations in the Cotton Belt from South Carolina to Texas, the rice coast of South Carolina and Georgia, the sugar cane fields of Louisiana, and the tobacco fields of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. Few slaves lived in the mountainous Appalachian counties. One in four Southern households held slaves, but only 1 percent of the white population owned more than 100 slaves. In some counties in agriculturally rich South Carolina and Mississippi, nearly half of the households owned slaves. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. -- Abraham Lincoln, 1858 Lincoln-Hamlin political poster: Beardless, 51, and a nationally known lawyer from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was not the leading candidate when the Republicans convened in Chicago. However, "Honest Abe's" allies adroitly outmaneuvered their opponents, using Lincoln's log-cabin lineage as the "symbol of frontier, farm, opportunity, hard work, and rags to riches." The "rail splitter's" nomination on the third ballot solidified the Midwest for the Republicans and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine helped deliver the voters in New England. Lincoln strides ahead: Four candidates raced for the White House in the election of 1860; Lincoln, the rival of Democrats Breckinridge and Douglas, and John Bell -- shown running last in this caricature. Bell led a compromise party whose platform "the Constitution... the Union... and the Enforcement of the Law" resonated in parts of the South, where Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot in ten states. Ironically, Bell's effort eroded supported for the Southern Democrat Breckinridge, virtually assuring Lincoln's plurality victory. Currier and Ives political cartoon, 1860: Slavery splintered the Democratic Party during the 1860 Presidential election. Southern Democrats, led by Vice President John C. Breckinridge, refused to compromise on the expansion of slavery. Northern Democrats, led by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, refused to accept a slavery-extension platform that meant certain doom with voters in the North. The Democrats' split enabled Lincoln's minority party to steam to victory.
43. CHICKC_110913_528.JPG: Talk of secession thundered across the South in response to Lincoln's election. Despite the President-elect's vow not to disturb slavery where it already existed, South Carolina left the Union six weeks later. Georgia and six more Deep South states followed even before Lincoln's inauguration. Delegates met in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861 to draft a constitution for the new Confederate States of American and unanimously elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president. The new country's constitution resembled the old, but it guaranteed slavery and nurtured states' rights. On April 12, 1861, Confederates began shelling Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Lincoln's call for troops to quash the rebellion led four Upper South states, including Tennessee, to secede. The Confederacy was now complete -- and at war. [North and South] have been so entirely separated by climate, by morals, by religion, and by estimates so totally opposite of all that constitutes honor, truth, and manliness, that they cannot longer coexist under the same government. -- Charles C. Jones, Jr. , planter and mayor of Savannah, Georgia, January 28, 1861 Not all Southerners approved of immediate secession. Dr. Greenberry G. Gordon, a delegate to the Georgia secession convention from northwest Georgia cast his vote with the minority "Cooperationists" -- a group that proposed that the slave states submit to the North a list of demands that must be met for the South to remain within the Union. Yet when war erupted, Gordon like many Southerners quickly answered the call to defend his new country. He organized a company of 125 men from LaFayette, which soon became Company G, 9th Georgia Volunteer Infantry, and later became surgeon of the regiment. Dr. Greenberry G. Gordon in CSA officer's uniform: The devastating war that came to northwest Georgia, as well as emancipation, crippled Gordon financially. In 1860, as an owner of seven slaves, his personal estate had been worth $10,000. Ten years later, his personal wealth had declined to only $500. It is a revolution... and it can no more be checked by human effort... than a prairie fire by a gardener's watering pot. -- Senator Judah H. Benjamin of Louisiana Sheet music celebrating secession: Three quarters of Southern households did not own slaves, and few people considered the complex leagl argument of states' rights. So why did Southerners celebrate secession and willingly fight? "I took up arms, sir," bellowed a Confederate officer, "upon a broader ground -- the right of revolution. We were sovereign. Our properties and liberties were about to be taken from us. It was a sacred duty to rebel."
44. CHICKC_110913_534.JPG: A Separate South 1861: On the eve of the Civil War, the young town at the foot of Lookout Mountain was ready to grow. In the 1850s, four railroads converged at Chattanooga, linking the Deep South with the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi Rivers. Plentiful resources -- coal, iron ore, copper, potassium nitrate, and lead -- awaited exploitation. Wealthy white Southerners and Northern entrepreneurs, sensing the region's industrial potential, began to capitalize on it. Yet by 1861, the population of Chattanooga was only 2,500. The whites who lived here were mostly Southerners, with some Northerners, Westerners, and Irish immigrants mixed in. Slaves and a few free blacks made up not more than 15 percent of the region's population. During the coming conflict, the local residents would follow divergent paths. The view from Lookout Mountain took in a corner of north Georgia and mountainous Tennessee -- a "separate" South, not typical of the longer-settled plantation-based society that embarked on rebellion. The hotel was swarming with people arriving and departing with the trains, east, west, north, and south ... Rolls of banknotes were exhibited ... In the confusion of tongues, the ear could catch the words: 'plots,' 'stocks,' 'quarter sections,' 'depot,' 'dividends,' 'township,' 'railroads,' ... 'ten thousands,' 'hundred thousands,' 'millions' ... -- A reporter describing the scene at the Crutchfield House, Chattanooga, Harper's Magazine, 1858
45. CHICKC_110913_551.JPG: Each state that provided troops to the armies that brought the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga was authorized to erect unit monuments within the national Military Park. Most monuments were paid for with state funds authorized by the state legislature. Some monuments weer paid for by private donations. Most monuments were placed where a regiment or battery was engaged during the battles. Most were erected in 1894 or 1895. Some are simple blocks of stone while others included many detailed, ornate, beautiful, and (unfortunately) fragile elements. Now over 100 years of age, many of the monuments have suffered the ravages of time, visitors, and vandals. Environmental factors such as freezing and thawing, pollution, and trees falling on the monuments have caused some of the damage. However, most of the damage has been committed by human hands, and feet. Some damage has occurred unintentionally from people climbing on the monuments; some damage has come from those who desire a souvenir; much damage is the result of pure vandalism, committed for whatever reason vandals have when they damage any structure or thing. State seals have been taken, replaced, and taken again; ornamental swords, reins, cannonballs, and guns have been broken free and carried off; entire statues have been toppled from their bases and smashed. A couple of monuments are entirely gone. Almost all show at least some damage.
46. CHICKC_110913_553.JPG: Repairing the damage is difficult and costly. In some cases, it is not even known what the missing pieces really looked like. In other cases, what remains is so little or fragile that to make the repair would only cause more damage. Some monuments are located where they would only be vandalized again if missing elements were returned. There are more than two hundred pieces of missing bronze work alone. A 2002 estimate placed the cost of repairing or replacing just those bronze pieces at more than $1.5 million. You can help prevent any additional damage by not climbing or sitting on the monuments and by reporting new acts of vandalism to National Military Park staff. The Ohio Monument Drummer Boy: The drummer boy is one of four stone statues on the Ohio Monument on Missionary Ridge. Vandals toppled the drummer boy from his base and broke him into several pieces. In 1977, the statue was reassembled and restored by a stone company in Atlanta, Georgia. The cost was $3,500. The broken parts were reattached with stainless steel dowels and an adhesive called Bonstone Epoxy (you can see the steel rods and epoxy on his wrist). Aluminum drumsticks replaced the original granite ones. Since being returned to the monument, the drummer boy has been vandalized yet again.
47. CHICKC_110913_555.JPG: Vandalism at the Battery D, 1st Michigan Light Artillery Monument
48. CHICKC_110913_558.JPG: Parts from the Maryland Monument in Orchard Knob
49. CHICKC_110913_562.JPG: Americans had longed disagreed over crucial issues, including slavery and states' rights. As repeated attempts at compromise failed, the North and South passed the point of reconciliation. For the South, the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who staunchly opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories, became the deciding factor. In the months before his inauguration, seven southern states seceded from the Union.
50. CHICKC_110913_575.JPG: 1861: April 12-13: Confederates Bombard Fort Sumter, South Carolina: Federal control of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor became a critical point of contention between the North and the South. The Confederates demanded the fort's surrender; President Lincoln vowed not to give up Federal property in the South. Despite negotiations, the Confederates opened fire on the fort at 4:30am on April 12. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later. The Civil War had begun. April 15: Lincoln Calls for 75,000 Militia
51. CHICKC_110913_577.JPG: 1861: July 21: Battle of First Manassas, Virginia: The North, anxious to end the rebellion quickly, rushed into conflict to seize the advantage. In the valley of Bull Run, 30 miles southwest of Washington, DC, an inexperienced Federal army under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell marched against and equally unprepared Confederate force under Brig. Gen. PGT Beauregard and Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. The Confederates, however, received timely reinforcements and routed the Federals from the field. The belief that the war would be short was shattered.
52. CHICKC_110913_583.JPG: 1861: August 10: Battle of Wilson's Creek, Missouri: To stop the Confederate driver into Missouri, Union Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon led his outnumbered forces into battle at Wilson's Creek. Confederates under Brig. Gen. Benjamin McCulloch and Missouri state troops under Maj. Gen. Sterling Price were at first driven back. Lyon's death, however, prompted his successor to retreat, abandoning much of southern Missouri to Confederate control.
53. CHICKC_110913_586.JPG: 1862: February 6 - June 11: Tennessee River Maneuvers: Confederate Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, protected vital avenues into Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. By February 16, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, with the help of a fleet of gunboats, had captured both forts, forcing the Confederates under Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston to regroup at Corinth, Mississippi. On April 6, Johnston launched an assault on Grant's army, and the Battle of Shiloh ensued. At first, the Confederates were successful, but by the next day, Johnston's death and Union reinforcements had turned the tide, forcing the Confederates to retreat back to Corinth. Over the next two months, Union Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck slowly moved on Corinth and forced the Confederates farther south into Mississippi, thereby cementing the Union's hold on much of middle and west Tennessee.
54. CHICKC_110913_589.JPG: 1862: March 3 - July 24: Mississippi River Campaigns: Union naval and ground forces advanced from the north and south along the Mississippi River, progressively breaking the Confederate's hold. Long reaches of that important transportation artery fell to Federal control in successive actions: at New Madrid, Missouri (March); at Island #10, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana (April); and at Memphis, Tennessee (June). By July 1862, the Federals controlled the Mississippi, except for the tree miles of river fronting Vicksburg.
55. CHICKC_110913_592.JPG: 1862: March 17 - July 1: Peninsula Campaign, Virginia: By the end of May, after besieging Yorktown, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan had cautiously advanced his Army of the Potomac to the outskirts of Richmond. Confederate action in the Shenandoah Valley, however, prevented reinforcements from reaching McClellan. McClellan's army was attacked at Seven Pines (May 31-June 1) by Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, who was seriously wounded. Gen. Robert E. Lee took command of Johnston's army and redesignated it the Army of Northern Virginia. In a series of battles known as the Seven Days (June 25-July 1). Lee drove McClellan from his position east of Richmond and into a fortified camp on the James River.
56. CHICKC_110913_595.JPG: 1862: March 7-8: Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas: The Federal drive into southwest Missouri, climaxed by the Battle of Pea Ridge, forced the Confederates to relinquish their hold on that state. March 9: Battle of the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (Merrimack), Hampton Roads, Virginia: This first battle between ironclad warships changed naval history. Though the two-hour struggle ended in a draw, it shattered Southern hopes of destroying the Northern fleet and breaking the Union blockade.
57. CHICKC_110913_598.JPG: 1862: July 22: Dix-Hill Cartel: This cartel, or agreement, guided the exchange of prisoners between the North and the South. Neither side was prepared to care for the massive number of war prisoners, and their treatment became a bitter and controversial issue.
58. CHICKC_110913_600.JPG: 1862: August 14 - October 23: Kentucky Campaign: Confederate armies under Gen. Braxton Bragg and Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith advanced from Tennessee into Kentucky. But poor coordination between the two Confederate forces allowed the Federals under Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell to concentrate and then move against Bragg and Smith. On October 8, at Perryville, Kentucky, the troops fought an indecisive battle; the outnumbered Confederate force managed to slip away, withdrawing into east Tennessee.
59. CHICKC_110913_603.JPG: 1862: August 28 - 30: Battle of Second Manassas, Virginia: Merging several smaller forces, Lincoln created the short-lived Army of Virginia under Maj. Gen. John Pope. In late August, Lee moved against Pope's army in central Virginia. Maneuvered into battle at Manassas, Pope was thoroughly defeated and withdrew into the defenses surrounding Washington DC. For the second time, the Federals had met defeat at Manassas. 1862: September 4-18: Maryland Campaign: Following the Battle of Second Manassas, Lee marched his army north, hoping to draw Federal forces from Virginia and, perhaps, to gain Maryland's support for the Confederacy. Lee's plans, however, were discovered by Union Maj. Gen. McClellan who advanced his army to strike the Confederates while they were still divided. The Federals lost heir garrison at Harper's Ferry but were able to bring the Confederates to battle at Antietam Creek. The fierce fighting there on September 17 left 23,000 casualties. Lee withdrew into Virginia.
60. CHICKC_110913_606.JPG: 1862: September 22: Emancipation Proclamation Issued: The Battle of Antietam on September 17 provided the Federal victory Lincoln needed to issue this presidential decree. The Emancipation Proclamation freed, as of January 1, 1863, all the slaves in the Southern states under Confederate control. It marked a dramatic change in the focus of the war.
61. CHICKC_110913_609.JPG: December 31, 1862 and January 2, 1863: Battle of Stone's River, Tennessee: Following the Kentucky Campaign, Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee concentrated at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. On December 26, Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans left Nashville and advanced his Army of the Cumberland on Murfreesboro. On December 31, the Confederates struck Rosecrans' army, battering the Union line's right and center. Bragg renewed the battle on January 2 but with no additional success. He then withdrew southward to the Duck River Valley.
62. CHICKC_110913_612.JPG: 1862: December 13: Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia: In early November, Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside replaced McClellan as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. Burnside hoped for a swift advance on Richmond but delays in crossing the Rappahannock River allowed Lee to concentrate his Army of Northern Virginia at Fredericksburg. When Burnside finally attacked, he was bloodily repulsed, a costly defeat that intensified antiwar feelings in the North.
63. CHICKC_110913_614.JPG: 1863: March 29 - July 4: Vicksburg Campaign, Mississippi: In March 1863, after five unsuccessful advanced against Vicksburg, Grant launched an elaborate campaign to capture this key Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. Moving his forces through Louisiana to cross the Mississippi well below Vicksburg, Grant first captured Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital, and then marched west to lay siege to Vicksburg. Six weeks later, the city surrendered. The Mississippi was all but free of Confederate control.
64. CHICKC_110913_616.JPG: 1863: April 27 - May 6: Chancellorsville Campaign, Virginia Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, the new commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, launched a campaign to force Lee's Army of Northern Virginia out of its positions near Fredericksburg. Though Hooker's forces outnumbered Lee's two to one, the Federals relinquished the initiative and were defeated at Chancellorsville and Salem Church. The cost of the Confederates' victory, however, was high: Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson died of complications from wounds.
65. CHICKC_110913_618.JPG: 1863: May 21 - July 9: Port Hudson, Louisiana: At Port Hudson, African American Federal troops fought for the first time in a major engagement. Port Hudson's surrender after a siege broke the last Confederate grasp on the Mississippi.
66. CHICKC_110913_620.JPG: 1863: June 3 - July 14: Gettysburg Campaign, Pennsylvania: Hoping that a victory on Northern soil might encourage British intervention on behalf of the South, Lee advanced his army into Pennsylvania, gathering supplies from unspoiled Northern territory. At Gettysburg, as Lee reconcentrated his forces, the Confederates encountered Union Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac. For three days (July 1-3), Lee assaulted Meade's army but was unable to drive it from its defensive position. With Lee's retreat southward, the North had won an important victory. But both sides suffered; altogether Gettysburg claimed 51,000 casualties. June 30: State of West Virginia Admitted to Union
67. CHICKC_110913_623.JPG: 1863: June 23- July 3: The Campaign for Chattanooga: Tullahoma Phase: After months of preparation, Union Maj. Gen. Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland advanced against Gen. Bragg's Confederates. By deceiving and outmaneuvering his enemy, Rosecrans drove Bragg southeast beyond Tullahoma, Tennessee. Additional Federal troops threatened Bragg's supply line, forcing the Confederates to retreat across the Tennessee River and into Chattanooga. In just 11 days, with no major battles, Rosecrans had driven the Confederates out of middle Tennessee. Chattanooga could now be threatened directly.
68. CHICKC_110913_626.JPG: 1863: July 13-16: New York City Draft Riots: When the 1863 Enrollment Act went into effect, it sparked bloody demonstrations against conscription for an increasingly unpopular war. As many as 1,000 people were killed or injured in the riots.
69. CHICKC_110913_628.JPG: 1863: August 16-September 9: The Campaign for Chattanooga: Occupying the City: Before crossing the Tennessee River, Union Maj. Gen. Rosecrans divided his army into three columns: one north of Chattanooga, to deceived Confederate Gen. Bragg; and two south, whose approach to the city would be hidden by the mountains. With a firm foothold on the southern bank of the river, Rosecrans moved his southernmost columns across Lookout Mountain to threaten Bragg's rear. Taken by surprise, Bragg was forced to abandon Chattanooga to protect his supply line; he withdrew to LaFayette, Georgia. On September 9, Federals occupied Chattanooga, a major transportation hub; the city never returned to Confederate hands.
70. CHICKC_110913_631.JPG: 1863: September 19-20: The Campaign for Chattanooga: The Battle of Chickamauga: Union Maj. Gen. Rosecrans's army was attacked by Bragg's Army of Tennessee near Chickamauga Creek, where an initial encounter quickly grew into full-scale battle as reinforcements arrived for each side. On September 20, a Confederate charge, led by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, broke through a gap in the Union line, driving Rosecrans from the field of battle. The destruction of the Union army was averted by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," who managed to hold his position. Chickamauga was a decisive Confederate victory, but Bragg failed to follow it up, allowing the Union army to retreat to Chattanooga.
71. CHICKC_110913_634.JPG: 1863: August: Point Lookout Prison Camp Opens: Intended as a depot for Confederate prisoners en route for exchange, this Union camp on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland became the largest Civil War prison. More than 52,000 Southerners passed through its gates before it closed in June 1865.
72. CHICKC_110913_671.JPG: Battle Wagon: This original battle wagon is believed to be the only one surviving from the Civil War period. A complete restoration in 1978 revealed its builder cut several corners in its construction, using improperly ages lumber and undersized bolts. In peace time, government inspectors probably would not have accepted it for Army use. This wagon was a gift to the park in 1943 by the Chicago Historical Society, hence its "Chicago Board of Trade Battery" designation. Today, the interior is stocked to appear as it would have when ready for field service. During the Civil War, the battery was the basic unit of field artillery. Most batteries such as the Chicago Board of Trade Battery, were made up of six cannon, although four-gun batteries were common, especially in the Southern side. In service, each cannon or "piece" was accompanied by a caisson, carrying a spare wheel and two ammunition chests. Both cannon and caisson were pulled behind limbers. Each limber carried another ammunition chest and was drawn by six horses. A full battery also consisted of several extra caissons carrying reserve ammunition, a traveling forge, and four battery wagons. The battery wagon carried tools, spare parts of carriages, spare harness, and other stores required for service and repair of an artillery battery in the field. It also would be pulled by a six-horse limber as it accompanied its battery to the campground or battlefield. The Chicago Board of Trade Battery was recruited by members of the Board in response to President Lincoln's call for 300,000 soldiers in July 1862. The Board raised $15,000 in bounty money in less than two days. The battery saw action in 11 of the hardest battles fought in the west including Stones River, Nashville, and Chickamauga.
73. CHICKC_110913_681.JPG: This is a lead minie ball that was embedded in a tree. A section surrounding the minie ball was cut into the block you see here and inscribed as follows: JD RIGSBY LOOKOUT MT BATTLE A BOVE THE CLOUDS 1863 TO J G. HALEY
74. CHICKC_110913_694.JPG: Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's indecisiveness following his victory at Chickamauga led to defeat at Chattanooga two months later. An exceptional opportunity to turn the course of the war had been lost. Chattanooga, firmly in Federal hands, would become the base for a drive into the Deep South in 1864.
75. CHICKC_110913_696.JPG: 1863: September 23- November 27: The Battles for Chattanooga, Tennessee: After the defeat at Chickamauga, Union Maj. Gen. Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga where he was replaced by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, newly appointed supreme commander in the West, arrived to command at Chattanooga. By the end of the month, Federal troops, including reinforcements from Virginia, opened a shorter supply route, "The Cracker Line," by seizing Brown's Ferry and Lookout Valley (October 27-29).
76. CHICKC_110913_700.JPG: November 23: Orchard Knob: To drive Southern troops from the Chattanooga region, Grant first pushed the Confederate advance line off Orchard Knob and a nearby hill, thereby gaining greater room for maneuvering. Grant's advance placed his Army of the Cumberland in position to strike Confederates entrenched on Missionary Ridge. On November 25, Grant made Orchard Knob his command post because of its panoramic view of the battlefields. November 24: Lookout Mountain: Grant directed Federal forces under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker to seize Lookout Mountain. The fighting took place on a plateau about two-thirds up the mountainside around the home of Robert Cravens. Occurring in a layer of fog, this fighting was popularly know [sic] as "The Battle Above the Clouds." At the end of the day, the Confederates retired, abandoning the mountain to Hooker's forces. November 25: Missionary Ridge: Despite the losses of Orchard Knob and Lookout Mountain, Confederate Gen. Bragg maintained his line on Missionary Ridge. Grant ordered Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman to attack the north end of the ridge, while Hooker advanced north from Rossville Gap. When Sherman's attack was unsuccessful and Hooker was delayed, Grant attacked the center of the Confederate position. The assault carried to the crest of the ridge and drove much of the Confederate army off in disarray. The Confederates withdrew to Dalton in northwest Georgia.
77. CHICKC_110913_703.JPG: 1863: November 4 - December 5: Knoxville Campaign, Tennessee: In the late summer, Federal drives into Tennessee had forced the Confederates to abandon both Knoxville and Chattanooga. In November, Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet tried to recapture Knoxville. An unsuccessful assault against the fortified city (November 29) and the approach of Federal reinforcements from Chattanooga ended Longstreet's campaign. He withdrew into upper east Tennessee. November 19: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: President Abraham Lincoln attended ceremonies dedicating a national cemetery at Gettysburg. Lincoln's brief address gave full expression to the ideal of American nationhood, concluding in the eloquent pledge "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." As Lincoln spoke, the South was already on the defensive. The disasters at Gettysburg and Vicksburg would soon be followed by defeats at Chattanooga, thus assuring the North's control over Tennessee and depriving the South of vital resources.
78. CHICKC_110913_706.JPG: 1864: February 14: Andersonville Prison Opens: This hastily constructed prison camp in southwest Georgia was established to relieve Richmond of its growing number of Union prisoners. Andersonville is generally considered to be the worst of the Civil War prisoners; nearly 13,000 of the 45,000 Union soldiers confined there during its fourteen-month history died. 1864: Hunley Sinks Housatonic, Charleston, South Carolina: The hand-propelled Confederate submarine CSS HL Hunley sank the sloop USS Housatonic off Charleston, South Carolina. Hunley, however, was lost in the operation.
79. CHICKC_110913_709.JPG: 1864: May 7 - September 8: Atlanta Campaign, Georgia: Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman advanced southward from Chattanooga to crush the Confederate Army of Tennessee and to seize Atlanta, Georgia, a strategic railroad and manufacturing center. In a series of engagements, Sherman forced the Army of Tennessee under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston southward. As Sherman neared Atlanta itself, Johnston was replaced by Gen. John B. Hood who led a fierce effort to stop Sherman's advance. But on September 1, Hood was compelled to abandon Atlanta, losing a key Confederate city. Sherman's victory helped guarantee Lincoln's reelection in November.
80. CHICKC_110913_713.JPG: 1864: May 4 - June 12: Grant's Overland Campaign, Virginia: Promoted to general-in-chief of all Union armies, Grant accompanied the Army of the Potomac in a campaign to destroy Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. In a series of bloody confrontations -- the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor -- Lee and Grant engaged in a war of attrition, each suffering enormous casualties as they gradually drew closer to the outskirts of Richmond.
81. CHICKC_110913_716.JPG: 1864: March 10 - May 22: Red River Campaign, Louisiana: Proposed as an effort to regain control over part of Texas, this Federal drive under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks was turned back by the Confederates, whose effort was helped by the river's low water level. The unsuccessful campaign upset the Union's troop strength and time tables for future efforts.
82. CHICKC_110913_718.JPG: 1864: June 15 - (1865) April 2: Siege of Petersburg, Virginia: Thwarted in his effort to capture Richmond from the north and east, Grant ordered the Army of the Potomac to cross the James River, seize the rail center at Petersburg, and thereby isolate Richmond. When initial assaults failed, Union forces extended their lines around Petersburg, fighting battles at Weldon Railroad, Ream's Station, Hatcher's Run, Fort Harrison, and Five Forks. A final massive assault on April 2, 1865 crushed the Confederate lines, forcing them to abandon Richmond and Petersburg.
83. CHICKC_110913_721.JPG: 1864: Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Virginia: In August, Union Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan entered the Shenandoah Valley to crush Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early and to destroy supplies that were vital to the Confederacy. Battles occurred at Winchester, Fisher's Hill, Tom's Brook, Cedar Creek, and Waynesboro. Sheridan defeated Early's army, swept through the rich Shenandoah granary, and devastated the valley, using tactics similar to those Sherman employed in his March to the Sea.
84. CHICKC_110913_723.JPG: 1864: August 5: Mobile Bay, Alabama: A Federal fleet under the command of R. Adm. David G. Farragut entered and closed Mobile Bay, a vital Gulf Coast port. Shortly thereafter, a cooperating Union army captured Forts Powell, Gaines, and Morgan.
85. CHICKC_110913_725.JPG: 1864: November 15 - December 21: March to the Sea, Georgia: Abandoning his Atlanta base, Sherman marched across Georgia to Savannah on the Atlantic coast. Encountering little opposition, Sherman's troops cut a path sixty miles wide across Georgia, destroying military property and devastating the land. Sherman's tactics in this campaign are still debated. On December 13, Sherman established a link with Federal naval forces on the coast, forcing the Confederates to abandon Savannah on December 21.
86. CHICKC_110913_727.JPG: 1864: September 29 - January 9, 1865: Hood's Tennessee Campaign: Hoping to force Sherman out of Georgia by disrupting his supply lines, Hood led his Confederates through Georgia and Alabama before advancing to Nashville, Tennessee. Following a costly battle at Franklin on November 30, Hood's troops took up positions outside Nashville and constructed defenses. On December 15-16, however, Federal forces under Gen. George H. Thomas crushed Hood's army. The remnants withdrew to Tupelo, Mississippi.
87. CHICKC_110913_731.JPG: 1864: November 8: Lincoln Reelected
88. CHICKC_110913_733.JPG: 1865: February 1 - April 14: Carolinas Campaign, North and South Carolina: Coordinating with several other Union forces, Sherman advanced northward from Savannah into the Carolinas. Southern resistance was minimal and Sherman's campaign caused the Confederates to evacuate Charleston, South Carolina. In North Carolina, Sherman successfully fought the Battle of Bentonville on March 19-20 against Confederate forces under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. On April 14, Sherman and Johnston agreed to an armistice and began negotiations for the Surrender of Johnston's army.
89. CHICKC_110913_737.JPG: 1865: April 3 - 9: Appomattox Campaign, Virginia: Forced to abandon Richmond and Petersburg, Lee retreated westward with his Army of Northern Virginia. Rapid Federal pursuit and constant pressure prevent Lee from turning south to join Confederate forces in North Carolina. On April 6, Lee's troops suffered crippling losses during the Battle of Sayler's Creek, and three days later, were boxed in at Appomattox Court House. On April 9, Lee met Grant to discuss surrender.
90. CHICKC_110913_739.JPG: 1865: April 9: Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee Surrenders the Army of North Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Virginia April 14: President Lincoln Assassinated April 26: Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston Surrenders the Army of Tennessee in North Carolina May 4: Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor Surrenders the Confederate Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana May 26: Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith Surrenders the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department
91. CHICKC_110913_743.JPG: The Civil War saved the Union and abolished slavery. It brought rapid advancements socially, economically, and culturally. But the toll of the war was high: more than 620,000 Americans died. Healing the countless wounds and balancing the enormous changes would take many decades. The tragic conflict forged a new America and unleashed forces that continue to affect us today.
92. CHICKC_110913_746.JPG: 1865: December 18: The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution Abolishing Slavery Goes into Effect
93. CHICKC_110913_748.JPG: A Separate South: 1865 In the aftermath of the Civil War, Chattanooga was reborn. Although wrecked and nearly emptied of civilians by the autumn of 1863, the town rebounded as Generals Sherman and Thomas transformed the wasteland into a massive supply depot and staging base for the 1864 Union offensive against Atlanta. Railroads, now repaired, reopened running north. The army constructed warehouses and wharves along the river and began stockpiling a six-month supply of stores and ammunition. Hundreds of Union sympathizers and former slaves found employment as dock and rail yard laborers, clerks, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, teamsters, and carpenters. At the war's end, the military infrastructure remained intact, helping Northern businessmen and investors transform Chattanooga into a new industrial center. In neighboring Georgia, where resistance to "reconstruction" policies hampered economic rejuvenation, many cities remained devastated, but Chattanooga thrived, becoming a beacon of the "New South." I found a strangely mixed population in Chattanooga -- traders, adventurers, soldiers, poor whites, refugees, and Negroes. There weer many Union men from the Cotton States who had escaped into our lines during the war, and either could not or dared not return. -- John T. Trowbridge, 1865
94. CHICKC_110917_02.JPG: Author signing for "Onward Southern Soldiers: Religion and the Army of Tennessee in the Civil War", with authors Traci Nichols-Belt and Gordon T. Belt.
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