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Why Did They Fight Here?
Why did thousands fight for control of Chattanooga, a prosperous but small town of 2,500? Why were President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis so anxious about the outcome? The answer was a matter of geography and transportation.
Situated in a mountain gap, Chattanooga was a railroad transportation hub, a gateway between the North and the Deep South. Rail lines radiated from Chattanooga in every direction -- to Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, and Richmond, and to places beyond those key cities. Much of the Confederacy's military and civilian supplies moved over these railroads. Federal control of Chattanooga would further splinter the Confederacy.
But the federal government didn't merely want to make life more difficult for the Confederacy. It wanted utterly to destroy the Confederacy's capacity to fight. To do so, it had to conquer the Confederate industrial heartland in Georgia and Alabama. To get there, the Union armies had to pass through Chattanooga -- and to hold Chattanooga as a supply base. That was the true strategic importance of the Chattanooga campaign in the fall of 1863. |