It was now almost 5 P.M. And in the distance it soon became clear that Grant need not have worried. The second Confederate line had been overrun, and the men of Sheridan’s division were driving hard for the crest beyond. Six regimental flags were plainly visible from below, bobbing, drooping, disappearing momentarily, each unit seeking to be the first to gain the heights. The honor went to the 24th Wisconsin, whose eighteenyear-old adjutant, Captain Arthur MacArthur, planted the colors on the precipice after leading the regiment upward with the battle cry “On, Wisconsin.” According to his son Douglas, MacArthur was embraced by Sheridan: “Take care of him,” the jubilant general told the Badger regiment, “he has just won the Medal of Honor.”87
As unit after unit reached the crest, the Confederate position along Missionary Ridge unraveled. Bragg himself barely escaped capture as rebel soldiers threw away their weapons and fled down the reverse slope, seeking safety in the rear. It was “the sight of our lives,” one Union soldier wrote. “Gray clad men rushed wildly down the hill into the woods, tossing away knapsacks, muskets, and blankets as they ran. In ten minutes all that remained of the defiant rebel army that so long besieged Chattanooga was captured guns, disarmed prisoners, moaning wounded, ghastly dead, and scattered, demoralized fugitives. Missionary Ridge was ours.”88 The Confederates abandoned forty-one pieces of artillery, a third of the army’s total, and left 7,000 muskets in the field. “No satisfactory excuse can possibly be given for the shameful conduct of the troops in allowing their line to be penetrated,” wrote Bragg. “The position was one which ought to have been held by a line of skirmishers against any assaulting column.”89 The Army of the Cumberland’s triumph was an upset victory of enormous proportions. Grant later called the Confederate position on Missionary Ridge “impregnable.”90 The grim determination displayed by the troops took its toll, however, and Union casualties were heavy. Sheridan lost 20 percent of his division in the assault and Wood approximately the same. An Indiana regiment began its ascent with 337 men and lost 202 of them, or nearly 60 percent. Overall, Union losses totaled 5,475 killed and wounded; the Confederates lost less than half that. But the number of men captured or missing told a different story. Grant lost 349; Bragg 4,146.
Grant attributed the victory in part to Bragg’s faulty deployment of his army. Too many men were placed on the plain in front of what was an otherwise easily defended position.91 When they fell back, the troops behind them panicked. Despite their smashing victory at Chickamauga, despite the enormous advantage of terrain and artillery support, despite the powerful resistance that Cleburne’s division put up against Sherman, the brute strength of Thomas’s charge was too great to withstand. The shock action of sixty infantry regiments descending en masse on the main Confederate battle line disconcerted the defenders. After the first rifle pits were overrun, Union attackers followed the retreating rebels so closely that it became impossible for Bragg’s troops to make a stand. Momentum carried the day. And morale. Thomas had done a superb job reorganizing the Army of the Cumberland after Rosecrans’s departure, and Grant’s presence had a tonic effect. The men knew what was expected of them and gave all they had. By contrast, the bickering among Confederate generals seeped downward through the ranks. Once the corps commanders lost confidence in Bragg, it was inevitable that the dissatisfaction would spread through the army.
The battle of Chattanooga was won by the soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland. Credit Grant for effectively deploying the troops from three separate armies, devising a battle plan that fit the situation, and relying on his subordinates to carry through. Sherman’s performance was disappointing, but Thomas made up for it. Jefferson Davis deserves some credit for the Union victory as well. The decision to detach Longstreet’s corps altered the balance of forces at Chattanooga and gave Grant the opportunity he needed. Writing about the battle years later, Grant said, “Mr. Davis had an exalted opinion of his own military genius,” and on more than one occasion during the war “came to the relief of the Union army.”92
There was no formal surrender ceremony at Chattanooga, but Grant’s compassion for his defeated adversaries was again on display. A Confederate soldier who was taken prisoner recorded that as he and other prisoners were being taken to the rear, they were halted to allow a group of Union generals and their staffs to pass by. The officers rode past the Confederates smugly without any sign of recognition except by one. “When General Grant reached the line of ragged, filthy, bloody, despairing prisoners strung out on each side of the bridge, he lifted his hat and held it over his head until he passed the last man of that living funeral cortege. He was the only officer in that whole train who recognized us as being on the face of the earth.”93
Another portrait of Grant was provided by Major General David Hunter, the senior general on active duty, who spent most of November in Chattanooga. Writing to Secretary of War Stanton, Hunter said that Grant had received him with great kindness. “He gave me his bed, shared with me his room, gave me to ride his favorite warhorse, read to me his dispatches, accompanied me on my reviews, and I accompanied him during the three days of the battle. In fact, I saw him almost every moment, except when sleeping, of the three weeks I spent in Chattanooga. He is a hard worker, writes his own dispatches and orders, and does his own thinking. He is modest, quiet, never swears, and seldom drinks, as he only took two drinks during the three weeks I was with him. He listens quietly to the opinions of others and then judges promptly for himself, and he is very prompt to avail himself in the field of all the errors of the enemy.”94
Vicksburg was Grant’s great victory in the West and the turning point of the war. But as one historian has noted, the triumph at Chattanooga proclaimed Grant’s military genius.95 As at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, he converted certain defeat into a smashing Union victory. Had he not been dispatched by Washington to take command, it is fair to surmise that the Army of the Cumberland would have perished. Burnside at Knoxville would have been forced to surrender, eastern Tennessee would have fallen to the Confederacy, rebel momentum would have accelerated, and the survival of the Union would have been imperiled. As it was, the remnants of Bragg’s army were in headlong retreat toward Atlanta. Grant continued the pursuit for two days, but then halted to march to Burnside’s assistance—a situation that took care of itself before Sherman’s relief column could arrive. After learning of Bragg’s defeat, Longstreet decided that the soundest course would be to attack Burnside, dispose of the Army of the Ohio, and regain the initiative. “There is neither safety nor honor in any other course,” Longstreet told his skeptical subordinates.96 Accordingly, on November 29, four days after the battle of Chattanooga, Confederate troops attempted to storm the Union lines at Knoxville and were repulsed with heavy losses. Against the odds, Burnside had held out. Longstreet broke off the battle and on December 3 withdrew northward. The siege of Knoxville was lifted and both sides settled down for the winter.
Grant was unhappy about going into winter quarters. He saw no reason to keep the army idle, and the pause would give the rebels time to reorganize.97 Accordingly, he wrote Halleck on December 7 suggesting that the operation against Mobile be reactivated. “I would hope to secure that place, or its investment, by the last of January.” If the enemy mounted a stubborn resistance, Grant proposed to isolate the city and move with the bulk of his army into central Alabama and possibly Georgia. “It seems to me this move would secure the entire states of Alabama & Mississippi, and a part of Georgia.” Grant said that if he did so it would force Lee to abandon Virginia and come south, because “without his force the enemy have not got army enough to resist the army I can take.”98
Officials in Washington were less sanguine than Grant and gave little credence to the impact of an offensive in the South on Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Halleck eventually approved the operation against Mobile, provided Tennessee was liberated first. In particular, both Lincoln and Halleck wanted Longstreet ejected from east Tennessee before tackling the Gulf Coast city.99 Grant did not disagree, but the severity of the winter in the mountainous country north of Knoxville made any advance against Longstreet impractical until spring. Accordingly, he improvised. Rather than wait for spring, he sent Sherman to Vicksburg with instructions to launch a massive raid east through Mississippi, seize the rail junction at Meridian, and destroy the track, rolling stock, and whatever else might be of use to the Confederacy. This was truly a prelude to Sherman’s March to the Sea, and Uncle Billy performed the task with enthusiasm.II Thomas was ordered to cooperate with Sherman’s movement by making a show of advancing from Chattanooga toward Atlanta, while the Army of the Ohio was to block any attempt by Longstreet to move south. Simply put, Grant was stirring the pot in the Division of the Mississippi and keeping the rebels off balance while waiting to take the offensive in spring.
The deliverance of Chattanooga and Knoxville was celebrated throughout the North with thanksgiving and reverence. President Lincoln coupled his announcement of the victories with a recommendation that people gather in their churches to thank the Lord “for this great advancement of the national cause.” He then sent a personal message to Grant:
Understanding that your lodgement at Chattanooga and Knoxville is now secure, I wish to tender you, and all under your command, my more than thanks, my profoundest gratitude, for the skill, courage and perseverance with which you, and they, over so great difficulties, have effected that important object. God bless you all!100
A. LINCOLN
I. For the first and only time in military history, the Union advance was aided by a charge of unattended pack mules. During the fighting the night of October 28, Hooker’s teamsters became frightened and deserted their tethered mules. The animals broke loose from their fastenings and stampeded directly toward Longstreet’s troops, who in turn became frightened, believing that a brigade of Union cavalry was coming down on them. They too stampeded, leaving it to an Ohio infantryman to immortalize the episode as Tennyson had done for the Light Brigade in the Crimea.
Half a mile, half a mile,
Half a mile onward,
Right toward the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred,
“Forward, the Mule Brigade;
Charge for the rebs!” they neighed.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made;
Honor the mule brigade,
Long-eared two hundred.
Shelby Foote, 2 The Civil War 810–11 (New York: Random House, 1963).
II. “My movement to Meridian stampeded all Alabama,” Sherman wrote. The Confederates “retreated across the Tombigbee and left me to smash things at pleasure. . . . We broke absolutely and effectively a full hundred miles of railroad and made a swath of desolation fifty miles broad across the State of Mississippi which the present generation will not forget.” Foote, 2 Civil War 934.