In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

 22 The Batt les around Chattanooga F a l l 1 8 6 3 Fighting by Moonlight Geary’s command was somewhere out ahead on this mountain road to Chattanooga. He had sent orders back for them to come up as fast they could. Chattanooga was twenty-five miles to the east, the way the crow might fly, but by the course the soldiers would march, far longer and much more difficult. The Tennessee River ran in coils from Bridgeport to near Chattanooga, where it relaxed into a giant loop. They marched along the river and into a steep-sided, winding valley, well into the night, coming to rest near a gorge at a place called Whiteside, above which stood the bulk of Raccoon Mountain. Geary had pushed through here on the double-quick hours earlier and had marched his men over Raccoon Mountain and into the next valley, where Hooker ordered him to a stop. He had arrived at a place called Wauhatchie Station with the impressive, steep-sided majesty of Lookout Mountain dead ahead and Chattanooga out of sight the other side. Geary was ordered to stay here and hold the place while Hooker moved on toward Chattanooga. When Geary came down into Lookout Valley, he could plainly see rebels wiggle-waggling his arrival to each other from signal stations halfway up the mountain .1 The rebel generals Longstreet and Bragg were up there, watching him descend into the valley. They were making plans to destroy him. Until the rest of his division could join him, Geary had but fifteen hundred men, and parts of Knap’s battery, in which his son Edward commanded a section. He worried that he had too few men to hold this isolated place if the rebels decided to come down off the mountain and strike him. Geary threw out pickets and ordered his men to sleep with muskets in their hands and cartridge boxes belted tight. During the evening, a citizen of the neighborhood came in and told Geary that he had seen Longstreet’s men that very day, not up on the mountain but right down here where Geary was standing . Around ten thirty a few of his skirmishers tripped over their rebel counterparts and they exchanged shots. After that, the valley went quiet. Everyone seemed to sense that the other shoe was about to drop. The moon illuminated a radius of one hundred yards around Geary’s men, and shortly after midnight lines of rebel infantry stepped into the edge of it and began firing for all they were worth. Geary’s pickets were shot down with the words of the challenge “Who goes there?” half out of their mouths, and the rebel line strode forward. The defenders formed a battle line in the shape of an L, corner out to the enemy, with their artillery tucked in behind, and began pouring fire out into the dark. Geary’s men had a thirty-yard length of rail fence from behind which they loaded and fired, but aside from that it was a stand-up fight done out in the open, with soldiers aiming their muskets at the orange flashes that marked the enemy. One rebel rank would move up, be shot down or driven back, and another would 280 The Battles around Chattanooga come right in its place. Rebel prisoners informed Geary that he was up against the South Carolinians of Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood’s division, Longstreet’s corps, commanded in this rare nighttime assault by Brig. Gen. Micah Jenkins. After three hours, Geary’s men ran low on ammunition. Runners gathered what they could from the cartridge boxes of dead and dying men stacking up around them. The crews serving Knap’s guns depressed the barrels, loaded short-fused spherical shot, and blasted holes in the enemy lines. The rebels were close enough that their yells “Pick off the artillery!” could be heard clearly above the roar. Knap’s gunners began to go down two or three at a time, both men and horses tangled together in the guns. Although surprised, Geary had not been taken off guard, and except for the Negro teamsters who drove off at the first fire, Geary’s line had not budged a single foot. The fighting went on by some accounts until the sky was going gray in the east. At last, the rebels backed away. The rebels had suffered severely. Geary’s gravediggers buried 153 rebel soldiers at the scene...

Share