Pilgrimage to Chickamauga

While visiting Norris' family in N. Georgia this past weekend, Norris and Cheryl took an afternoon to revisit the battlefield at Chickamauga, where Cheryl's great-grandfather fought with the 82nd Regiment, Indiana Volunteers. For this trip, we went off the automobile tour to find the markers in the woods where some of the action took place. We will post the photos in chronological order with the battle.

One thing we did not previously realize was the Chickamauga and Chattanooga Battlefield Park was the first military park in the United States, created in 1890.

Our first stop is off the Reeds Bridge road, near the north east corner of the park. A third of a mile foot trail over level ground led us to this marker. Markers like these were placed with the help of Veterans before the park was officially created. This one marks the location of the action the 82nd saw on the first day of the battle, September 19th, 1863.



This is how the marker looks when you have passed beyond it on a spur trail -


And for scale, here is Norris with the marker -



The Park has placed the same type of artillery in the positions occupied during the battle. These were the guns the 82nd was supporting.




This interpretive panel was a short walk farther along the trail and tells what happened there - click on the picture and you should be able to read the text.

Rodger Ruddick's book, From the Hayfields to the Battlefields (pages 155-6) gives more details about the role the 82nd played on the 19th of September supporting General Van Derveer's brigade. (The Forrest mentioned in the panel is the one and only Nathan Bedford Forrest).

Now we head to the center of the park for the action the 82nd saw on the second day of the battle, September 20th, 1863.

In this next picture, we are looking over the Union line of battle towards the line of the Confederates -


While we were there, I read the description of the action from Rodger Ruddick's book (pages 156-159) which describes Col. Hunter's orders and what happened to the 82nd at this critical point of the battle.



Back in the woods is the marker showing the position of the 82nd -


The ribbon on the wreath read XIV Army. We did not see any others like it in the park. It might have been placed there on the 20th of September.





A short walk further and you come to an opening of the woods onto a field, which is where the Ohio regiments on the 82nd's right had been positioned.



Cheryl had studied Rodger Ruddick's book and other histories. Every version of the battle tells of the mistaken report that there was a hole in the Union line and that Rosecrans ordered General Woods to move men in order to plug the supposed gap. That action left a real hole in the line at the very spot where Confederate General Longstreet ordered his troops, newly arrived by train from Virginia, to attack, leading to the defeat of the Union Army. However, it was only when standing at at this spot on the battlefield that we understood that the 82nd Indiana was but a short distance to the left of that hole in the Union line, with only the 17th and 31st Ohio between them and the gap where the Army of Northern Virginia attacked and was able to start taking over the field. And only on the battlefield itself do you realize how little space a regiment (nominally 1000 men in Civil War times) actually occupied on the front lines. At that point, you get a real feeling for what happened as you read the description from From the Hayfields, of Colonel Hunter ordering the 82nd to lie down while the retreating Ohioans ran over them, then to pop up and fire before retreating themselves.

This next photo shows the view into the woods that the advancing Army of Northern Virginia would have had, the field with the split rail fence just behind them. The Indiana marker is not visible in the photo, but it's a very short way to the right, beyond where the trail seems to split.


Then from history .... (this next panel is at the Visitor's Center on the north side of the park.)

... we know that General Thomas' XIV Army Corps fell back to Snodgrass Hill, where they held off the Confederates while the Union Army fled back to Chattanooga. Rodger Ruddick's book gives a lot more detail about the actions of Colonel Hunter and his men of the 82nd as the first on the hill. We had pictures from the monument to the 82nd before, but will post them here as well -


As with all of the pictures, clicking on that image should allow reading of the text. This panel reviews the action of the 19th and earlier on the 20th before explaining what happened on Snodgrass Hill.

And here is the Park Service's marker -


Norris stands next to the monument -



A view of the position the 82nd held, looking toward the Dyer field they had crossed and from which the Confederates repeatedly attacked the hill until nightfall.


And a view to the right of the hill, where the parking lot for the driving tour is located.



On a future visit, we will need see if anyone has made a marker map for the Battle of Chattanooga so that we may find where the 82nd supported installation of the pontoon bridges over the Tennessee River, to open the Cracker Line that fed the besieged army, and where they attacked up Missionary Ridge on the 25th of November. Driving around the now residential neighborhoods on Missionary Ridge there seems to be a marker every few feet, so a map would be invaluable.