Norris and Cheryl took advantage of sunny skies and relative warmth on Friday to discover some of the landmarks for the Battle of Chattanooga that took place 150 years ago on 23-25 November. We hoped to use a local mobile map app but found it was not responsive. We had the two most important addresses with us so we used those and Cheryl's reading of the history and other visitors' blogs to navigate to the locations of interest, i.e. places where the 82nd Indiana Volunteers played their part in the battle.
For reading the text on the park service's panels, you can click on the images for a larger view.
Our first stop was at Orchard Knob, located in a modest neighborhood in Chattanooga. The memorial park takes up a city block. The first photo is from the perspective of a street corner and does not do justice to the impressive height of the knob.
Orchard Knob was taken by the Union forces on the 23rd, after which Grant set up his headquarters here.
The next photo shows the view to the north east, in the direction that Baird's division went up Missionary Ridge on the 25th. Notice the large hospital complex in the middle ground.
Here the camera is looking more straight east toward Missionary Ridge. We've heard and read the story about the Hooker's success at Lookout Mountain while Sherman was stalled at Tunnel Hill, trying to come south. The men in Thomas' army were ordered to take the rifle pits at the base of the ridge, but finding the fire there made those positions untenable, fought their way up the ridge and took the crest.
Here we're looking toward the south and Lookout Mountain, where Hooker's forces took control on the 24th.
This panel summarizes the action of the Fourteenth Army Corps. At this point in the war, the 82nd served in Baird's division.
This is a closeup of one of the Michigan monuments we found interesting. Michigan's monuments seem to be characterized by these frieze panels. The monuments were placed by the states decades after the war. Some of them are for units which did not actually see action at the knob, but this area is preserved by the National Park so it serves as the designated area for them.
From Orchard Knob, we headed to Crest Road on the Ridge. Norris' nephew-in-law DeWayne had taken us up on Crest Road several years ago, but at the time, we did not know where the 82nd was in the order of battle. This time, we'd done our homework. As mentioned above, the 82nd was in Baird's division in John Basil Turchin's brigade. Turchin was born in Russia - his real name was Ivan Vasilyevish Turchaninov - and he was already a controversial character in the Union Army because of the actions of his men in Athens, Alabama in 1862.
But keeping this blog post with the purpose of our visit, we stopped at this reservation. Crest Road is a neighborhood of high-end homes with spectacular views over the city of Chattanooga on one side and towards the Appalachians on the other. Many interpretive panels are located in front yards, but the road is dotted with these "Reservations" that also have signs and memorials.
It is not easy to appreciate the steepness of the climb up here - the slope is covered with vegetation that was not there at the time of the battle.
This panel is one that tells the story of some of the CSA units that Turchin's brigade engaged with.
Another view from the ridge - notice Memorial Hospital in the middle ground.
Our next stop was at the DeLong Reservation. This is where we found the interpretive panel for the 82nd.
These next two panels, also found at the DeLong reservation, are self-explanatory.
At the edge of the clearing at this Reservation are a couple of cannon
and this panel -
Sending your artillery piece down the hill sounds like an act of desperation, but it made a more effective weapon that way since the guns were useless once the Union line started to advance up the ridge as the panel explains.
This is a wide-angle view at the DeLong Reservation back toward the road and the tony homes.
Here is one more panel describing the action:
Back at the Chickamauga battlefield on Saturday, we stopped at Snodgrass Hill for another visit to the 82nd's large monument. (We blogged about that in 2009 - photos and story at
this link. The first photos are from other places in the battlefield - Snodgrass Hill is covered in the last six photos of that post.)
While we were re-reading the panels, the Park Rangers came up leading a group of visitors in a car tour, so we stayed to hear what they had to say about this scene of the last part of the Battle of Chickamauga.
Apparently, the man on the right had been leading the tour, but in the cold air, his voice was giving out. The younger ranger talked about how the line formed on this ridge near the Snodgrass home, and told the dramatic story of the death of the second in command of one of the Illinois regiments on a farther knoll. Even more dramatic was the description of the identification of his body by his 17 year old son, 5 months later. We could see from where we stood how, as the Union line extended from knoll to knoll, the charging Confederates would have been in the crossfire of those soldiers at the top. Cheryl's Great-grandfather John was among those firing in their faces as they came up the hill.
The action that afternoon was dramatized by the tour leader, who read from a 19th Illinois Regiment soldier's recollection of the fighting. The 19th Illinois monument is right next to the 82nd, so his vivid descriptions of the fighting would match what the 82nd witnessed. Our guide, like Cheryl, wondered about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among the survivors.
