Chattanooga Campaign

The Chattanooga Campaign followed the Union defeat at Chickamauga in September 1863. The Army of the Cumberland withdrew into Chattanooga, where Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee occupied the surrounding heights and threatened its supply lines. Ulysses S. Grant was placed in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi and worked with George H. Thomas, William Tecumseh Sherman and Joseph Hooker to reopen communications and prepare an offensive.

Fighting at Wauhatchie secured the so-called Cracker Line, bringing food and reinforcements into the city. In November, Union attacks at Orchard Knob and Lookout Mountain were followed by the assault on Missionary Ridge. The Confederate position collapsed, forcing Bragg’s army to retreat into Georgia and ending the immediate threat to Chattanooga.

The campaign opened the route towards Atlanta and made Chattanooga a major Union base for operations in the Deep South. Historical fiction about the campaign can move between command decisions, exhausted soldiers, civilians under siege and the political consequences of a Confederate defeat after the victory at Chickamauga.