Grant reached his new command by way of Louisville, Kentucky, where he met the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, who brought with him the order of October 18, as well as General Grant’s commission. Grant sent from Louisville the following telegram to Thomas, “Hold Chattanooga at all hazards. I will be there as soon as possible. Please inform me how long your present supplies will last, and the prospect for keeping them up.” General Thomas answered: “Two hundred and four thousand four hundred and sixty-two rations in storehouses; ninety thousand to arrive tomorrow, and all the trains were loaded which had arrived at Bridgeport up to the 16th—probably three hundred wagons. I will hold the town till we starve.”
On October 19, Thomas ordered General Hooker to carry out the former orders of General Rosecrans, namely to concentrate his forces at Bridgeport, in order to move them to Chattanooga.
General Grant arrived at Chattanooga on the evening of October 23, one month after the Union troops had taken possession of the city. On the 24th he went to Brown’s Ferry in company with Thomas and W. F. Smith, the chief engineer; at once he recognized the necessity and possibility of the scheme, initiated by General Rosecrans, but conceived and planned by W. F. Smith, of placing a pontoon bridge there and of obtaining a hold on the south side of the river at that point, and he ordered its execution; much had already been done toward preparing for it. General Smith was given full power to complete the plan. The river at Chattanooga runs almost directly west opposite the city, but soon it curves to the north and then it turns to the south with quite a sharp bend at the foot of Lookout Mountain, from where the river runs directly north, forming a narrow and perfect peninsula directly opposite or west of the city. This peninsula widens slightly at its southern end and forms a perfect shape of a human foot; hence it is called “Moccasin Point.” Brown’s Ferry is directly west of the city, on the western point of the neck of this peninsula, some miles below Lookout. It is only about a mile in direct line to Brown’s Ferry from the northern end of the bridge, at the foot of Cameron Hill in the western outskirts of the city. From Brown’s Ferry the river continues north, and passes Williams Island; five or more miles from the ferry, it makes another sharp turn to the south at the foot of Walden’s Ridge; in the course of six or seven miles from this northern bend it flows tortuously past Kelly’s Ferry. The peninsula thus formed, is the northern nose of Raccoon Mountain. From Brown’s to Kelly’s Ferry is about five miles in direct line somewhat to the southwest, and, as said before, it is one mile across to Chattanooga. It is about five miles from Cameron Hill bridge to Brown’s Ferry, but from where the boats for the Brown’s Ferry bridge subsequently started, it is about nine miles, and to Kelly’s Ferry more than fifteen, perhaps twenty miles. These figures show the value to the transportation, of obtaining unobstructed access to Kelly’s Ferry as a landing for steamboats bringing supplies from Bridgeport across Brown’s Ferry, when it should come into possession of the Union Army by the advance of Hooker, until the railroad could be repaired or put into working order from Bridgeport to Chattanooga. The movement of troops which accomplished this, also, gave the army a lodgment on the south side of the river, to meet, and assist, Hooker’s forces coming from Bridgeport, thus breaking the Confederate hold upon the river road to Bridgeport. Under General Smith’s orders and supervision, the plans were successfully carried out. Two flatboats and fifty pontoons, with cars, were prepared. In these, 1,500 men under Hazen passed down the river nine miles, and close to the Confederate pickets. They were to land at different points in sections, the places having been pointed out previously to the officers in command. On account of the darkness fires were kept burning opposite these places, so that the different sections could land at the proper points. The remainder of Turchin’s and Hazen’s brigades—from which the men in the boats were taken—and their batteries, were marched across the peninsula, and posted out of sight in the woods, near Brown’s Ferry on the north side of the river.
The infantry troops were to cross in the boats, as soon as the men under Hazen landed on the south side, and recross to the north side. The artillery was to move into position as soon as the boats landed, in order to cover a retreat in case of disaster. The equipment for the pontoon bridge was also in place and ready for use. The boats commenced to float at 3 a. m. October 27, and they were not discovered by the enemy until 5 a. m., when the first section had landed; a portion of the second section, which did not land in the proper place, was fired on by the enemy’s picket, calling forth an attack by the picket-reserve of the enemy. But the Union troops on the north side of the ferry crossed rapidly in the boats, pushed forward to the top of the ridge, and in two hours they protected themselves sufficiently with timber and abatis to hold the tête de pont. On the 27th the bridge was completed at 4:30 p. m.; the work was done under some shelling from Lookout Point. Captain P. V. Fox of the First Michigan Engineers was the skillful superintendent of the bridge building. Twenty beeves, six pontoons, a barge and about 2,000 bushels of corn fell into the hands of the Union troops. The Union loss was 6 killed, 23 wounded, and 9 missing. Six prisoners were taken from the Confederates and 6 were killed; how many were wounded is not known. While the bridge was being laid, General Hooker crossed the river at Bridgeport on a pontoon bridge, and was marching up towards Chattanooga. At 3 p. m. on the 28th, his head of column reached Wauhatchie, in Lookout Valley, at the junction of the railroad from Bridgeport, with the branch from Trenton up the valley. The wagon road from here to Brown’s Ferry runs about four miles, along the western base of a ridge, which here and there has deep depressions; through one of these the railroad continued to Chattanooga, around the nose of Lookout, close to the river; through another the wagon road runs. General Hooker had with him Howard’s Eleventh Corps, and Geary’s division of the Twelfth, with the exception of one regiment left at the bridge at Bridgeport, one at Whiteside’s and one at Shellmound; the latter two places being on the railroad between Bridgeport and Chattanooga.
The First Division of the Twelfth Corps, (Williams), had been left to guard the railroad from Murfreesboro to Bridgeport. In Ruger’s brigade of this division was the Third Wisconsin Infantry, commanded by Colonel William Hawley. This regiment had been mustered into the service on June 29, 1861, and had been serving with the Army of the Potomac since that date until now, when it became a part of the Army of the Cumberland. In the Second Brigade of the Third Division, (Schurz) of the Eleventh Corps was the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin Infantry, commanded by Captain Frederick C. Winkler, who was appointed Major November 17, 1863. It was exclusively a German regiment, and was mustered in at Milwaukee on August 17, 1862. On the following October 6, it left Wisconsin for the Army of the Potomac, in which it served until it became a part of the Eleventh Corps under Howard and Hooker of the Army of the Cumberland.
Hooker’s advance troops, under General Howard, camped that night within a mile or so of Brown’s Ferry, where they opened communication with the troops there. Geary’s division was in the rear and camped near Wauhatchie, three miles from Howard’s troops; thus the road from Wauhatchie to Kelly’s Ferry—three miles to the northwest of Wauhatchie—was controlled. About 1 a. m. on the 29th, Geary was heavily attacked by a part of Longstreet’s troops, but not before he had his division in line for defense. Howard was ordered to double quick his nearest division, under command of General Carl Schurz, to Geary’s relief. Before proceeding far, it was fired upon from the near hills on the division’s left, but at long range. The firing produced no great injury to Schurz’s troops. Howard detached one brigade to deploy on these hills, and pushed on with the other; in the meantime Steinwehr’s division, also of Howard’s, came up. Then it was discovered that another hill, in the rear of Schurz was also occupied by the enemy. Smith’s brigade charged it and carried it with the bayonet against three times its number.
Hooker says, “No troops ever rendered more brilliant service. The name of their valiant commander is Colonel Orlando Smith of the Seventy-third Ohio Infantry. * * * For almost three hours, without assistance Geary repelled the repeated attacks of vastly superior numbers, and in the end drove them ingloriously from the field.” Thus the Lookout Valley was secured, and new communications were opened. The loss to General Hooker’s command was 416. Longstreet practically conceded that the Union commander had succeeded in opening this new line of communication, but spoke lightly of it. Whittaker’s and John G. Mitchell’s brigades were subsequently moved over to this region. The steamboat at Chattanooga passed down on the night of the 28th; thereafter two steamboats (one had been built at Bridgeport), made regular trips with supplies from Bridgeport to Kelly’s Ferry. Good roads were made from Chattanooga via Brown’s to Kelly’s Ferry and the railroad from Bridgeport towards the east was being repaired. There was no shortage of rations or forage after these rapid preparations were commenced to attack the enemy in his strong positions around the city. Hope and confidence had always inspired the Army of the Cumberland; the rank and file had never despaired; now, they took the lead in anticipating that the end was in sight; success in battle depends very much on the condition of the human body and the enthusiasm of the spirit.
The feeble and ineffectual efforts of Longstreet to prevent the opening of the river, and the advance of Hooker’s troops, opened the eyes of all the general officers of the Army of the Cumberland to the weakness of the Confederate Army, both in the ranks and among the officers. General Longstreet, in his official report of the battle of Wauhatchie, attributes his defeat to the jealousy of brigade officers.[35] The Confederate troops, making the attack on General Geary, were withdrawn from the east side of Lookout, but they returned immediately before daylight on the night of the attack. General Longstreet gave reasons for this action; he showed that it was not good military tactics to keep a large force on that side of the mountain, where its only line of retreat was around the slope of Lookout; if it were defeated, it would be exposed to the fire of the Union troops at and opposite Chattanooga. These reasons were sound and foreshadowed the ease with which Hooker’s forces, on November 24, drove the enemy so easily and captured Lookout Mountain. It was after this defeat, that Bragg (for reasons unknown), sent Longstreet’s Corps toward Knoxville to assist in defeating Burnside. Bragg hoped that it could be returned in time to assist in the battle, that he knew must be fought at Chattanooga. Longstreet took with him the two divisions of McLaws and Hood, and Alexander’s cavalry. Wheeler’s cavalry passed him on the road; it was supposed to do certain things that it failed to do. Longstreet recommended that Bragg’s army should be drawn back in a strong position behind the Chickamauga, after the departure of Longstreet’s troops in November; his reason for this recommendation was, that in its present position it could be reached in twenty minutes by the Union Army. Bragg seemed to be blind, however, to the events so rapidly transpiring in Chattanooga; he did not seem to realize that the troops Longstreet had fought at Wauhatchie, were reinforcements from the East to the Union Army.
In the meantime the Confederate batteries on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge sent an occasional artillery shot into the Union lines. The pickets of the two armies held their lines close to each other in the valley and watched each other’s movements, firing whenever a soldier on his beat became visible. There being no good reason for this desultory and ineffectual warfare, an agreement was finally reached, that the pickets should fire only when advances of troops became apparent; henceforth, an officer could with impunity ride along the picket line in plain view of the opposite pickets.
As soon as Grant became aware of Longstreet’s departure for East Tennessee, he prepared for an attack on Bragg’s army in order to keep him from detaching more troops against Burnside and to compel him to return those already sent. He ordered General Thomas to assault the north end of Missionary Ridge; the order was given November 7; but on account of the utter lack of animals—caused not only by the great loss in the recent battles, but also by the death of a large number from starvation since the occupation of the city—it was finally decided by Grant, Thomas, and Smith, that nothing but a defensive attitude would be feasible until General Sherman’s forces could arrive. The necessity for aggressive operations, on account of Bragg’s boldness in taking such a desperate chance as to send a large force commanded by his ablest general away from his weak little army, increased the activity of the Union Army in its preparation for battle, and thus was opened a way for the relief of Burnside; the hope was that he could hold out until help arrived.