Chattanooga, Tennessee National Battlefield Trip by Ruth Paget
One of the most interesting trips I have taken from Atlanta, Georgia is north to Chattanooga, Tennessee (1 ½ hours north barring traffic jams). My husband Laurent and I set out early for Chickamauga, Georgia and Chattanooga, Georgia battlefields one sweltering hot summer.
The Confederacy won the battle at Chickamauga first, but put the Union in position on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee to win the battle that set up the Atlanta Campaign to gain the railroad artery of the South. At the Battlefield Parkway exit in Georgia, we exited and drove through the Chickamauga Battlefield. The Chickamauga National Battlefield Park is about ¼ mile along Battlefield Parkway to the left, but we kept on driving to Fort Oglethorpe named after the founder of the Georgia colony.
At Fort Oglethorpe, we turned right towards the north and drove about 9 miles into Chattanooga. When the Confederates won Chickamauga in September of 1863, they thought they had routed the Union. However, in November 1863, the Union began battle again and prevailed.
The visitor center in Chattanooga notes that there are three different battle sites by Lookout Mountain above and around Chattanooga:
-Battle of Orchard Knob
-Battle of Lookout Mountain
-Battle of Missionary Ridge
The Lookout Mountain Battlefield sits above the Tennessee River, which meanders around the South. It is 652 miles long. The River starts at Knoxville, Tennessee and flows south and west through northern Alabama and parts of northern Mississippi. The Tennessee River empties at Paducah, Kentucky into the Ohio River just a few miles upstream from the Mississippi River. Obviously, in addition to the railroad, the Tennessee River could also move men, weapons, and supplies to both Confederate and Union forces.
The visitor center exhibit at Chattanooga, Tennessee notes that both sides tried to starve each other during these battles, but the Union was in a worse situation in their mountain location.
According to www.battlefields.org , the Union had the following to eat:
-4 cakes of hard bread
-a quarter pound of pork
Those were the rations for 3 days
Even with those rations, the Union won the Battle of Chattanooga and took control of the city, railroad, and the Tennessee River at Chattanooga and began their advance from mountainous Tennessee to hilly Atlanta, Georgia.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
