Terrible Swift Sword by Joseph Wheelan Page A

Burnside’s army out of Knoxville.
    Longstreet and Bragg had been at swords’ points since Chickamauga over how to proceed against the Yankees in Chattanooga—Longstreet wanting to take the offensive, Bragg preferring to starve them out. In late October, Confederate president Jefferson Davis visited the army, ostensibly to reconcile the two commanders. Dissatisfaction was also endemic among Bragg’s subordinate officers, who were fed up with his habit of squandering hard-fought victories.
    It is puzzling that Davis sent Longstreet to Knoxville, weakening Bragg’s force at Chattanooga, just as the Union army was adding tens of thousands of troops. Davis might have done it to separate Longstreet and Bragg, or to prevent Burnside from reinforcing Grant, or possibly to win a double victory. Whatever the reason, when Grant learned that Longstreet had gone, he prepared to go on the offensive. In his Personal Memoirs , Grant observed that President Davis “had an exalted opinion of his own military genius,” sarcastically adding, “On several occasions during the war he came to the relief of the Union army by means of his superior military genius .” 28
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    NOVEMBER 25, 1863–MISSIONARY RIDGE—Thirteen Union divisions numbering about 75,000 troops were either already in motion or poised to assault the towering heights to the south and east of Chattanooga. Arrayed against them were
Braxton Bragg’s seven remaining Rebel divisions, with about 43,000 effectives. This was the day that Grant had ordained for ending the siege of the city.
    Sheridan’s and Wood’s divisions were dug in on Orchard Knob, which they had stormed two days earlier. Before them, rising up from the valley floor, was the long silhouette of Missionary Ridge. Sunshine winked off the muskets and cannons of the Rebels in rifle pits at the ridge’s base. Between it and the crest was another line of rifle pits, up a steep slope littered with boulders and fallen timber. Atop the ridge were more enemy troops, with cannons that intermittently shelled the two divisions.
    The troops on Orchard Knob had been idle all day, as had the Rebel infantrymen on the heights facing them. However, Bragg’s headquarters at the Thurman house, directly opposite them on the ridge crest, had been a hive of activity.
    Early on November 23, a Confederate deserter had been brought before Sheridan with startling news: Bragg was preparing to fall back into Georgia. This information and other intelligence reaching Union headquarters convinced Grant that he must attack and defeat the Confederates surrounding Chattanooga without delay—before they slipped away to the south.
    At 11 a.m. on November 23, Grant ordered Thomas to drive in the Rebel pickets and test the enemy lines to see if they were still held in force. Thomas instructed Major General Gordon Granger to ready his two IV Corps divisions for action. Wood’s division would lead the assault, with Sheridan’s division supporting it. The objective, Orchard Knob, was a small, lightly timbered hill that jutted one hundred feet above the Chattanooga Valley.
    At 1:30 p.m., Grant, Thomas, Granger, Hooker, Assistant War Secretary Charles Dana, and other dignitaries watched from Fort Wood as Sheridan’s and Wood’s 10,000 men began their steady advance on Orchard Knob. “Flags were flying; the quick earnest steps of thousands beat equal time,” wrote Granger’s chief of staff, Brigadier General Joseph S. Fullerton. Drums rat-a-tatted, bugles sounded, and officers shouted commands. Ten thousand bayonets flashed like “a flying shower of electric sparks,” noted Fullerton.
    The Rebels on Orchard Knob left their gun pits to watch the spectacle, believing it was a grand review. When, minutes later, it dawned on them that the Union troops were in fact attacking, they scrambled back to their positions and began firing. After a sharp, short struggle,