Battle of Chattanooga - Lookout Mountain
In order to lift the seige of Chattanooga, Lincoln took a number of immediate actions. He ordered 20,000 reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac to Chattanooga, and he appointed U.S. Grant as the overall commander of Union troops west of the Alleghenies. Grant took immediate action to improve the supply lines. Then, on November 24th, he launched his attack on Confederate lines. That day troops under, General Hooker, captured Lookout Mountain. The next day troops under General Thomas broke through the center of the Confederate lines and sent the Confederates in headlong retreat.
After the battle of Chickamauga the Confederates began a seige of Union occupied Chattanooga. Rosencrans wired Washington that without reinforcements he would be unable to hold it for very long. Washington, thus gave reinforcing Chattanooga its highest priority. The question was were could troops be brought from. The answer was the Army of the Potomac. The vehicle was the railroads. In a remarkable logistics movement 20,000 men with all of their equipment were transferred to Chattanooga in eleven days. It was the longest and fastest movement of troops in the 19th century.
Sending troops alone was not enough however, it was also decided that a new commander was needed. Thus the Division of the Mississippi was created spanning the Mississippi to the Alleghenies. US Grant was appointed the commander of it. He was given the option of maintaining Rosnecrans as the Commander of the Army of the Cumberland or replacing him, he decided to replace him with Sherman. Once he arrived in Chattanooga Grant's first goal was to open the supply route into Chattanooga. This he did with a well planned action in which elements of Hookers advancing corps combined with troops from Chattanooga to seize the crossings of the Tennessee River near the Raccoon Mountains. This became known as the Cracker line. Once this action was accomplished Grant's forces could resume receiving regular rations.
Grant's future success was further aided by dissension in the Confederate ranks. Bragg's subordinates all called for his removal. Confederate President Davis was forced to travel to Bragg's headquarters to try to work out the differences, something he failed to do. The only thing he did accomplish was to recommend the detachment of Longstreet, to reconquer Little Rock.
With the departure of Longstreet the momentum moved inextricably to Grant. By mid November Sherman had arrived from Vicksburg with an additional 17,000 men. Grant ordered Burnside who was outside Little Rock to keep Longstreet busy as long as possible. This he did, by avoiding battle and instead forcing Longstreet to begin a siege of the city.
Grant was now ready to assault the Confederate forces surrounding him at Chattanooga. His plan called for an attack on both flanks of the Confederate lines, while using Thomas's recently defeated forces as merely a feint in the center. Thus on November 24th Hooker's forces assaulted Lookout mountain. With relatively light casualties ( less than 500) Hookers forces successfully ascended Lookout mountain. Sherman forces on the other hand were having a harder time of it. On the 24th they successfully ascended the other end of the confederate lines, only to find that it was not part of Missionary Ridge, but a separate hill. The next morning on the 25th Shermans forces attempted to assault the end of Mission Ridge with little success. Finally, exasperated Grant ordered Thomas forces to make a limited assault in the center to relieve some of the pressure on Sherman. The assault by the veteran of Chickamauga succeeded beyond all expectations. Thomas forces sprinted up the open plain, straight at the first line of Confederate forces and overcame them swiftly. Grant and the other commanders watching from below at Orchard Knob were shocked to see the Union soldiers advance from the first line of confederate fortification and head straight up the hill without orders. The defenders were similarly shocked and fell back in total disarray. In a few minutes all of the Confederate positions were overrun and Missionary Ridge was in Union hands. The Confederate retreated almost 30 miles towards Atlanta.
