I'm what you would call an amateur historian. I don't have a history degree, but I've lived in the Chattanooga area, surrounded by the nation's oldest and largest military park, for most of my life, and I've always been curious about what happened here. It's hard to believe that this place where I live used to be a battlefield where thousands were killed or wounded while fighting for what they believed in. I stand on the crest of Missionary Ridge and look at the beautiful homes around me (some with a cannon or two or a plaque in the front yard marking out a unit's location during the battle) and wonder about the men who defended this hill. I look out at the valley below and wonder what possessed those men to charge up the steep slope. On the other side of the valley is Lookout Mountain, where another battle took place. Between Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, in the valley, is Orchard Knob, scene of a minor little skirmish that kicked off the Battles for Chattanooga, and the National Cemetery, the burial place of thousands that died in that war and later ones, including some of Andrews Raiders, who were captured and executed after the Great Locomotive Chase. A few miles to the south, across the Georgia state line, is the Chickamauga Battlefield. The history is all around me.
This blog started out as a general Civil War blog with an emphasis on the Chattanooga Campaign. As the 150th anniversary of the war approached in 2011, this blog turned into an almanac-style day-to-day history of the war. Due to some personal vexations, I got behind on the day-to-day recounting. I got caught up momentarily before some additional vexations caused me to fall behind again, then finally call a halt to the project. I hope to eventually finish the almanac with, for clarity's sake, the entries postdated to fall within the 150th anniversary timeline.
The Chattanooga history posts that were originally here have been transferred to a new blog, Chattanooga's Civil War.
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