Bump for 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.
Meanwhile, as Lincoln was giving his speech, one of the three major Union armies (the Army of the Cumberland) was penned up in Chattanooga following the rout at Chickamauga. Help had (and was) arrived, however, in the form of U.S. Grant and two corps from his Army of the Tennessee. On November 23, Fighting Joe Hooker fought the battle of the clouds, taking the Confederate position on Lookout Mountain. Two days later, Sherman launched what was to be the main attack, but Confederate forces under Pat Cleburne, despite being outnumbered 4-to-1, held him off.
A frustrated Grant ordered the battered Army of the Cumberland to take the Confederate rifle pits at the base of Missionary Ridge. The men rumbled forward, easily capturing the pits, and then, without orders, charged up the slope itself. The Confederate defenders had been placed too far back on the slope to effectively fire down at them, and often were blocked from firing at all due to their own men (from the pits) retreating before the Union advance. The Union soldiers captured the ridge, and the Confederates retreated pell-mell into Georgia, saved from destruction only by Cleburne's stand at Ringgold Gap. Missionary Ridge/the Battles for Chattanooga would be the only battle in which elements from all three major Union armies (Cumberland, Potomac, and Tennessee) would take part.
Lookout Mountain is a bear to get up to, but I highly recommend the battlefield to anyone in the area. Missionary Ridge is lined with houses, but has a beautiful monument (to Illinois, IIRC), and gives you an idea of the incredible bravery shown by the Union troops in advancing up the heights. Chickamauga is nearby (technically part of the same park), and is very well preserved. The whole battlefield probably ranks third on my list, behind only Gettysburg and Sharpsburg.
A last note on Cleburne: despite being the best general in the Army of Tennessee (not to be confused with the Union's Army of the Tennessee, named for the river rather than the state), Cleburne never advanced in division command. This is in large part, if not entirely, due to the fact that shortly after the rout at Missionary Ridge, he proposed to the army's ranking officers that the Confederacy enlist slaves in their armies and grant them and their families freedom in exchange for service. The idea, predictably, did not go over very well. A little over a year later, however, when a man named Robert E. Lee got behind the idea, the CSA finally gave in and raised a handful of slave companies. They were drilling in Richmond at the time the city fell, and there are even a few accounts of them participating in rear-guard skirmishing during the retreat to Appomattox. Cleburne, however, wouldn't live to see it. He was shot down during the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, as always, at the head of his men.
