November 1, 1863 According to Abbott, “there has been some pretty hard fighting done here since we moved our camp and there is cannonading going on nearly every day!” Abbott’s regiment is camped out in Chattanooga, TN, which later in the month would see a few significant battles. One was the Battle of Lookout Mountain, occurring on November 24, 1863. Abbott, while not knowing that a battle would happen there in three weeks’ time, makes reference to this site. He informs his family that the Confederates had set up a battery at the very top of Lookout Mountain and they were continuously “pounding away at us nearly all the time…” Clearly, even weeks before the actual battle, little skirmishes were breaking out in this area. Nicknamed the “battle above the clouds,” the Battle of Lookout Mountain itself was one of the key battles in securing Chattanooga for the Union, along with Missionary Ridge. The Union capture of the mountain helped to break apart the Confederate siege of Chattanooga. For a few months leading up to this point, Confederate troops had set up camps on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge just outside of the city. The Union forces scaled the mountain, taking advantage of fog to cover their advance. The Confederates had roughly 1,200 men facing 12,000 Union soldiers, as they had assumed their position on the mountain would give them a significant advantage. However, this was not the case, as they ended up leaving their camp later that day. With the Union victory at Missionary Ridge the next day, these Union victories proved to be extremely beneficial to the Union army as it gained access to the Deep South, making way for General Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign later in the war. Like I said before, this letter was written about three weeks before the Battle of Lookout Mountain. I thought it was cool that Abbott mentioned there was already some early signs of battle almost a month in advance and decided it wouldn’t hurt to summarize the battle anyway. It’s not one that I had ever heard of since, while it was still important, it isn’t one of the large-scale battles mentioned in your average history class. Works Cited: The History Channel: This Day in History. ”Union Troops Prevail at the Battle of Lookout Mountain.” http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/-battle-of-lookout-mountain (accessed January 31, 2014). The Civil War Trust: Saving America’s Civil War Battlefields. “Chattanooga.” http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/chattanooga.html?tab=facts (accessed January 31, 2014). Photo Credit: "Battle of Lookout Mountain." wikipedia.org - The image is an 1889 lithograph of the battle
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AuthorTessa Wakefield, student intern at the Concordia College Archives, assembled these blog entries in 2013-2014 for the Isaac Mark Abbott Civil War Letters Collection. The posts summarize the content of the letters, interpret Abbott's experiences and place them in the larger context of the Civil War. Archives
March 2014
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