King's Pyramid

At the Chickamauga Battlefield, pyramids of cannonballs mark where high-ranking officers died during the battle. This pyramid marks the spot where Col. Edward A. King (USA) died. The Kelly family's home is in the background.

The Parrott Rifle

This is another post in a series on Civil War weaponry.

In 1860 Robert P. Parrott developed the Parrott gun at his West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York.  The first models were 10-, 20- and 30-pounders, but by the end of the Civil War 300-pounders were in production.  They were made of cast and wrought iron and identifiable by the reinforcing band around their breeches.  The guns were used in all theaters of the war by both armies and navies; the Confederates produced their own versions.


a 10-pounder Parrott gun -- photo taken at the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitors' Center

Parrotts were extremely practical.  They could be operated and manufactured easily, but there were safety issues.  They tended to crack and burst.  In 1862, Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery for the Army of the Potomac, tried to ban them from that army's inventory, and in 1889 the New York Times called on the Ordnance Bureau to ban them altogether after a series of mishaps at West Point.

Parrott's patent for his guns centered on the process of attaching the reinforcing band to the breech.  On most guns, the band was heated, slipped on the gun and allowed to cool.  Sometimes the band and tube were threaded and sometimes they were tapered, but the tube always remained stationary while the band was attached.  Parrott's method involved rotating the tube on rollers and spraying water inside to keep it cool while the hot band was slipped on.  Rotating the tube caused the band to clamp itself in place uniformly as it cooled.

Robert Parker Parrott was born in Lee, New Hampshire on October 5, 1804.  He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1824, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery Regiment.  He served as an assistant to the chief of the Ordnance Bureau and was assigned as an inspector of ordnance at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York.  He eventually resigned from the army to accept a position as superintendent of the foundry.  Parrott worked here for the next 41 years, eventually becoming lessee and operator of the foundry.

Before the war the foundry manufactured all types of cannon, but during the war years, the foundry's heyday, it focused on the manufacture of Parrott guns.  Parrott also developed the Parrott shell, the Parrott sight and the Parrott fuse.  After the war, Parrott retired from the foundry, but continued to experiment with artillery projectiles and fuses until his death in 1877.

The most famous Parrott gun was the Swamp Angel, which was used by the 11th Maine to bombard Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863.  The gun fired on the city 32 times before bursting.  The gun is now a monument in Cadwallader Park in Trenton, New Jersey.  Its fame comes from the Herman Melville poem "The Swamp Angel."

  A Parrott at Point Park on Lookout Mountain

The Chattanooga Country

Understanding the terrain of the Chattanooga area is key to understanding the Chattanooga Campaign. In this post I'll try to explain the terrain as clearly as I can with the help of a couple of Google Maps I've put together. We'll begin our journey in Chattanooga itself.




When the Civil War began in 1861, Chattanooga was still a very young town going through its fair share of growing pains.
 

"The reason Chattanooga is many years younger than her sisters, the reason she lacks the old pillared homes of other towns, the tradition of 'Before the War' grandeur, is because the Cherokee Indians clung to the little place with desperate strength and courage. It was practically the last beautiful remnant of their once marvelous country." -- Zella Armstrong

Looking south across the Tn. River to Ross's Landing

Chattanooga began in a bend of the Tennessee River known as Ross's Landing. John Ross, years before he became chief of the Cherokees, settled here in 1816. He established a trading post and a swing ferry that was anchored on Maclellan Island. It was a prime location on the northern border of the Cherokee Nation, just across the river from the United States. Ross moved to Georgia in 1826 to be closer to the political center of the Cherokee Nation. He sold his land at Ross's Landing to a Nicholas Dalton Scales, a Methodist minister.

Around the time that the Cherokees were ceding the last of their lands east of the Mississippi in the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, white settlers began drifting into the area in greater numbers. The fledgling settlement experienced its first growth spurt a couple of years later when it became the major embarkation point of the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears.

Almost as soon as the Cherokees were gone, the white settlers met at the log schoolhouse and voted to change the name of the settlement to Chattanooga. They soon began selling lots and laying out city streets. Nine streets ran north and south and were mainly named after trees. The central street was named Market Street. Nine streets ran east to west and were numbered.

Through some vociferous lobbying by some of Chattanooga's most prominent citizens, the town became a major railroad hub before the beginning of the Civil War. Work began on the south end of the Western & Atlantic Railroad in Marthasville, Georgia (now Atlanta) in 1839, but proceeded slowly. Eventually Chattanooga was chosen as the northern terminus of the line, and the railroad was finally completed in 1849. Chattanoogans complained that the railroad depot, on Ninth Street (now MLK Blvd.), about a mile from the waterfront, was too far on the outskirts of town, and benefited only the Crutchfields, who operated a hotel across the street. The Western & Atlantic was soon followed by the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad (in 1854), the Memphis & Charleston Railroad (1857) and the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad (1858), connecting Chattanooga to the rest of the United States in almost all directions.

Civil War era Chattanooga

Estimates vary, but when the war began in 1861, Chattanooga had approximately 5000 citizens. Most of the commercial activity in the town took place close to the river on Market Street. Most of the business buildings were small, one or two stories high, and unpretentious, mostly scattered on the west side of the street. The largest and fanciest building in town was the Crutchfield House, the hotel on 9th Street across from the depot. The buildings on the east side of Market Street were mostly houses. The finest houses were on the heights east of Market Street. More houses were scattered on Cameron Hill west of town.

The Crutchfield House

Cameron Hill is still a somewhat imposing presence west of downtown Chattanooga, looking like a miniature version of Lookout Mountain, but is vastly altered from its wartime appearance. In the early 1960s part of the east side of the hill was scraped away to make room for Highway 27 and the Olgiati Bridge. The southern portion of the ridgeline was also lowered and the top half of the hill removed.

There are a lot of hills, knolls and knobs east of town. To the south, the land is mostly flat all the way to the Georgia border.



This second map was created primarily for the purpose of marking the line of Missionary Ridge east of Chattanooga, but we can also use it to take a long view of the area.

The line of pins on the map shows the locations of Missionary Ridge's National Park Service Military Reservations and a couple of other points of interest. Missionary Ridge begins just south of the Tennessee River and meanders southward into Georgia, varying from a few meters to around 100 meters high, broken by just a very few gaps. The ridge presents a steep side rising from the plain on the west side, with undulating hills stretching to the east.

The Tennessee River takes a generally weird path. It's about 650 miles long, formed at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers in Knoxville, and flows mainly southwestward, looping through East Tennessee, into northern Alabama, where it changes direction, flowing northward, back through Tennessee and Kentucky, where it runs into the Ohio River. The river was much wilder before the Tennessee Valley Authority began constructing dams on it in the 1930s and 40s.

In the Chattanooga area, there are some interesting twist and turns. The river flows southwestward around a couple of bends until it runs into the north end of Lookout Mountain, where it makes a sharp turn to the north, carving out a generally foot-shaped section of land called Moccasin Bend at the northern foot of the mountain. The river then runs on both sides of Williams Island, then slices between Raccoon Mountain and Walden Ridge. After circling almost completely around Raccoon Mountain, it makes another couple of turns before diving southward into Alabama, passing through Bridgeport, the Union Army's supply base for most of the Chattanooga Campaign.

Moccasin Bend from Lookout Mountain

There is much mountainous terrain to the north and west of Chattanooga. This is respectively, the tail end of the Appalachian Mountains that dominate the eastern portion of the United States, and the Cumberland Plateau that dominates the central portion of Tennessee. Walden Ridge marks the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau and runs north for about 75 miles. Its highest point is Hinch Mountain, near Crossville, Tennessee. (Elevation: 929 meters)

During the siege of Chattanooga from September to November 1863, troops from the U.S. Army Signal Corps set up a post on the southernmost point of Walden Ridge. Using flags during the day and torches at night, this was virtually all the communication the besieged Union Army had with the outside world.  Their outpost was called Signal Point, and the southern part of the ridge became known as Signal Mountain.

Lookout Mountain rises up from the Tennessee River. It's a long ridge that runs through the northwest corner of Georgia into Alabama. The highest point (729 meters) is in Georgia.

Lookout Mountain

A couple of other points of interest:

The Chickamauga battlefield is on the western side of the southernmost part of Missionary Ridge.

Farther west is the city of Ringgold, Georgia, situated in a gap of Taylor Ridge. General Patrick Cleburne fought a rearguard action here on November 27, 1863, allowing Braxton Bragg's army to escape after the Battles of Chattanooga.

William Lytle, U.S.A.

Although he is virtually unknown today, at the time of the battle William Lytle was one of the most famous men on the field at Chickamauga. A popular pastime was to hold piano recitals and poetry readings in parlors and drawing rooms. Lytle's "Antony and Cleopatra," released in 1857, was one of the most popular poems in the North and South before the war.

William Haines Lytle was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 2, 1826, the scion of one of the most prominent Cincinnati families. He graduated from Cincinnati College (now the University of Cincinnati) and passed the bar. He started a law firm, but soon enlisted in the 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, serving in the Mexican-American War, where he rose to the rank of captain.

After the war, he resumed his law practice and began a political career, winning election to the Ohio legislature as a Democrat. He ran for Lieutenant Governor in 1857, losing by just a few hundred votes. He also lost a race for his party's nomination for his district's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1860.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Lytle was serving as a major general in the Ohio state militia. Although he was a pro-states' rights Democrat, Lytle chose to defend his country and was sent to the newly-established Camp Harrison to train the Ohio volunteers who answered Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion.

Through his military and political connections Lytle was commissioned as colonel of the 10th Ohio Infantry, and assigned to William Rosecrans's forces in western Virginia. He soon rose to command a brigade, but was severely wounded in the leg at the Battle of Carnifex Ferry on September 10, 1861.

After a convalescent period, Lytle briefly commanded a training camp at Bardstown, Kentucky, then was given command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio, first under Ormsby Mitchel, then in Lovell Rousseau's division. Lytle was again severely wounded at the Battle of Perrysville on October 8, 1862, and left for dead. He did not die, but was captured by the Confederates. On November 29, 1862, while still in captivity, Lytle was promoted to brigadier general.

In February of 1863, Lytle was paroled and rejoined the army, now named the Army of the Cumberland under the command of William Rosecrans. He was given command of the 1st Brigade of the Third Division (Sheridan's) of XX Corps (McCook's).

Lytle's brigade did not reach the battlefield at Chickamauga until after dark on September 19, 1863, after marching for seventeen days straight with the corps's baggage. They were positioned near the Widow Glenn's. The next day he was ordered by Sheridan to march to the north to join George Thomas's position on the left side of the line. Lytle had barely begun the movement when Confederates broke through the Union line directly in front of him. Lytle quickly formed his men into battle lines, but they were quickly overwhelmed. Seeing that his situation was hopeless, Lytle ordered a counterattack in a vain attempt to slow the Confederate advance. To his regiment, Lytle said, "All right, men, we can die but once. This is the time and place. Let us charge." Lytle had barely begun his charge when a bullet struck him near the spine, but he stayed on his horse in the front of his men. Then, three bullets struck him almost at once. One, which struck him in the face, was mortal. He was 36.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

"Reaction to Lytle's death in Cincinnati was remarkable," Gampfer says. "It was the biggest military funeral procession in the history of the city." He is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery. Six weeks before his death, when presented (a) Maltese cross by members of his old regiment, Lytle ended a speech this way:

"That the day of ultimate triumph for the Union arms, sooner or later, will come, I do not doubt, for I have faith in the courage, the wisdom, and the justice of the people. It may not be for all of us here today to listen to the chants that greet the victor, nor to hear the brazen bells ring out the new nuptials of the States.

"But those who do survive can tell, at least, to the people, how their old comrades, whether in the skirmish or the charge ... died with their harness on, in the great war for Union and Liberty."

"Antony and Cleopatra"

I am Dying, Egypt, dying,
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,
And the dark Plutonian shadows
Gather on the evening blast;
Let thine arms, O Queen, enfold me,
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear;
Listen to the great heart-secrets,
Thou, and thou alone, must hear.

Though my scarr'd and veteran legions
Bear their eagles high no more,
And my wreck'd and scatter'd galleys
Strew dark Actuim's fatal shore,
Though no glittering guards surround me,
Prompt to do their master's will,
I must perish like a Roman,
Die the great Triumvir still.

Let not Caesar's servile minions
Mock the lion thus laid low;
'Twas no foeman's arm that fell'd him,
'Twas his own that struck the blow;
His who, pillow'd on thy bosom,
Turn'd aside from glory's ray,
His who, drunk with thy caresses,
Madly threw a world away.

Should the base plebeian rabble
Dare assail my name at Rome,
Where my noble spouse, Octavia,
Weeps within her widow'd home,
Seek her; say the gods bear witness -
Altars, augurs, circling wings -
That her blood, with mine commingled,
Yet shall mount the throne of kings.

As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian,
Glorious sorceress of the Nile,
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile.
Give the Caesar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine;
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.

I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Hark! the insulting foeman's cry.
They are coming! quick, my falchion,
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell;
Isis and Osiris guard thee!
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell!

At the Chickamauga battlefield, the spots where high-ranking officers died are marked by pyramids of cannonballs. Over the years, cannonballs were removed from Lytle's pyramid to replace those that were damaged by vandalism in more visible parts of the park. Lytle's pyramid was eventually reconfigured to be just a simple triangle marking the spot on what is now Lytle Hill where he died. After a fundraising campaign, Lytle's pyramid was restored and re-dedicated on the 150th anniversary of his death, September 20, 2013.

War Scrawls Its Autograph

The poet, writer and newpaperman Benjamin Franklin Taylor came to Chattanooga in 1863 as a war correspondent for the Chicago Evening Journal. His letters from this period were later compiled into a book, In Field and Camp.

This excerpt is a description of Chattanooga, written just after his arrival, after the battle of Chickamauga and the siege, but just before the climactic battles of Chattanooga.

One part is still true of the city today, actually even more so, as the city has stretched its boundaries far beyond where they were in the 1860s:  "But never think you have seen the town at one glance; it is down here and up there and over yonder; the little hills swell beneath it like billows; you will gain the idea if I say it is a town gone to pieces in a heavy sea."

"Within this sweep of grandeur lies a thing whose name shall endure when yours and mine have been effaced by Time, like a writing upon a slate by a wet finger - Chattanooga.

"Once a town with one main business street to give it a little commercial pulsation; residences, some of them beautiful, a few of them stately, sprinkled all around upon the acclivities, interspersed with more structures built up in the true Southern architecture, holes in the middle, or balconies, or the chimneys turned out of doors. A stinted, rusty-looking market house subdued beneath a chuckle-headed belfry, four or five churches of different fashion, two or three hotels whose entertainment has departed with the Boniface, and straggling tenements 'of low degree' are pretty nearly all that remain.

"As you pass along the central street, the dingy signs of old dead business catch the eye. Where 'A. Bake,' attorney at law, once uttered oracles and tobacco juice, Federal stores have taken Blackstone's place; where ribbons ran smoothly over the salesman's fingers, boxes of hardtack are piled, like Ossa and Pelion come again.

"Fences have gone lightly up in camp fires, tents are pitched like mushrooms in the flower-beds, trees have turned to ashes, shrubbery is trampled under foot, gardens are nothing better than mule pens, shot or shell have left a token here and there, and, across the whole, War has scrawled his autograph.

"But never think you have seen the town at one glance; it is down here and up there and over yonder; the little hills swell beneath it like billows; you will gain the idea if I say it is a town gone to pieces in a heavy sea.

"But a new architecture has sprung up; slopes, valleys, hills, as far as you can see are covered with Federal camps. Smoky cones, grander wall-tents, narrow streets of little stone and board kennels, chinked with mud like beavers' houses, snugly tucked into the hillsides, and equipped with bits of fireplaces that sometimes aspire to the dignity of marble, are everywhere. It is nothing but camps and then more camps.

"I wrote about 'dead business,' but I was too fast. It is all business, but conducted by the new firm of 'U.S.' The anvils ring, the stores are filled, wagons in endless lines and hurrying crowds throng all the streets, but the workman and the clerk is each a boy in blue.

"Chattanooga is as populous as an ant-hill. And there is more of the new architecture; breastworks, rifle-pits, forts, defenses of every name, crown the slopes. Here, at your left elbow, is Fort Wood that can talk to Mission Ridge; and there are Negley and Palmer and so on around the horizon. And then, as if they had been poured out of the town like water, spreading away to left and right and south, as you stand facing Lookout, are Federal camps, drifting on almost to the base of the mountain and lying bravely beneath its grim shadow.

"The more you look the more you wonder how it can all be. It overturns your notions of hostile armies, this neighborly nearness. You see two thin picket-lines running parallel and a few rods apart - not so far as you can jerk a peachstone.

"They pass lovingly together from your left, down Mission Ridge, curve to the right along the lowlands and pass the foot of the great mountain. They are the line of blue and the line of gray."

A 6-pounder Smoothbore

While we're on the subject of 6-pounder smoothbores (or we were a few days ago), here's a shot of one.

This cannon is at Delong Reservation on Missionary Ridge, marking the position of Water's Alabama Battery during the battle on November 25, 1863. The monument to the 2nd Minnesota Infantry Regiment is in the background.

A Brief History of Prewar Chattanooga

In telling Chattanooga's Civil War story, a good place to start would be with a brief telling of Chattanooga's brief history before the war.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Chattanooga was still a very young town, laid out and organized less than 25 years prior. Population totals for the period vary from about 3000-5000, and business was booming. The author Porte Crayon (David Hunter Strother) visited in 1855, and describes the scene:

A swarm of people in the streets "paced to and fro with eager and excited looks as if their lives, fortune and sacred honor hung upon the events of the next hour. All the corners and by-places were filled with groups in earnest conversations; some were handling paper, others examining maps. Rolls of bank notes were exhibited, and net purses with red gold gleaming though their silken meshes. In the confusion of tongues the ear could catch the words: lots, stocks, quarter-section, depot, dividends, township, railroads, terminus, ten thousand, hundred thousands, millions."

Crayon's traveling party eventually stumbled upon a couple of street urchins selling empty bottles in the street, causing Crayon to remark, "I fear we are in a nest of speculators, where anything may be had at a bargain, ranging from a man's soul down to a beer bottle."

But Chattanooga's story begins with John Ross. Now here's an interesting character, born to pioneer stock, Scottish traders who mingled freely with the Cherokee. His father, Daniel, married Molly McDonald, a part-Cherokee, part-Scottish girl. John Ross was only one-eighth Cherokee, and was raised to be bicultural and bilingual; he grew up with his family near Lookout Mountain where he was considered a member of the Bird Clan. He got an education at Gideon Blackburn's school for the Cherokee in Charleston, Tennessee, then at an academy near Fort Southwest Point, present-day Kingston, Tennessee.

After a stint as an Indian agent to the western Cherokee in Arkansas, he served as an adjutant to a Cherokee regiment in the War of 1812, fighting under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, defeating the Creeks and ending the Creek War.

He tried his hand at several business ventures, earning most of his living farming tobacco with about twenty slaves. In 1816, he began operating a swing ferry across the Tennessee River. There was nothing there, but it was a prime location, near where the Old Federal Road intersected with the Great Indian Warpath and several other ancient paths. Somewhere along the way, this little area by the river became known as Ross's Landing.

This little bit of land -- everything south of the Tennessee River to the Georgia line, which included Ross's Landing -- was the last ceded by the Cherokee. They held onto it until a rogue group of leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. The treaty was ratified by the US Senate in March, 1836, and the rush was on.

Actually, the first white settlers came a tad earlier, while the land still belonged to the Cherokee. The little spot where John Ross had put his ferry and trading post was a natural congregating spot. One of the first of these settlers said that they "felt like we were coming out of the world to come and live among the bears and Indians."

Ross's Landing was one of the main embarkation points for the Cherokee, sent west on forced marches that became known as the Trail of Tears. Soldiers came to gather the Native Americans and send them on their way. The presence of the Cherokee and the soldiers drew merchants and more settlers. Ross's Landing soon became a regular little boom town, like something seen in the West in the decades after the war. 

When the Cherokee were gone, the new residents began ordering things more to their liking, including changing the name to Chattanooga, a word the Cherokee had used to describe the area. It allegedly meant "rock coming to a point," an apt description for nearby Lookout Mountain. The streets were laid out and the land was split into parcels and sold.

"Chattanooga up to this time had been to Georgia what Texas had been to the South - a rendezvous for broken merchants to escape the bail law for debt, then in force in Georgia, and fugitives from justice all over the South. You can imagine the state of society, a new place, merchants without money or credit, boatmen, railroad hands, all coming and going, whiskey sixteen cents a gallon, every man for himself, but little law or order among that class." -- A. M. Johnson, an early resident.

The boom continued and the little town thrived and grew. It began to resemble a "civilized" society with churches and schools, business conducted close to the waterfront, houses on the high ground to the west, away from the river with its dense fog and mosquitos.

The big break came when Chattanooga was chosen to be the northern terminus of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. That railroad connected the city to Atlanta and was only the beginning. Soon other railroads were built, connecting Chattanooga to Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis and points beyond. By the start of the Civil War, Chattanooga was a major rail center, vitally important for both sides' strategic success.

The 6-pounder Smoothbore & the 12-pounder Rifled James

I guess I should begin by telling you about something I slipped by you in the previous post, the photo, which was a sepiaized version of this photo...

This is a 6-pounder smoothbore. It's also the first of hopefully many posts on the weapons used in the battles for Chattanooga.

The 6-pounder smoothbore was state of the art in 1841 and was used extensively during the Mexican War, but was considered obsolete by the time of the Civil War. But both sides, particularly the South, used the 6-pounder smoothbore when nothing else was available. It was lighter than the more modern guns with a tube weight of only 881 pounds, but fired a 6-pound solid shot (hence the name) about the size of a grapefruit or a softball. It had a range of 1520 yards, but you had very little hope of hitting a small target that far away. The 6-pounder smoothbore could also fire round shell and canister and case.


The Civil War occurred at an interesting period in the evolution of weaponry. Artillery in particular was evolving rapidly -- from smoothbores to rifles and from muzzle loaders to breech loaders. Rifling made a gun much more accurate by imparting spin on the projectile allowing it to cut through the air more cleanly.

One of the earliest innovations tried was upgrading the many Mexican War-era 6-pounder smoothbores into rifles by re-boring the gun tube and adding the rifling grooves using a system developed by General Charles T. James. This project was not very successful. The rifling grooves wore out too rapidly in the soft bronze, but again, both sides, particularly the South, used what they could get.

The 12-pounder rifled James (not to be confused with the James Rifle, a 14-pounder bronze field piece) could lob a projectile farther than the smoothbore (1700 yards vs. 1520 yards) with much greater accuracy.


There are many examples of both versions of the weapon, the smoothbore and the rifle, in the battlefields around Chattanooga. The photo above was taken on Missionary Ridge; the cannon is in someone's front yard.

About This Blog

Let me apologize in advance for the infrequent posting. A weird opening sentence in the first post of a new blog, but based on past experience I already know how it's going to go. I'll get very passionate and post several days in a row, then go a month of Sundays between posts.

The good news is that none of this is very time-sensitive, more the gradual telling of a big story, the story of Chattanooga's part in the Civil War.

Also, let me apologize. I don't have a fancy history degree or anything. I'm just a rube, a self-taught amateur, but I'll tell the story the best I can.

This blog is the next step in the evolution of whatever this turns out to be. My prior blog was Civil War Meanderings. I'm going to count that one as dead and move on. (Offer subject to change.) I'll reuse some of the same material, but this blog should be more sharply focused on Chattanooga's story.