Article #5: Chattanooga

The the final installment of my short sources, I read a brief article called "Wartime Importance of Chattanooga and East Tennessee" by James Sullivan. I decided to focus on a lesser talked-of battle, but an important one nonetheless, in my last short article.

Sullivan starts his article out by describing the time period in which the battle of Chattanooga occurred. He talks of its placement in the middle of 1863, the most important and eventful year of the Civil War, and how that added to its impact. The scoreboard had been pretty even for a while, but Union dominance at Chattanooga pushed it to a new level. The sequence of 1863 was basically Gettysburg, then Vicksburg, then Chickamauga (in TN), then Chatanooga in late 1863, which led to the fall of Atlanta and the entire South. Sullivan proceeds to tells how Chattanooga is located right where the TN River passes through the Cumberland Mountains, so it was obviously a major territorial battle. Sullivan says that Chattanooga, "was called the 'Key to East Tennessee' and 'Gateway to the Deep South'". He also writes how Chattanooga being such a railroad hub led to its value. Sullivan says that in 1863 Lincoln instructed most of his generals, specifically Major General Ulysses Grant (who was at this point in charge of the entire Union army), to put their main focus on the railroads in the South, especially those in Eastern Tennessee. While this was of great importance for the Union win, keeping the allegiance of the people of East Tennessee was also a major goal. Sullivan tells how many attitudes in the eastern portion of the seceeded state of Tennessee had stayed toward the cause of the Union, and if properly planned and performed, any action near Chattanooga could help the Northern army secure their allegiance. Sullivan gives many reasons how and why the battle of Chattanooga was so important to the path of the Civil War.



I thought this was a very enlightening and interesting article. It was rather short, but it gave plenty of information on the battle of Chattanooga and really told why it was significant. Sullivan didn't talk much about the actual battle, he focused more on the ramifications of it and the importance of Chattanooga as a city possesion for the North and the South, and this approach was very helpful to me. He basically says that the significance of the battle of Chattanooga was greatly supplemented by things that were going on around the same time. After thinking about it, I believe this to be a pretty good observation. Chattanooga ended up being one of the last strongholds in the South (after the other events in 1863) and was a great advantage to whoever controlled it (railroads galore, central location, political support for both sides, etc.) so when it got down to it, the battle would be significant. I learned alot from this article; it helped me put many peices together. I think that Chattanooga was a very important battle in its own right, but maybe more important as a sort of final stepping stone from the middle of the war to the fall of the Confederacy and the end of it all.


Article: Sullivan, James R. "Wartime Importance of Chattanooga and East Tennessee." National Park Service Historical Handbook. Old Magazine Articles. Web. 20 April 2010.


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