November 23, 1863---The Battle of Chattanooga, Tennessee: Day One

NOVEMBER 23, 1863:        

The Battle of Chattanooga      (Day One):

The Federals, who have been under siege in Chattanooga since the Battle of Chickamauga on September 20^th finally break out of the city in force. Despite the “siege,” supplies have flowed freely into the city via the “Cracker Line” which the Confederates failed to break, and Union reinforcements, under William Tecumseh Sherman, though delayed by weather, have arrived to aid in attacking the Rebels. The reinforced Federals overrun Orchard Knob and gain a firm foothold for continued attacks against the Confederate line. 

November 22, 1863---A Perfect Storm in Tennessee

NOVEMBER 22, 1863:       

Confederate Military Intelligence suffers one of its greatest failures. General Braxton Bragg, C.S.A., investing the Siege of Chattanooga, detaches the forces of General Simon Bolivar Buckner C.S.A., and sends them north to aid General James Longstreet C.S.A. in the Siege of Knoxville. 

 

Bragg, already weakened by Longstreet’s earlier departure, is left with only a skeleton force at Chattanooga. What Bragg does not know is that he is about to be attacked by General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A., and that Longstreet will have to retreat from Knoxville to aid him, with General Ambrose Burnside, U.S.A. coming out of Knoxville in pursuit of Longstreet. In the meantime, both Bragg and Longstreet will face attack from numerically superior Union forces, while Buckner’s forces will be neutralized in transit, facing enemies both ahead and behind along what is today the I-75 corridor.

 

November 21, 1863---Sherman's Mud March in Tennessee

NOVEMBER 21, 1863:        

After weeks of marching, torrential downpours, flooded fords, washed-out bridges, and mucky roads, the skies finally cooperate with General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose relief troops begin the crossing of the Tennessee River in order to relieve the Siege of Chattanooga. 

November 20, 1863---"The little I did say was not entirely a failure."

NOVEMBER 20, 1863:       

President Lincoln responds to the note he receives from Edward Everett praising the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln is modest:

"In our respective parts yesterday you could not have been excused to make a short address nor I a long one. I am pleased to know that, in your judgement, the little I did say was not entirely a failure."

November 19, 1863---President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address

NOVEMBER 19, 1863:        

150 years ago President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

"Silly remarks . . ."