This first National Military Park commemorates the Civil War battles of Chattanooga and Chickamauga on the Georgia/Tennessee line.
Chickamauga Battlefield Park was not what I expected. Yes, they had a museum and visitor center. But the park itself is a surprising auto tour along 7 miles of countryside.
The driving tour is well marked with signs and numbered stops at significant spots. Cleverly, you dial into a phone number to hear a detailed history of the battle at each stop.
Chickamauga battle was fought in the fall of 1863. Here the Union and Confederate armies clashed in a bloody three-day conflict that left over 34,000 dead or wounded. Second only to Gettysburg in the heavy cost of life.
The park consists of over 1,000 monuments, markers, and tablets dedicated to the regiments who fought. They are scattered along woodland trails, open fields, and beside the road. Wherever troops skirmished, flanked, bivouacked, or retreated, a monument is present. Most were placed in the 1890’s by citizen groups.
I’m not a military historian nor qualified to comment on battlefield tactics, so let’s skip that part of the story which was so expertly told on the dial-in narration. Instead I focused on the human impact of this battle.
This war, maybe more than any other, robbed us of some of the brightest minds in America. Here in this open field, for instance, we lost a poet laureate and the astronomer who discovered the rings of Saturn.
Enslaved manservants often followed their owners into battle. One carried his master’s body back to Mississippi for burial. Another escaped from Kentucky and, fighting for the Union, faced down his former enslaver who charged across a field on horseback.
A devastating new weapon was unleashed in a grape field at Chickamauga – the Union’s Spencer 7-shot repeating rifle. It mowed down 300 Confederates in 3 minutes. And expended 45,000 shots in another skirmish. Sheesh. Brutal.
The South won the battle at Chickamauga, but later lost Chattanooga to General Ulysses S. Grant after a month’s long siege.
I remain a confirmed peace-nik, but still find these places spellbinding to visit. Haunting, actually.
Chickamauga Battlefield – National Military Park