Quote of the Day (Frank Wolfe, on the aftermath of the Battle of Chattanooga)

“I saw death in almost every conceivable form that could revolt humanity.”—Pennsylvania soldier Frank Wolfe, Nov. 26, 1863, walking past the carnage left on Missionary Ridge from the prior day’s fighting at the Battle of Chattanooga, quoted in James Lee McDonough, Chattanooga: A Death Grip on the Confederacy (1984)

(I have to admit to a form of cheating here: I had intended to cover Chattanooga yesterday, but devoted so much time to the Longfellow post that I couldn’t get to this pivotal Civil War battle.

Riding over the battlefield with a friend called Tom, Frank Wolfe came upon multiple moments evoking sorrow and pity, including a pair of Union soldiers, father and son, being buried side by side; the remains of two houses burned to the ground with wounded servicemen inside; and, on the extreme right of Missionary Ridge, five Rebels from Alabama, “badly cut up.” Wolfe and and Tom shared their food with the Confederates, but there was only so much they could do: I found their wounds still undressed. One was shot in the lungs and evidently dying….They bade God bless us! as we left them.”

Wolfe and Tom, like their Union comrades over the last three days, had fought the Confederates with desperate courage. But now, they displayed the same spirit as Abraham Lincoln, who in a year and a half would cal on his victorious fellow citizens to “bind up the nation’s wounds.”

As the two Union friends looked around the battlefield, the thought might have flashed through their minds that the carnage could have happened just as easily to them. Just 24 hours before, on the third day of fighting, the best-laid plans of General Ulysses S. Grant seemed to be coming apart. “Fighting Joe Hooker” had been delayed by four hours from reaching his objective. At the other end of the flank attacking the Confederate commander, Braxton Bragg, William T. Sherman could not budge Patrick Cleburne.

Soldiers under the Union’s George Thomas were then asked to make a feint toward the Confederate center. Nobody wanted them at the beginning to charge up the hill. But, with guns bearing down on them, and the area at the foot of the ridge turning into a slaughter-pen, common soldiers decided that to wait meant death. Instead, they charged up the hill.

In years to come, that spontaneous Union charge up Missionary Ridge became the stuff of legend.)