On this day in history the 111th Pennsylvanian Volunteers earnt their moniker “Noble Spartans” after successfully attacking Confederate positions on Lookout Mountain. Among them were several Londoners who survived the day and returned to England.
#TheMonumentalProject have sought to honour the service of William Bray and Frank McDougal of Company E, and George Denham, Company F. The experiences that day are preserved in the book, “The Spartan that climbed Lookout Mountain – the Civil War Experiences of George Denham” written by our Co-founder Gina Denham.
Gina Denham’s Book
“On Tuesday, November 24th George woke up to a cold, wet and miserable day. Similar weather to the day before when it had been wet and cloudy. Earlier that morning at 3 a.m. Hooker had ordered Geary "To cross Lookout Creek and to assault Lookout Mountain, marching down the valley and sweeping every rebel from it.". Benjamin Taylor described the morning as in which George mustered preparing for the attack as “Cold and cheerless; it was a Scottish morning, and the air was dim with mist”
As George made necessary preparations, he and the federal soldiers present witnessed a curious weather phenomenon that occurred 3-5 times a year at Lookout Mountain. The mountain was known for a layer of fog that formed around its base which then rose, sometimes engulfing it entirely. The rising fog had been written about since the first European settlers visited the area before 1735. On November 24th, 1863, as George readied himself for the attack, the infrequent weather situation set in. "Clouds enveloped the entire mountain," wrote Union General John Geary before the attack.
As George looked south from his picket near Chattanooga, low clouds and fog obscured almost all of Lookout Mountain. After the supply route to Chattanooga had been re-instated via Brown's ferry earlier in the month the Mountain had lost much of its strategic importance; the supply lines for the confederates were behind Missionary Ridge, and the capture of Lookout Mountain was therefore believed to make little difference. However, the night before Grants’ order to Hooker would not be an easy task because the terrain that the Union troops would be facing was steep and heavily wooded, for at least two-thirds of the way up, where it then levelled off, and a few small farms and houses were located. And, above this shoulder, the mountain rose steeply again until it turned into a sheer rock palisade for the remaining fifty feet until it reached the summit. A palisade ran around the north end and for miles back either side of the mountain. The very top of the mountain formed a plateau, which widened towards the southern end of the mountain range.
The confederates had placed their forces here, entrenched with earthworks, and rifle pits, reinforced with logs, along the northern end, and eastern and western sides. At the lower slope was a picket line running from the northern end around to the Eastern side, artillery was positioned atop the mountain, but it was out of range of the City of Chattanooga. There were two separate units of Confederate soldiers based there.
George found himself ready with 12,000 union troops who had been assembled by General Geary concealed by the cover of fog. It seems that fate was favouring George with the infrequent weather phenomenon, it afforded him some relative safety from any targeted fire by the rebels on the heights above. Confederate General Edward Walthall, whose Mississippians made up part of the Rebel line would write that he detected Geary's movement at about 7:30 am but before he could tell where the Union commander was headed "a mist obscured the valley" at about 8:00 am.
Despite the potential safety afforded by the unusual fog cover, many of the Union men had lost their appetite for breakfast. They were all issued with 60 rounds of ammunition, and one day's rations of hard bread in their haversacks. Geary had directed Brigade commanders to have their men put in light marching order. This meant despite the poor weather conditions George found himself without an overcoat or blanket for the next 8 days; a period later described by Geary as unusually cold and inclement. During the nights they were compelled to build large fires, without expecting to sleep.
George marched two and a half miles up the valley for Wauhatchie to Lights Mill by Lookout Creek. The creek itself was too deep to be forded, but in a few minutes it was bridged, and the men crossed around 8.30 am. He may have realised he was crossing near the scene of the night attack a few weeks earlier. As they reached the other side of the creek 42 Confederate defenders were quickly captured and the remainder escaped. In the weeks before the attack, in early October, fraternisations had taken place between northern and southern soldiers. The troops on the frontline pickets made an informal enlisted man's agreement that they would do no firing unless there was a general advance. Pickets met, chatted, played cards, swapped coffee, tobacco, newspapers and other articles in no-man’s land. Even some of the officers got into the spirit of things. General Micah Jenkins thought the federals had their pickets deployed on his Confederate side of Chattanooga creek, however rather than attack to remedy the potential breach, he sent over a message asking if the two sides could not be content to stay on their sides of the creek. Low morale on both sides and less lust for fighting had contributed towards it. Both sides were cold, tired, wet and hungry, and all men, in whatever their shade of uniform just wanted to go home, Autumn weather in the Tennessee mountains had been characterised by constant rain, chill and fog, and therefore in shared hardship men from Northern and Southern States forgot their principles and loyalties and simply wanted to be elsewhere. Even General Grant in his memoirs recorded an encounter with Confederate pickets at Chattanooga creek, at one place a tree had fallen to span across it. Soldiers from both sides used the location to gather water, Grant rode up to a soldier dressed in blue and asked him whose Corps he belonged to. The man replied he belonged to Longstreet's corps, not realising he was chatting to a Yankee. Grants confusion was easily explained because before coming west the Confederates of Longstreet’s Corps had been supplied with new uniforms made of dark “steel grey” British Wool, and troops from opposing sides often confused any new confederate arrival as union men. So with all these confusions taking place, one can understand that when the assault took place why 42 Confederate pickets were caught off guard, and George perhaps spared the risk of being at a disadvantage, as it was his brigade that had captured the Rebels.
Despite not encountering much resistance, it was still not an easy task for George to navigate the slopes. The soldiers of the 111th felt their way up blindly through the dense fog that shrouded the mountain. They then climbed halfway up the western slope through the woods, worked their way north, along the base of the rock palisade, which was reported as being, “Laborious and extremely toilsome, over the steep, rocky, ravine-seamed, torrent-torn sides of the mountain”. However, the Confederates were significantly outnumbered and could not resist the pressure and fell back. Hooker ordered an artillery bombardment to saturate the Confederate line of retreat, but the effect was minimized because of poor visibility and the fact that the two forces were almost on top of each other.
The rebels had overestimated the advantages offered by the mountain, and the 1,200 men based there faced overwhelming numbers of attacking Yankees. Their artillery proved of little use, as the hill was so steep that their attackers could not even be seen until they appeared near the summit. Braxton Bragg did not send them reinforcements because the Union attack against the Confederate centre at Missionary Ridge was more threatening than the sideshow occurring at Lookout Mountain.
At around 9 am in a thick fog a charge began that continued for three miles and over the Confederate obstacles. Geary noted that the fog in Lookout Valley had risen providing continued concealment to his troops, but it had also prevented Union General Hooker's artillery from joining the fray. All of the Union brigades made ground against the disadvantaged defenders. Men of the Walthall’s confederate Mississippi brigade faced an assault made up of men from the 111th and Irelands Brigade. George and his company had been ordered to fix bayonets, and they ran forward, in 5 minutes a wall of flaming steel surrounded the besieged confederate lines, and within 15 minutes the enemy relinquished and threw down their arms. The union men continued making ground up the heights, adrenaline overcoming fatigue, and they soon rounded the point of the mountain and gained sight of the Craven Farm.
During the attack, Benjamin Taylor recalled the arrival of rain again, in which “Skirts of mists, trailed over the woods and swept down the ravines, but our men trusted in providence, kept their powder dry and played on”. Around 11 o’clock the clouds and mist briefly lifted sufficiently enough that the Union artillery could tell Rebel from Yankee and opened fire. The cloud bank soon returned. One Union artilleryman later compared it to "...a fire and cloud-capped Sinai." Reports from the battle note that "...the enemy threw grenade and shell over the cliffs, and the fire of their sharpshooters was so galling that we must inevitably have lost many men but for a dense cloud that enveloped the mountain top about noon”.
Hooker was concerned that his lines were becoming intermingled and confused by the fog and the rugged ground, worried they were tempting defeat if the Confederates brought up reinforcements in the right place. He ordered Geary to halt for the day, but the general was too far behind the attackers that George was part of. Geary could not stop them. Hooker later wrote, "Fired by success, with a flying, panic-stricken enemy before them, they pressed impetuously forward.". As the right flank of the Union charge made ground, a confederate regiment began shooting down upon them from the heights above, however, they were saved from catastrophe when men the 29th Pennsylvania fired a volley of shots at short range. A squad of a dozen or so rebels rose from rocks in front of the 111th and surrendered. They informed the Sergeant Castor Malin of Co K 111th, that there were more who wanted to surrender but were fearful of being shot. He replied that Union soldiers did not shoot their prisoners. Confederate artillery tried unsuccessfully to rain shells down upon the Union attackers arriving at Cravens farm, resorting to hurling hand grenades down instead. However, the Craven house was soon taken and by noon George saw General Cobham’s flag planted at the highest point fought over that day.
Shortly after Cobham’s flag was planted, 7 miles away at Ford Wood within Chattanooga, was a young 24-year-old Englishman, Henry Yates Thompson. At around noon, he could hear heavy reports of cannon and musketry coming from Lookout Valley beneath the mountain, and with the use of a telescope, he saw the Union soldiers in which George numbered sweeping around its steep face. Atop he saw rebels advance, then withdraw from their union attackers, and “Rifles popping all along the face of the mountain and guns shelling the retreating rebels..” he heard “furious cheering” which came from the plain below the mountain, near the river at its base. And “Above the sound of the popping of the rifles, and roar of the artillery arose a great shout through the whole valley of Chattanooga. From Fort Wood, we could see plainly with a glass the Union Soldiers near the top of the Mountain carrying a great Stars and Stripes flag. Now all down the valley right along to the extreme left, where Shermans mens’ could hardly have known what it was all about, rose the cheers of victory”. For George as one of the attackers on the mountain those cheers of victory must have been exhilarating. Applauding him were the likes of Thompson and, “The spectators in the town of Chattanooga, took up the cry; and I never in my life saw anything like the excitement at Fort Wood. Of all I saw and heard today was the most impressive circumstance was the cheering of the Union troops marshalled inline of battle positions…When Hookers men planted the large U.S flag near the top of the mountain, the whole of the troops, and the people in and around Chattanooga, who must number some 60,000 at least, seemed to hurrah together”.
160 years later #Themonumentalproject echo that ‘hurrah’ once again. We thank George, William, Frank and no doubt many other foreign born participants who served at Lookout Mountain. Their service is not forgotten.
The Spartan who climbed Lookout Mountain: The American Civil War experiences of George Denham 1835-1914
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