Friday, November 28, 2008
Rally on the....errr...High Ground or the Military Crest
This past week being the 145th Anniversary of the struggle for Chattanooga, I thought it would be a good time to mention an new project of mine, one of the far too many I already have. This one though ties into some of the other accepted "facts" about Braxton Bragg. That being that the Army of Tennessee laid its trenches, if they could be called that (several accounts refer to them being on a foot or so deep, or even just rocks and logs piled up), on Missionary Ridge on the geographic crest instead of the military crest, a tremendous blunder. However, though this may be wrong thing to do, I have been taking notice of all of the other positions used by the AoT before and after that had their positions on the geo. crest, and it is surprising, even during the Atlanta Campaign a large number of the CS positions are on the geo. crest, Rocky Face Ridge, Resaca, and others. So, now comes the struggle to see why.
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7 comments:
Also on Shy's Hill
and cheatam hill at kennesaw mountain
Thank you all for those. So, now then the hard question, why? Also, with all the changes that Joe Johnston made, why did'nt he change things?
Bad habits are hard to break? Relative to Shy's Hill, we do know it was fortified after dark, so that may explain that. KM is harder to explain, except for the possible fact that Cleburne and Cheatham weren't responsible for the earlier problem at MR.
Sam,
True about bad habits, but this was'nt anything new. Walker notes in his letters that Manigault refused to stay on the geographic crest and moved to the military. Need to check out his positions at Kennesaw. Its almost like you can imagine this AoT engineer bungling along like Inspector Clouseau. Also, with your work on Stewart, did any of his men have time to put up any works on the south end of the ridge or were they being shifted around too much.
Shifted around too much, although I think Strahl's men had some works on the slope they occupied. Note what we have from Stovall's few reports--his men had to move forward to the military crest to do their shooting.
What was the knowledge of the "military crest" at this time? What were they taught/observed? Possibly they looked for the iconic impregnible position.
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