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Pastimes : Civil War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bearshark who wrote (28)	1/27/2003 8:09:17 PM
From: KonKilo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 341

No, I am not familiar with that. [Missing OR pages re Sherman at Mission Ridge] Tell me about it. To break the siege of Chattanooga, Grant had to take Mission(ary) Ridge. Because it was such tremendously strong ground, he decided not to attack it frontally, but instead planned for Sherman to attack the Confederate right at Tunnel Hill to the north and for Hooker to get astride the ridge from the south, at the Confederate left. Thomas would demonstrate in the center to prevent troops from reinforcing the two wings. (I'm sure you know all this.) Grant obviously intended for Sherman's attack to take the ridge. Why he chose Sherman for this honor is a matter of some conjecture; certainly he felt a bond with Sherman and trusted him over his other subordinates, but some scholars have theorized that Sherman's political connections (his brother was an Ohio Senator and his father an ex-Senator) intrigued Grant as well. At any rate, when Sherman reconnoitered the ridge, he failed to notice that the northermost point of the ridge was separated from Tunnel Hill by a deep gorge. His troops gained this separate eminence with little opposition and Sherman reported to Grant that he was now astride the ridge. Did he lie here, too embarrassed to admit his faulty reconnaissance, or did he truly think he was on the ridge? I tend to think that he was embellishing the truth here because he also reported that his right was anchored at the railroad tunnel, several hundred yards away. As you know, his subsequent attacks the next day against Cleburne failed repeatedly and he never did gain the ridge until Hooker rolled up the Confederate left and Thomas' famous against-orders frontal assault took the center. Here's where it gets murky. In the official report, Sherman blamed his failure on a poorly laid down map. Yet, notice that the offending map is missing from the OR. Also, the page in the OR that reports Sherman's orders from Grant previous to the battle and his movements on the separate eminence (dubbed Billy the Goat Hill by locals after the battle) is also missing. Grant also put the best face on Sherman's effort and scarcely mentioned Hooker's contribution. Reading the OR, you'd never know that Sherman's attack was an utter failure and that Hooker was largely responsible for the victory. Not at all in keeping with Grant's usually reliable reports. And that's all I know about the missing OR pages. What do you think happened? BTW, I work only three miles from Tunnel Hill and frequently spend my lunch hour walking the actual ground where this all took place. Thanks to the National Park Service, the majority of the battlefield, especially at Tunnel Hill, is preserved and marked.