Monuments of Moment

Something about the place, even today, makes it feel far more defensible than it really was. General Braxton Bragg, the Reb General, didn't over-invest for good reason. There were other arenas just then that were more vulnerable in the shaky Confederate lines. He'd smacked the Union forces at Chickamauga just a couple months before, and had a goodly chunk of the Union Army just about encircled and under siege at Chattanooga, where the river's transportation opportunities were a lifesaver, the railroad priceless.

President Lincoln famously commanded a general he'd taken a shine too, Ulysses S. Grant, to take over command of the Union forces in the region, replacing those who'd suffered defeat at Chickamauga. Grant assigned Thomas Hooker to Lookout Mountain and gave him more than a handful of troops, about 12000 to be exact, an overwhelming force when up against Bragg's paltry 1200 Confederates.

As ominous as that cannon looks, far up and above the city and a wide bend in the Tennessee River, the embankment that is Lookout Mountain is so steep that, from the top, it was almost impossible for that gang of Confederate troops to see the assault coming until they looked the Yankees right in the eye. 

Cannons or no cannons, the Union forces were a vastly greater number than the Confederate defense, but if you ever visit the place, you can't help but imagine how incredibly hard it was for Hooker's men to scale that incline. If you want to scale Lookout Mountain, you have to either follow a never-ending snake of a road, or else climb almost straight up. 

The story goes that Hooker didn't exactly obey orders when Grant told him to engage the rebels. Once he got his men scaling that mountain, he let 'em go, and up they went to engage the Secessionists in what has, ever since, been dubbed "The battle in the clouds." Mist covered things that day; lots and lots of fighting happened deep within its cold glove. 

When all was said and done and the toll could be counted, what happened was a Union victory in the much bigger battle to gain a foothold in Georgia and set the stage for what would eventually be called "Sherman's March to the Sea." An even bigger win at Missionary Ridge, just east of Lookout Mountain, put Bragg and the rebel forces pedaling backwards. Grant began to look like the kind of leader of his fighting men President Lincoln had trouble finding. 

Right up there at the tip of Lookout Mountain is a park commemorating what happened there in November of 1863. And, yes, there are monuments.

Big ones. But then what happened in the mist on Lookout Mountain one November day was not child's play, and the fighting men were not tin soldiers. No one was kidding around. And while casualties were "rather light," Wikipedia says, there were body bags. Most of the Confederates were killed, wounded or captured. One historian calls what happened up on the mountain less of a battle than "a magnificent skirmish."

Most of my ancestors were still in the Netherlands in 1863; only one family had arrived, that one in Wisconsin. They were here long enough to have a son in blue, but no one from my family went, as far as I know. 

We're into bringing down statues right now. I'm not a descendant of slaves or slaveholders. My cause is not as immediate or as painful. I can understand how it is some hate what seems the deliberate praise of long, tall granite monuments. 

But me--I'd rather they stay up so that we can think about them, for good or ill, so that we can learn what we don't know, understand how others have tried and failed or triumphed--and try to determine why or why not. Tearing down monuments for very real historical reasons is understandable, but somehow, oddly enough, anti-historical. 

Forgive me--I'm for preservation.