Boyd: A Confederate artillerist comes to Chattanooga

EDITOR’S NOTE: Next week’s article describes the efforts of this resourceful artilleryman to help push the Union out of Chattanooga.

When one of many Confederate trains unloaded at the wood yard one mile south of the Catoosa Ga., platform on the Western & Atlantic Railroad in late September 1863, a talented young artillery officer mounted his horse and started his ride north to join his commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet.

The young officer had just participated in one of the largest troop movements of the war in an effort to reinforce the Confederate’s Army of Tennessee and defeat the Union Army of The Cumberland along a stream known as West Chickamauga Creek.

However, the Battle of Chickamauga, one of the largest and bloodiest in the West, had been fought several days earlier. The Union had lost and retreated into Chattanooga.

Edward Porter Alexander, son of a planter family from Washington, Ga., and a West Point graduate, had served in the south’s Army of Northern Virginia since the beginning of the war and had seen action in all major battles in the Virginia theater.

As chief of artillery of the 1st Corps, the young officer, who was considered a master of his trade, was in charge of the massive artillery bombardment preceding Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. More than 150 of his guns pounded the Union position on Cemetery Ridge, but the poor quality of Confederate fuses and improper ranging of the guns contributed to the South’s loss at Gettysburg.

When the young artillerist arrived at the Catoosa platform, he was hoping for a change in fortune, but that was not to be – at least in the short-term.

On his way toward Chattanooga, the roads were clogged with wagons and ambulances carrying wounded Confederate soldiers from the Chickamauga battlefield to the recently established Greenwood shed, one mile south of the Catoosa platform from which he had recently disembarked.

The shed and yard were being used as a collection point for transporting 900 wounded by rail to the general hospitals in Marietta and further south.

Due to miscommunication among hospitals, more than 900 Rebel soldiers languished at the yard exposed to the weather before Samuel Stout, superintendent of the general hospitals in Marietta, learned of the mistake and dispatched 10 trains to transport the wounded. No records survive to indicate the number of deaths at the shed during the delay.

As Alexander rode north to Ringgold, he would have observed a company of Confederate engineers rebuilding the four railroad trestles that were burned by Union Col. John Wilder’s Lightening Brigade just before the Battle of Chickamauga. The engineers would restore rail service to Ringgold and points north by Sept. 28.

As the young colonel entered Ringgold, he would find a Confederate hospital town, where the courthouse, Inman House, Baptist church, Catoosa Springs and Cherokee Springs had furnished about 2,000 beds. Kate Cummings and Fannie Biers left diaries about working in those hospitals.

At Ringgold, Alexander and his subordinates waited for his artillery, timbers and associated equipment to be assembled with the necessary horses and mules to move north to capture Chattanooga. The transportation of the animals from Virginia had been delayed due to the shortage of rail cars. The federals began their trek north to Chattanooga on Sept 24.

On arrival at the headquarters of Lt. Gen. Longstreet outside Chattanooga, Alexander assumed his duties as commander of the artillery.

Unfortunately for Alexander, he never had the opportunity to execute his ambitious plan. Having failed at Gettysburg and arriving too late for the Battle of Chickamauga, he had another disappointment at Chattanooga.

Alexander returned to Virginia with Gen. Longstreet in the spring of 1864, rose to the rank of brigadier general, and served until the South’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865. During the war, he was noted for his early use of signals and observation balloons.

After the war, Edward Potter Alexander taught mathematics at the University of South Carolina and served in executive positions with several railroads. His friend, President Grover Cleveland, appointed him to oversee the fixing of the boundary between Nicaragua and Costa Rica with the possible objective of an interoceanic canal.

He also wrote the acclaimed “Military Memoirs of a Confederate.” Unlike some Confederate officers, Alexander eschewed the bitter “Lost Cause” theories of why the South was doomed to fail given the superiority of the North and voiced his criticisms of prominent Confederate officers, including General Robert E. Lee himself.

Hentry P. Boyd is a retired businessman. For more information, visit www.chattahistoricalassoc.org.