It was the first officially proclaimed Thanksgiving holiday – the fourth Thursday in November, that is – but things in Chattanooga were in a mess.
It was Nov. 26, 1863, and the previous day had seen the Confederate Army of Tennessee driven off Missionary Ridge, out to the countryside and on into Georgia. Earlier in the week, the same army had been routed from Lookout Mountain.
The Union Army was firmly in control of Chattanooga as residents sat down to give thanks for whatever troops hadn’t requisitioned from their homes and their cupboards.
Guns at Fort Wood began to boom at noon, “chimes so grand that men began to uncover their heads,” Chicago war correspondent Benjamin F. Taylor wrote, marking the day.
But those in Chattanooga who weren’t celebrating the day signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln just two months earlier had more immediate duties. They were burying the dead.