Hazen's Raid at Brown's Ferry

After the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, Union Gen. William S. Rosecrans retreated to Federal-occupied Chattanooga, a strategically vital rail center, where Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg laid siege from Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. During the siege, Confederate forces controlled the two most reliable supply routes to the Union garrison, leaving only a rickety road across Walden’s Ridge open to Federal wagon trains carrying food, clothing, and ammunition. In late October, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered troops in Bridgeport, Alabama, to march north and seize the valley west of Lookout Mountain while forces from Chattanooga floated in pontoon boats around Moccasin Bend to capture Brown’s Ferry and allow engineers to build a pontoon bridge. In the early morning of October 27, 1,150 soldiers under Gen. William B. Hazen set out in pontoons, slipped past Confederate pickets under cover of river vapor, landed on the south bank at Brown’s Ferry, surprised the guards, and secured the area by sunrise. The pontoon bridge was then laid, opening the safer supply route called the Cracker Line and easing Chattanooga’s supply crisis. Union Gen. William T. Sherman reinforced Grant in November, the Federals attacked the heights, Bragg retreated, and the Union army held the city for the rest of the war.

Chattanooga, Tennessee · United States