Cameron Hill

After the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, Union General William S. Rosecrans retreated to Federal-occupied Chattanooga, a strategically vital rail center, where Confederate General Braxton Bragg laid siege from Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Union General Ulysses S. Grant took command in October and began efforts to break the siege, while Bragg detached forces under General James Longstreet to attack Knoxville as a diversion. After General William T. Sherman reinforced Grant in November, the Federals attacked the heights and Bragg retreated, and the Union army held the city for the rest of the war. During the siege in October and November 1863, a Union observation post on Cameron Hill, high over the city, watched the Confederates surrounding Chattanooga; at 1 P.M. on October 2, Capt. A.S. Cole reported seeing an omnibus filled with people driving along the top of Missionary Ridge and stopping often, apparently to make observations, and on November 24, shortly after noon, the Cameron Hill signal station reported that Union forces had carried the works near white house on Lookout Mountain. After the battles for Chattanooga ended, the Federals strengthened the Cameron Hill earthworks, constructed camps, built water works, and constructed a sawmill for lumber for warehouses and other structures. In 1862-1863, Confederate troops had built artillery batteries on Cameron Hill. After Rosecrans's army pushed Bragg's forces out of Middle Tennessee during the Tullahoma Campaign in the summer of 1863, the Federals attacked Chattanooga, and on August 21, Colonel John T. Wilder reached the Tennessee River and ordered Captain Eli Lilly's 18th Indiana Light Artillery to bombard the city. Confederate guns atop Cameron Hill responded with little effect; Wilder reported that few of their guns could reach his force because they were mostly 12-pounder howitzers and 6-pounder rifles, that they opened with nineteen different guns, and that one 32-pounder rifled gun covered all on that side, while Lilly made excellent shots and dismounted guns at 2,000 yards. On September 7, Bragg abandoned the Cameron Hill artillery position and left Chattanooga to the Federals.

Chattanooga, Tennessee · United States