Wilder's Artillery Position

On August 21, 1863, amid Confederate fasting and prayer services called after defeats at Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the retreat from Tullahoma, Colonel John T. Wilder led his mounted infantry brigade north of Chattanooga to create a diversion while the Federal Army of the Cumberland crossed the Tennessee River far to the south. After marching up Sequachee Valley, over Walden's Ridge, and past Poe's Tavern, Wilder's force captured a picket post from Bragg's army, reached the North Chickamauga River, and at dawn advanced to the Tennessee opposite Chattanooga. There Wilder placed four guns of Lilly's battery on the ridge north of the river while Major J.A. Connoly of the One Hundred and Twenty-third Illinois, with four companies, moved to seize a ferry boat. A Confederate battery on the opposite shore opened fire, and Wilder's guns replied, sending shells over the parapet and into Chattanooga, disrupting church services in the Presbyterian church. Two steamboats at the Chattanooga wharf, the Paint Rock and the Dunbar, were sunk as they tried to escape, and a pontoon bridge at the foot of the island was also destroyed. General Daniel H. Hill later wrote that the shelling came without warning during the religious observance and that women and children were killed and wounded. Wilder remained in the area after the war and, seven years after shelling Chattanooga, was elected mayor of the city.

Chattanooga, Tennessee · United States