In October 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland was besieged in Chattanooga, all but surrounded by familiar opponents: The Confederate Army of Tennessee.
Battle Above the Clouds by David Powell recounts the first half of the campaign to lift the Siege of Chattanooga, including the opening of the "cracker line," the unusual night Battle of Wauhatchie, and one of the most dramatic battles of the entire war: Lookout Mountain..
Confederate General Braxton Bragg, unwilling to launch a frontal attack on Chattanooga\'s defenses, sought victory elsewhere, diverting troops to East Tennessee.
Grant.
A new man arrived to take command: Ulysses S.
Reinforcements were on the way.
The Union responded.
The Confederates held the high ground, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, but they could not completely seal off Chattanooga from the north.
Then came stalemate in front of those same trenches.
In the immediate aftermath of their victory, the South rejoiced; the Confederacy\'s own disasters of the previous summer--Vicksburg and Gettysburg--were seemingly reversed.
Yet those Confederates, once jubilant at having routed the Federals at Chickamauga and driven them back into the apparent trap of Chattanooga\'s trenches, found their own circumstances increasingly difficult to bear.
Disaster was in the offing.
Soon even those quarter-rations would not suffice.
The Federals were surviving by the narrowest of margins, thanks only to a trickle of supplies painstakingly hauled over the sketchiest of Mountain roads.
In October 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland was besieged in Chattanooga, all but surrounded by familiar opponents: The Confederate Army of Tennessee
