#OTD in 1863, some 24,000 Yankees in George Thomas’s army stamped their feet in the afternoon chill, gazing across an open field toward this hill, Orchard Knob. They were about to launch that most deadly of Civil War paradoxes: a reconnaissance in force.

Emphasis on the "force."

The soldiers in the ranks were eager to prove their worth. For two months they’d been sitting around, starving in the cold, while they suffered the gravest of Military Indignities: being besieged by Braxton Bragg. Now they wanted to put on a show for their new boss, U.S. Grant.

What did Bragg, in charge of the Rebel forces lining Missionary Ridge, make of the display? Well … with the same Napoleonic Instincts that saw him send Longstreet away on the eve of battle, he peered through his telescope and decided it was a review.

For Grant.

No, seriously.

Rebel Gen. John C. Breckinridge, surprisingly sober at this point, was NOT buying it. “General Bragg, in about 15 minutes you are going to see the damndest review you ever saw. I am going to my command.”

Almost as soon as he turned to leave, the Yankee bugles blew FORWARD.

The Rebels could not believe what they were seeing: Thomas J. Wood’s division, with Phil Sheridan and Oliver Howard’s men on its flanks, began marching so quickly and smoothly that, to this day, reenactors across the Midwest get all misty-eyed just THINKING of pulling it off.

The Yankees’ eagerness even extended to their mascots; three greyhounds with the crack 36th Illinois raced out ahead of the soldiers, chasing down rabbits in the line of advance. (What a traumatic experience for the poor rabbits, says the guy who still cries at “Watership Down.”)

As cannons began booming behind them, Wood’s men swept past the first line of Rebel pickets. Thanks to what the great historian Peter Cozzens describes as “inexcusably poor coordination” (that’s our Braxton!), only 2 Alabama regiments stood in their way: 634 dudes against 14,000.

Only the 28th Alabama stood firm, lying on their backs to fire over the breastworks. One of these wild shots killed a man from the 41st Ohio after other Rebels had started surrendering, so the dead guy’s brother went over to the Rebel and bayoneted him “to the ground as he lay.”

Wood sent for orders; should he fall back as planned? Thomas and Grant huddled, but Grant’s aide John Rawlins (who I’m convinced was sent from the future, Terminator-style, to make sure things went okay) stepped in and said, in so many words, Hell no we’re not falling back.

Union cannons went forward, and Thomas signaled to Wood: “Hold on; don’t come back; you have got too much; intrench your position.” (Can you IMAGINE this snap thinking in the Army of the Potomac? An officer would have refused to dig in on the grounds he misspelled "entrench.")

The advance was not without hitches: Some New Jersey Zouaves hid behind a barn and refused to move out (sigh ... fucking Zouaves) and one Union officer saw another dangle his foot over a breastwork, hoping to get a non-fatal wound so he could avoid the REAL fight coming up.

But Rawlins was deeply impressed, and Grant wrote to Halleck in D.C. that Thomas’s men “moved under fire with all the precision of veterans on parade.” He predicted tomorrow “Sherman will join the attack from the mouth of the Chickamauga, and a decisive battle will be fought …”

P.S. I stumbled across this cool tidbit as I was looking for pictures for this post: basically, the limestone of Orchard Knob has become kind of a natural phenomenon, home to rare flower species: https://www.npp-ccm.org/blog/2020/2/27/wild-little-orchardknob

As the page notes: “If not for becoming part of the nation’s first preserved battlefield ... that 460 million year old limestone glade along the eastern rim of the Knob would likely have been dug out and hauled downtown to be used as highly desirable building material.” #History