Missionary Ridge Nov. 25, 1863

A hundred Union regiments stormed the Confederate defenses along the base and crest of Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga, Tennessee late in the afternoon of November 25, 1863. One observer from afar said as he watched the Union regiments move up the ridge against withering Confederate fire, he could see points that seemed to pull those regiments upward. Looking more closely, the observer realized those “points” were regimental flags carried by bearers who were leading the charge up that ridge. Slowly, those regimental flags “pointed” the way to the top of that ridge, and the Union soldiers routed the Confederate soldiers who retreated in great disorder.
My own interest in this famous battle comes from the letters of one the soldiers who stormed Missionary Ridge that afternoon, Private Sam Smith of Springville, Indiana. He stormed it with his regiment, the 15th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.
I never knew Sam, and I am no relative of his. Yet, I have copies of 102 letters he wrote to his wife, Sarah, and, occasionally to his father or other relative, but mostly to his wife. They start when he enlisted in the Union army in April 1861 right after the Rebels attacked Ft. Sumner at Charleston, South Carolina. The letters follow him for better than two years.
Private Smith writes little in his letters about battles he may have seen or been in during his years in the war. Mostly, he writes of men in his unit, Company F, that Sarah knows. Most of the soldiers in Company F were from Private Smith’s home town or near there.
A recurrent and sad theme through all his letters , however, are his wonderings to her why she does not write him more often, especially when he makes every effort to write her. His original letters were written on any kind of paper he could find, including wall paper. He often seems very discouraged at not hearing from his wife, so much so that as I read them I keep hoping that he will have received a letter. Mostly, he does not, but when he does receive a letter from Sarah, oh, my, there is joy in the letters he writes back to her.
He has some funny stories for her about his army experiences. Having been in the army, I probably appreciate them more even today than Sarah did. For example, he writes in one letter how he and other soldiers in F Company finally got an issue of army clothing! But, you can almost hear him laughing in the letter, when he writes that the issue is a HAT! Nothing else, a hat. That’s even though at the time the soldiers desperately needed everything else, including pants, shirts and shoes.
He must have been a cobler, too, because he at one point writes of repairing shoes for fellow soldiers to make extra money.
Sam was in three battles. His letters tell of two. He was not actually in the first one. He just came on it after it was over, the Battle of Shiloh. Though he did not see that battle, he writes of some one in it that he and his wife knew who was “shot through the brain.” Private Smith writes that with obvious shock. He also writes of another soldier's surfering a terrible wound by having his jaw shot away.
Company F, 15th Indiana, finally went into battle at Stone River or Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and in his one letter about that battle Private Smith writes that the 15th did some “master fighting” there. By "master fighting," he meant the 15th Indiana withstood assaults by three Confederate regiments that included two bayonet charges. Bayonets! Wow! He goes onto write the 15th suffered almost 200 casulaties of 357 who stormed the ridge, with 45 killed in the battle. "I have seen the elephant and a big one," he said meaning the battle. He does not explain the strategic importance of the 15th's assault,because by the time it was over, he was dead. Yet, from other sources I learned his regiment held an important positon in the face of a strong assault by Confederate forces. That effort by the 15th Indiana helped save the battle for Union forces.
Years later, incidentally, at a regimental reunion of soldiers who’d served in the 15th, a regimental chaplain recalled that battle at Stone River. Particularly, he remembered how awe struck he was to see a column of 10,000 mounted Union cavalry form up to go into battle! That would be 20,000 beings, counting the horses! Wow!
Sam did not write about the cavalry. He does mention the movements of the Union army that led to the Battle of Chickamauga (sp) in Tennessee. The Union forces were routed in that fight. Sam was not at battle but in reserve with his regiment at Chattanooga.
Private Smith describes the poor condition of the Union army at Chattanooga following its defeat at Chickmaga (sp), but he does not complain about it, at least in any of his letters. The Union army was largely surrounded and almost cut off from its supplies by the Confederate army confronting it for some weeks. Private Smith doesn’t mention it, but other sources suggest the Union general, Gen. Rosecrans, who had been so badly defeated at Chickamaga, must have been so depressed he could not command his army at Chattanooga. Gen. Grant who arrived to relieve him after he was fired met Gen. Rosecrans when Rosecrans was on his way out of Chattanooga. Grant said the general had a perfectly good plan for breaking the Confederate hold on Chattanooga, he just did nothing about it.
After Grant arrived, he broke the Confederate army’s hold on the city and his forces went on to win several preliminary battles before the final assault up Missionary Ridge.
Private Sam Smith was there when Rosecrans left Chattanooga and there when Grant arrived. He was there when some of the smaller battles were fought, though there is no indication that he or anyone in the 15th Indiana fought in them, and it is highly doubtful he ever saw Roscrans or Grant let alone knew very much about what they did.
Yet, it is known that Pvt. Sam Smith and the 15th Indiana went up Missionary Ridge in the face “withering fire” from the Confederates.
The story goes that Grant ordered his forces to take the base of Missionary Ridge on the afternoon of Nov. 25, 1863 and stop. They did by assaulting across broad open fields. If you see pictures of those wide open fields cleared after the harvest that the Union soldiers had to cross, you can only conclude they were brave men.
But, also as the story goes, when the Union regiments reached the bottom of Missionary Ridge, they did not stop. They continued on up it against even fiercer opposition than they'd met at its base.
Gen. Grant is said, upon seeing all those regiments start up that ridge, to have asked who ordered that assault? His own orders had been for them to stop at the bottom of the ridge, and, by the way, it was not entirely clear his troops could reach the base of the ridge because it was so heavily defended. No one knew who ordered the Union troops to storm that ridge. It is said the troops did it on their own and that nothing, not General Grant or the Confederates defending that crest, could stop them.
Onward and upward they went.
The 15th Indiana is said to have lost two bearers of its regimental flag in the assault. One of those bearers was killed, and he was awarded the United States’ highest military honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his bravery.
Bullets and cannon balls be damned, nothing stopped those Union troops, and the first regiment reach the top was Private Sam Smith’s own 15th Indiana. Not only did his regiment reach the top first, but it actually captured the Confederate commanding general’s headquarters!
As a footnote, another of the regiments that made the assault that day was a regiment of all Negro soldiers. And a white soldier who observed that Negro regiment wrote afterward, “By their bravery, those Negro soldiers deserve at least a foot on the statue of humanity.”
This comment is significant because at the time some people claimed Negroes were not human, but actually animals. The idea implied a justification for slavery. How terrible a thought then and even more so today.
But, then the real tragedy.
I don't know if Private Smith made it to the top of Missionary Ridge.
I’ve not been able to find out exactly what happened to him. His wife, or rather widow on his death, wrote the US War Department a few years after the war and asked how he was killed? A document she received back said the wound was to the back of his head. There is a suggestion, however, becasue of two dates on the document, that Prviate Sam Smith might have lived a day after being wounded.
His regiment suffered about 50 percent casualties in that assault, and after the battle there were so few able soldiers left that those who were were put into another regiment.
How sad it was to learn Private Smith was killed because if you read his letters you have to like him. He believed in his cause, and he stuck with it for two years, or until his death, without ever once going AWOL to see his wife. And, he could have gone home at least once if he'd snuck off because his regiment was stationed at Louisville, Kentucky briefly. And, Sam in one of his letters remarks how close he is to his home. A train ride from Louisville to Springville, Indiana, would have been about a day’s travel or maybe less. Yet, he remained firm. He did not desert to see his wife because he said he’d joined the army to fight the rebels, and that he would not quit until they were defeated.
He is buried at the US military cemetery at Chattanooga. His is one of thousands of graves scattered over a beautiful hill side, not far from Missionary Ridge.
I have not seen the grave, but a friend did. She took a photo of it for me. It is merely a white tombstone with his name and regiment on it. Seems like there should be more.
Oh, one other final note, one of the last letter's Private Sam Smith's wife, Sarah, wrote that is preserved was to Private Smith’s brother. His brother also had been in the 15th with Sam. Sarah Smith asked if her husband had gotten a letter she’d written to him just before he was killed?
It is not clear whether he did or not. I hope he did because Private Sam Smith was always pleading with his wife to write him.
Sarah Smith’s grave is at Harrodsburg, Indiana. I have seen it. It is in a place where the sun when it is out easily shines on it. Sarah remarried briefly some years after the war, but that marriage did not last.
I’ve written this in memory of Private Sam Smith because after reading his letters I like him so much that he deserves to be remembered.
What a nice fellow he seems to have been--as have so many of the Americans fighting for peace, freedom and human dignity seem to have been.