The Battle of Hoover's Gap (24 June 1863) was the principal battle in the Tullahoma Campaign of the American Civil War, in which Union General William S. Rosecrans drove General Braxton Bragg’s Confederates out of Central Tennessee. Rosecrans’ feigned move on the western end of the Confederate line had left the eastern mountain passes lightly defended, and Colonel John T. Wilder's mounted infantry achieved total surprise when they attacked Hoover's Gap. Success was attributed both to Rosecrans’ brilliant deception tactics and the high morale of Wilder’s "Lightning Brigade", equipped with the new Spencer repeating rifle.
Following the Battle of Stones River, Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans, commanding the Union Army of the Cumberland, remained in the Murfreesboro, Tennessee, area for over five months. In an effort to block further Union progress, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, commander of the Army of Tennessee, established a fortified line along the Duck River from Shelbyville to Wartrace. On the Confederate right, infantry and artillery detachments guarded Liberty, Hoover's, and Bellbuckle Gaps through the Highland Rim (near Beechgrove, Tennessee). Rosecrans's superiors, fearing that Bragg might detach large numbers of men to help break the Siege of Vicksburg, urged him to attack the Confederate positions.
One of the Army of the Cumberland brigade commanders, Colonel John T. Wilder was impressed by the ability of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan to raid behind Federal lines in Kentucky. When he found that Rosecrans wanted to increase the strength of his mounted force, Wilder proposed to mount his infantry brigade by launching raids of the surrounding countryside to steal horses. Rosecrans gave him permission. By the middle of April 1863, Wilder's brigade was fully mounted. Having witnessed a demonstration of a new repeating rifle by Christopher Miner Spencer in March, Wilder determined to arm his brigade with that weapon. Wilder got his soldiers' whole-hearted support to re-arm them with the Spencer repeating rifle, and each soldier pledged a note for $35. With notes in hand, Wilder co-signed them and took out a loan from his hometown banks. Soon the brigade was armed with the new seven-shot repeaters and began performing spirited mounted service.
On June 23, 1863, Rosecrans deployed forces to feign an attack on Shelbyville while massing forces against Bragg's right. Union troops struck out toward the gaps. On June 24, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas's men, spearheaded by Colonel Wilder's "Lightning Brigade", attacked Hoover's Gap. Wilder's mounted infantry pushed ahead and reached the gap nearly 9 mi (14 km) ahead of Thomas's main body. Wilder's men were armed with new Spencer repeating rifles and when they attacked, the Confederate 1st Kentucky Cavalry (converged with the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry) under Colonel J. Russell Butler, was easily pushed aside. As Butler's unit fell back the entire 7 mi (11 km) mile length of Hoover's Gap, it ran into Brig. Gen. William B. Bate's brigade of Maj. Gen. Alexander P. Stewart's division.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
This page covers Battle of Hoover's Gap (Tullahoma Campaign). A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Wikipedia source.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.