The Battle of Brown's Ferry was an engagement of the American Civil War which took place on October 27, 1863, in Hamilton County, Tennessee. During the battle, two Union brigades drove Confederate sharpshooters from the Tennessee River, which allowed supplies to start arriving to the Union army at Chattanooga via the "Cracker Line". Although a minor engagement, the battle proved to have significant results in paving the way for the Union victory at the Battle of Chattanooga a month later.
Following the defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga the Union Army of the Cumberland was trapped in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Braxton Bragg. Lacking the strength to capture the city by direct assault, Bragg settled into a siege, intending to starve the Union forces into surrender or retreat. To do so, he sent the brigade of Evander Law to a point on the Tennessee River downstream from Chattanooga, ordering it to fire on any Union wagon train which passed along the opposite shore. Law spread the 4th and 15th Alabama Infantry regiments along a 5-mile (8.0 km) front, keeping the other three regiments of his brigade in reserve. When the Union army began using other routes to supply Chattanooga, Law's corps commander James Longstreet ordered three regiments to be pulled back to Lookout Mountain, leaving two regiments along the river, with Colonel William C. Oates of the 15th Alabama in command.
Union commander William S. Rosecrans wired Abraham Lincoln saying "We have no certainty of holding our position here." Lincoln responded by sending reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac and Army of the Tennessee, with the overall command of the force under Ulysses S. Grant, recently promoted to command of the Military Division of the Mississippi. On October 26 Grant initiated operations to open a supply route from Brown's Ferry to Chattanooga. The plan was conceived and to be executed by Grant's chief engineer, Brig. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith. Hardtack, an army food staple, was usually despised by the men who were forced to eat it on a constant basis. However, with food running low the soldiers began to cry out even for the hardtack crackers. Thus the proposed supply line was dubbed the "Cracker Line".
Chief Engineer, Military Division of the Mississippi: Brig. Gen. William F. Smith
Smith was assigned two brigades under Brigadier Generals William B. Hazen and John B. Turchin as well as the Engineer Brigade under Col. Timothy Robbins Stanley. Turchin's men would march overland across a bend in the Tennessee River known as Moccasin Point and hold the east bank at Brown's Ferry. Hazen's men had the more hazardous task. Organized into 50 squads of 21 men each (20 soldiers and 1 officer) Hazen's men would ferry down the river in pontoon boats manned by Stanley's men. A third column under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker would advance from Bridgeport, Alabama, for relief of Hazen's men if necessary.
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.
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