Hold That Gap At All Hazards

The Battle of Ringgold Gap, a Confederate victory was fought November 27^th 1863 in northwest Georgia.

The Battle of Missionary Ridge was disastrous to the Confederate Army of Tennessee and sent them limping into northwest Georgia.  Reaching the mountain pass of Ringgold Gap, Confederate General Braxton Bragg, needed time to get his wagons and artillery; which were bogged down on the muddy roads through, so he called on Major General Patrick Cleburne to hold the pass from the Union army “at all hazards, and keep back the enemy until the artillery and transportation” are secure.  Ringgold Gap was a narrow railroad cut used by the Western & Atlantic just outside the town of Ringgold, Georgia.

Cleburne’s men opened the battle with artillery about 3 am surprising Union Major General Joseph Hooker’s following force.  Hooker tried to regain the initiative attempting to outflank the Cleburne’s position.  Cleburne held his ground with two cannon and 4,100 men for five hours, not giving Hooker or his 12,000 soldiers any ground.  The Confederate wagons and artillery having made it through the Gap, at about noon Cleburne managed a successful retreat.  It was a costly fight for both sides, with the Confederates loosing 480 men and the Union 432.

Confederate Ship, Union Ship

The USS Ellis went down with a fight on the morning of November 25^th 1862, after its commander had to have her abandoned.

The Ellis started life as the CSS Ellis when she was purchased by the state of North Carolina in 1861 at Norfolk, Virginia and turned over to the Confederacy.  She was placed under the command of Commander W T Muse, and sat to the defense of Fort Hatteras in North Carolina.  On February 10^th 1862 she was taken by the Union after a desperate fight with the USS Ceres just off of Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

She then became the USS Ellis and as part of the Union Navy was assigned to the North Atlantic Blocking Squadron.  Under the command of Lieutenant C L Franklin she went into service in the rivers of the North Carolina coast.  The Ellis took part in the capture of Fort Macon on April 25^th 1862, and destroyed a battery and salt works at Swansboro, North Carolina in August 1862.

The Ellis sailed up the New River Inlet in November 1862 under the command of Lieutenant William B Cushing.  She captured two Confederate schooners, but ran aground on November 24^th 1862 as she sailed back down the river.  After dark Cushing had all of the Ellis’ equipment, guns, coal, and all but five crew members transferred to the captured schooners.  As the schooners went down the river Cushing and his five crewmen waited on the Ellis for a fight.  In the early hours of November 25^th 1862 the Confederates opened fire on the Ellis.  Cushing refused to surrender his ship, so before leaving her he had fires set on board, and the one remaining gun loaded and pointed toward the Confederates so it would shoot when the fire reached it.  The Ellis blew up shortly after she was abandoned when the fires exploded her magazine.

Cushing and his men made their escape to the schooners and out the mouth of the inlet.

Waving The American Flag

Union Sergeant John Kiggins of the 149^th New York was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on November 24^th 1863 at the Battle of Lookout Mountain.

John Kiggins was born February 2^nd 1837 in DeRuyter, Madison, New York.

Kiggins enlisted September 2^nd 1862, and became a Sergeant on November 1^st 1863.  On November 24^th 1863 the 149^th New York moved on Lookout Mountain from the Tennessee side of the mountain.  The plan was to overwhelm the Confederates on the Lookout Mountain by sheer force of numbers.  As the fight got rolling, a heavy fog layed over the lower mountain.  The men of the 149^th found themselves stuck in between the Confederate line in their front and friendly fire coming from their rear.   Kiggins a Sergeant in Company D of the 149^th could see the men were in a predicament, and he grabbed a large American flag, stood up on a stump and began waving it over his head.  This movement stop the fire on the 149^th coming from their rear, but made Kiggins a great target for Confederates in his front.  Kiggins found nine bullet holes in his uniform, the top of his head was grazed by a bullet and one shot went through his thigh.  In the end the Union won the Battle the next day.

Kiggins would be wounded again May 25^th 1864 in the shoulder at the Battle of New Hope Church.  He didn’t return to his unit until April 23^rd 1865 at Raleigh, North Carolina.

Kiggins returned after the war to Syracuse, New York where he worked for the Whitman and Barnes Company a tool making company as a night watchman.  He was awarded the Medal of Honor on January 12^th 1892.  The citation for the award reads, “Waved the colors to save the lives of the men who were being fired upon by their own batteries, and thereby drew upon himself a concentrated fire from the enemy.”  Kiggins died in Syracuse, New York September 29^th 1914.  He is buried in the Bath National Cemetery in Bath, Steuben, New York.

Houses Trembled Ten Miles Off

Fort McRee located on the eastern tip of Perdido Key, Florida was continued to be fired on, on November 23^rd 1861 by Union batteries and the USS Niagara.

Fort McRee was a bent elliptical fort built on a barrier island.  At its widest points the fort was 450 feet by 150 feet wide.  The wall that faced the channel was 366 feet long and about 35 feet above the water line during low tide.  McRee held 128 cannons, including twenty-four 32 pounders.  The fort was built before 1839 by William Henry Chase who oversaw the construction of all the Pensacola area forts.

In early January 1861 Union troops located at Fort McRee destroyed about 20,000 pound of gunpowder and evacuated to Fort Pickens.  On January 12^th 1861 Confederate troops from Alabama and Florida occupied McRee.

On the morning of November 22^nd 1861 Union batteries located at Fort Pickens opened on some Confederate steamers docked at the Navy Yard.  The ships escaped with very little damage, while the Confederate guns located at Forts Barrancas and McRee returned fire on Fort Pickens.  The USS Richmond and USS Niagara moved in firing on Fort McRee, shooting the Fort’s flagstaffs off.  The Confederate fire was able to do some damage to the USS Richmond.  Confederate General Braxton Bragg said of that day's battle, that "the houses in Pensacola, ten miles off, trembled from the effect; and immense quantities of dead fish floated on the surface of the lagoon, stunned by the concussion."  At about 5 pm with the tide going out the two Union ships had to withdraw and the guns of McRee fell silent.

The Battle took up again on November 23^rd 1861 where it had left off.  The Union side firing around 5,000 rounds of ammo into Fort McRee did extensive damage.  Fort McRee’s Confederate commander Colonel John B Villepique sent word to Bragg that the fort was exposed, half his guns had been dismounted and the powder was in danger.  The Confederate only returned about 1,000 shots, killing 2 and wounding 13 Union men.  Fort McRee would survive the bombardment, but large chunks of wall were blown away or collapsed, and one powder magazine caved in.  Six Confederate soldiers died in the action.

First Battle In Indian Territory

The Battle of Round Mountain was fought in Indian Territory on November 19^th 1861 near Yale, Oklahoma.

Confederate Colonel Douglas Hancock Cooper the commander of the Indian Department moved on November 15^th 1861 with about 1,400 troops, including the 1^st Choctaw and Chickasaw Regiment to bring Chief Opothleyahola the leader of a band of Union supporting Creeks and Seminoles, under Confederate control or drive them out of the territory.  Cooper’s men found Opothleyahola’s camp on the Deep Fork of the Canadian River empty.  On November 19^th 1861 Cooper got information that Opothleyahola was working a fort near the Red Fork of the Arkansas River.

At about 4 pm on November 19^th Cooper’s cavalry found the Indians had abandoned there camp on the Red Fork.  Trying to follow Opothleyahola’s people the 4^th Texas ran into warriors at the foot of Round Mountains just inside the tree line.  There was a short fight and then Opothleyahola’s men set the prairie grass on fire, and retreated under that cover.

The next morning Cooper’s men found that Opothleyahola and his Union supporters had fled the area.  The Confederates called it a victory as they had drove Opothleyahola out of the territory.  By the end of 1861 the Indians had fled to Kansas.

If you are interested in reading more, check out BATTLE OF ROUND MOUNTAIN

Scrawled The Verses Without Looking

Julia Ward Howe wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” November 18^th 1861, which would become a popular patriotic song during the Civil War.

The music was originally written about 1856 by William Steffe as the spiritual “Canaan’s Happy Shore”.  A Vermont man; Thomas Bishop used the tune to set the words of “John Brown’s Body”, which was used by his Massachusetts unit for a marching song.   Julia Ward Howe was at a public review of troops near Washington when she first heard the song.  Reverend James Freeman Clarke who had escorted Howe to the review suggested she should write new words for the song.

Howe was staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC on the night of November 18^th 1861, when she claimed to have awoken with words of the hymn in her mind.  She remember writing the lyrics this way, “I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, 'I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.' So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published February 1862 in The Atlantic Monthly.

The First Union Army Lady Doctor

Doctor Mary Edwards Walker a Union Army surgeon was awarded the Medal of Honor November 11^th 1865 under the recommendation of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Mary Edwards Walker was born November 26^th 1832 in Oswego, New York the daughter of Alvah and Vesta Walker.  She worked on the family farm and took to wearing men’s clothing while working.  She was educated in the local school her mother taught.  After earning her own money to pay for it, Walker attended the Syracuse Medical College, graduating with a medical degree in 1855.  She married Albert Miller a fellow student and the two of them opened a practice in Rome, New York.

When the Civil War started Walker volunteered her service to the Union Army.  At first she was only allowed to operate as a nurse, as the Army didn’t have any other female surgeons.  She was at the First Battle of Bull Run.  Walker worked unpaid as a field surgeon on the front line at the battles of Fredericksburg and Chickamauga.  She was finally made a “Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)" for the Union Army of the Cumberland in September 1863.  This made Walker the first female Union army surgeon.  She was captured April 10^th 1864, behind the lines helping a Confederate doctor with an amputation and was sent to prison in Richmond, Virginia until exchanged.  President Andrew Johnson had her awarded the Medal of Honor after she was recommended by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and George Henry Thomas on November 11^th 1865.

Following the war Walker went on to write and lecturer about health care, temperance, and women’s rights.  She died February 21^st 1919.  At her funeral there was an American flag draped over her coffin.  She is buried in the Rural Cemetery in Oswego, New York.

In 1917 the United State Congress removed Walker’s name along with 910 other Medal of Honor recipients from the Roll of Honor.  None of the 911 was asked to return their medal and Walker wore her until her death.

If you’re interested in reading more Dr Mary E Walker  is a good web site to start with.