Battle of Lookout Mountain - Aftermath

Aftermath

Further information: Chattanooga Campaign

I have been the instrument of Almighty God. ... I stormed what was considered the ... inaccessible heights of Lookout Mountain. I captured it. ... This feat will be celebrated until time shall be no more.

Brig. Gen. John W. Geary, writing to his wife.

By midnight, Lookout Mountain was quiet. Pettus and Holtzclaw received orders at 2 a.m. to march off the mountain. The blackness of a total lunar eclipse screened the Confederate withdrawal. That night Bragg, stunned by the defeat on Lookout Mountain, asked his two corps commanders whether to retreat from Chattanooga or to stand and fight. Hardee counseled retreat, but Breckinridge convinced Bragg to fight it out on the strong position of Missionary Ridge. Accordingly, the troops withdrawn from Lookout Mountain were ordered to the right flank of Bragg's army.

On November 25, Hooker's men encountered difficulty rebuilding the burned bridges over Chattanooga Creek and were delayed in their movement toward the left flank of Bragg's remaining forces on Missionary Ridge. They reached the Rossville Gap as Thomas's men were sweeping over Missionary Ridge. Hooker faced his three divisions to the north and drove into Bragg's flank, furthering the disruption of the Confederate line, sending the Army of Tennessee into full retreat. Hooker continued his role in the campaign with his unsuccessful pursuit of the Confederates that was beaten back at the Battle of Ringgold Gap.

Casualties for the Battle of Lookout Mountain were relatively light by the standards of the Civil War: 408 Union, 1,251 Confederate (including 1,064 captured or missing). Sylvanus Cadwallader, a war reporter accompanying Grant's army, wrote that it was more like a "magnificent skirmish", than a major battle. General Grant, whose focus was on the northern end of Missionary Ridge—and who was usually partial to the achievements of his key subordinates in the Western armies—later denigrated Hooker's achievement, writing in his memoirs, "The battle of Lookout Mountain is one of the romances of the war. There was no such battle and no action even worthy to be called the battle on Lookout Mountain. It is all poetry." Nevertheless, the action was important in assuring control of the Tennessee River and the railroad into Chattanooga and endangering the entire Confederate line on Missionary Ridge. Brig. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, quartermaster general of the Union Army, observing the fog-shrouded action from Orchard Knob, was the first writer to name it the "Battle Above the Clouds".

Portions of the Lookout Mountain battlefield are preserved by the National Park Service as part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.