This Month's Events

• 6 November. The Tar Heels of General Hoke's brigade, encamped near Brandy Station, Virginia, have a wonderful day. They are paid for the first time in 5 months.


• 6 November. President Lincoln takes an evening off to see one of his favorite actors, John Wilkes Booth. He invites Booth to dinner at the White House, but his invitation is declined.


• 17 November. General Burnside's Union forces make it to Knoxville, Tennessee before the Confederates led by General Longstreet. This begins the "siege" of Knoxville.


• 19 November. Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address.


• 24 November. Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge both overlook the city of Chattanooga. Confederates, perched on the high point, have an excellent view of the Federal forces trapped in the city and their guns control the river. However, when the Union troops, led by General Joseph Hooker, attack the troops on the mountain itself, Bragg finally decides to abandon this strong point. By evening the Confederate troops withdraw under cover of the darkness of a lunar eclipse. This battle becomes known as the "Battle Above the Clouds" as the heavy cloud cover had made the action invisible to the anxious spectators below.
  This victory is a demonstration of the power of railroads in military logistics. Hooker's forces, 20,000 men and 3,000 horses and mules, had been moved from Virginia to Tennessee in only 7 days.


• 25 November. At Missionary Ridge the Federal forces , now commanded by General Ulysses S. Grant, continue their success of the day before, chasing the Confederates from their position and ending the siege of Chattanooga. Bragg's army retreats to Dalton, Georgia. Arthur MacArthur of the 24th Wisconsin succeeds in placing his regiment's flag on the crest of the ridge, for which he will be awarded the Medal of Honor. Arthur survives the war and fathers a son, Douglas, the General MacArthur of WW I and II.


• This month in Texas, Santos Benavides, a Texas state cavalry commander, is authorized to raise a brigade of Confederate cavalry. Benavides will defend the border and defeat a combined Union-Mexican attack on Laredo in May 1864; he is later referred to as "the war's most distinguished Hispanic Confederate".


• Also this month the Moravians in North Carolina receive word that back in September their Cherokee mission had been attacked by Cherokees belonging to the Union army. One missionary was killed and two taken prisoner with their fate unknown. Johanna Mack [see June 1862] knows only that her parents who staffed another mission are said to be alive and fleeing to Arkansas.

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