Joe:

I can send you a good bit of the material I've cited, and more in addition. E-Mail me at Sturkey@wctel.net.

I'm going to check out your sources. All are familiar with the possible exception of the 47 ALA work. There was some good newspaper rrporting, both by Personne, which I mentioned, and also by P. W. Alexander, of the Savannah Republican (I think that was his paper, without checking). There is of course a wealth of Federal material. Some good regiments, and a sequence of excellent and very poignant letters by John Geary, whose son was of course killed in Knap's Battery.

One of the greatest mysteries, at least to me, is why Longstreet and Bragg sat by so passively and let the Howard column march unmolested from Bridgeport to Lookout Valley. The Federal contemporary accounts all show amazement that the only opposition they met was merely sighting a handful of cavalry videttes. Even a small cavalry force could have significantly delayed the column for several days; it is extremely defensible ground the entire route. Part of the answer is obivous; Bragg and Longstreet were barely on speaking terms, but it still does not excuse their combined failure.

On a tactical level, Jenkisn compopunded the problem by detaching Anderson's Brigade and sending it south along the crest of Lookout, where it was totally out of the tactical picture, instead of bringing it down into the valley. Even on the night of Oct 28-29, Geary detached one regiment to picket south toward Trenton (and another out toward Kelly's Ferry), expecting the potential of an attack from the south, where Anderson should have been, or better yet, at or west of Wauhatchie Junction. And I cannot fathom why he removed three of Law's regiments on the 25th.

Once Jenkins took Anderson out of the play, and weakened his already slim force in Lookout Valley by 60%, any realistic hope of preventing a juncture between Hazen and Howard was gone. With the only quick practicable route to the Valley denied during daylight hours by the presence of Federal artillery on Moccasin Point, the Confederates simply could not transfer troops west of Lookout in time to prevent what occurred.