Civil War Photographs Narrate Book

Jan Galletta - Chattanooga Times

A fledgling art form, photographs document Civil War

Still a fledgling art form as the Civil War waned, photography documented little of the Battle of Chickamauga and the subsequent Chattanooga siege. Few of 1863's crude cameras captured scenes of the 47,000-casualty bloodbath as it raged over rugged peaks, in dense woods and in open fields.

But at least one magazine artist sketched the fighting, and several film negatives were exposed in area military installations. Many post-battle pictures recorded ruined structures and denuded hillsides.

Now some 200 of these black-and-white images appear in "Historic Photos of Chickamauga Chattanooga," by James A. Hoobler (Turner Publishing, $40, 205 pages). It is the second in a planned series of Civil War photo histories and follows last May's "Historic Photos of Gettysburg."

The author, senior curator of art and architecture at the Tennessee State Museum, earlier penned a photographic essay of occupied Nashville and Chattanooga, "Cities Under the Gun." He said his new book, 20 years in the works, arose from the nation's unflagging interest in the 147-year-old conflict.

"It's seared particularly in the Southern consciousness," said Mr. Hoobler, 57, speaking by phone.

"It's the most traumatic event in American history -- the only time we went to war with ourselves and the only time when part of the country has been invaded, conquered and militarily occupied."

The book's wartime images and narratives trace events from the campaign for Tullahoma, which set the stage for the two-day clash at Chickamauga in September of 1863, to the two-month midfall siege of such Chattanooga locales as Brown's Ferry, Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain.

Among them is a woodcut sketch by Alfred Rudolph Waud,cq a British special war artist who worked for Harper's Weekly, depicting Federal troops advancing against Confederate forces at Chickamauga.

Photos include a wrecked river span at Bridgeport, Ala., the Gordon-Lee House at Crawfish Springs, Ga. (which served as headquarters for Union Gen. William S. Rosecrans during the battle), and a haunting shot of captured Confederate soldiers at Chattanooga rail yards, en route to the Northern prisons where 26,436 of their gray-coated brothers in arms died, according to Mr. Hoobler.

But a hefty share of the book's pictures and prose concerns antebellum attempts to protect the Civil War battle lands that currently bow to development at the rate of 30 acres per day, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Civil War Preservation Trust.

Those safeguarding efforts began with the 1895 dedication of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, according to Hugh Odom, a ranger and guide at the park.

"We're the oldest and largest national military park," he said, referring to the 8,000-acre preserve.

Mr. Odum said that, while the park's visitor center yearly logs 350,000 guests, anecdotal evidence suggests overall park traffic may be closer to 1 million people a year, since many of its sightseers don't make visitor-center stops. He said the site primarily draws residents from Southern states.

"Sometimes, we've been accused of dwelling on the Civil War too much, but it happened here in our back yard," he said.

"We want visitors to think of the 124,000 men who fought here for two days 144 years ago."

The park provided some of the photos in Mr. Hoobler's book. Other sources were the Library of Congress, the Chicago History Museum, the Albert Gore Sr. Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library and the author's collection.

Some pictures, such as a sharply focused photo of a cigar-smoking Gen. U.S. Grant at Lookout Point, may be familiar to readers. But the book also boasts "some wonderful new images, particularly from the Tullahoma campaign and Chattanooga, that I located up in Chicago," said Mr. Hoobler.

"I hope people enjoy the book. And I hope they learn from it."