,y states including tennessee this region was one where the National Divisions played out on a local area. The population here was very split, very divided. The decision whether or not to stay in the union to protect to depart thes or United States, to depart the constitutional protections and make a bid for the protection of forming a news by separate nation, the Confederate States of america. There literally were troops raised from here on both sides. There were for Real Companies operating on three rail lines. Connect or intersect here at chattanooga. They do that to take advantage of the naturally occurring mountain gaps, passes, or passages, which allow beyond and through the Appalachian Mountains here at the southern end of that Great Mountain chain. Chattanooga was important from the beginning of the war in initially because so many southern soldiers going to fight for southern independence passed through chattanooga on the way to what they described as the seat of war, or the early seats somewhere in Northern Virginia or along the kentucky and tennessee border. But chattanoogas importance increased as the war lengthened as well, because the new confederate nation realized that if they were going to be successful in winning their independence and maintaining that independence, they had to develop the militaryindustrial capacity to produce the war neededl their soldiers to fight and win that independence. That militaryindustrial base the new nation goes to create is located in Central Georgia and central alabama. As that militaryindustrial complex grew incapacity, chattanooga became more important as a union target, because it was the doorway, the gateway, the passageway through the mountain barrier that in union hands could allow a union army to thrust into that industrial heartland. The union advanced out of middle tennessee, having earlier driven southward from louisville to nashville. They are thrusting on toward chattanooga. They advance over the mountains to the northwest of chattanooga, on a broad front. Deception and maneuver, by threatening to climb over the mountains to the northwest of chattanooga. They forced the confederates in 1863 to abandon the city of chattanooga. A small union force then occupies the city to garrison it, and the main armies then meet in the largest, bloodiest conflict of the campaign, the battle of chickamauga. It was fought about a dozen miles to the south of chattanooga, in the valley of western, what creek, on september 1820, 1863. Union army is defeated in that battle, but while they are defeated, they are able to withdraw into chattanooga. There, they fortify themselves within a one square mile area, in the bend of the tennessee river, and await the arrival of reinforcements. The confederates attempted to lay siege to the union army in chattanooga from positions along Missionary Ridge, to the east of the town, from across the valley between Missionary Ridge to Lookout Mountain, and on to Lookout Mountain itself, the final battle in the Overall Campaign for chattanooga, the final battle fought in november of 1863, is that that unfolds along the sharply defined to the east of chattanooga, east of where we are located right now. The confederates had had their main position throughout late september, october, and november. But not until just 48 hours before the fighting on the ridge did then november 25 confederates attempt to build fortifications along the actual crest of Missionary Ridge. Therefore, late on the afternoon of november 25, when ulysses s. Grant, from here at orchard knob, makes the decision to send union troops against missionary east of us, in what he intended as a limited assault against the base of the ridge the Union Soldiers advancing with less than an hour and a half of daylight remaining , very fewove forward of them knowing anything about grants limited intention for their assault. They move forward and believe they are simply attacking the confederates along Missionary Ridge. Worksind the confederate on the crest of the ridge poorly positioned. They find places where confederate fire cannot get to them as they work their way up the side of the ridge, and in a remarkable scene late that day, the union troops will penetrate the confederate line at multiple points, although simultaneously, and send the Confederate Army recruiting up retreating to the east and back down to georgia. With that Union Success on brief pursuitd a on the 26th and 27th, chattanooga is now firmly in union hands and will be turned by the union army, over the coming winter, into a giant supply base, similar to our Forward Operating bases today. It is from chattanooga that following spring that William Tecumseh sherman will take a combined union army group and advance southward from chattanooga toward atlanta and into that militaryindustrial heartland, and disrupted and destroy much of it, and bring the war to a close in the spring of 1865. Observers and participants at the time believed that union wasess here at chattanooga a signal of alternate Union Success in the war. Some has said this was a death knell of the confederacy. Chattanooga remained in union hands from their seizure of it in this campaign in 1863 onto the end of the war. And in part because it was a inon base and garrison town the last year and a half of the war, it allows a number of individuals from the north to come to chattanooga and began exploiting the resources that are in this greater chattanooga region. Even before the war was over, chattanoogas industrial segment of its economy that was beginning to grow just before the civil war actually gets reinvigorated in the closing then willthe war, and boom in the late 1860s and 1870s. We are located right now and what is known as orchard knob, or more specifically the Orchard Knob Reservation of chickamauga and Chattanooga National military park, one of several small areas that are part of the Missionary Ridge battlefield of the larger chickamauga and Chattanooga National military park. The veterans will come together and get congress to establish in andst of 1890 Chickamauga ChattanoogaNational Military park as the first such public area in the United States. Subsequently, battlefields at antietam, shiloh, gettysburg, and vicksburg will be created in the first era of preservation and commemoration of the civil war, on the very ground where it occurred. Today, this National Military park, with its units at the chickamauga battlefield, on Lookout Mountain, the small areas preserved here on Missionary Ridge still tells this story, a vital story in the course of our nations history, an important part of deciding how the civil war turned out. You can read about our countries but here youoks, can walk some of the very ground where those decisions were made. Even though here on the chattanooga battlefield today you are mostly in an urban environment, you can still stands near to where ulysses s. Grant stood. Look at that profile of Missionary Ridge. A little bit about the difficulties he faced in dealing with the confederates on that formidable piece of terrain. Amazed, whenng, union troops charged up that steep slope. You can drive along crest road and see the monuments markers along Missionary Ridge. How those union troops could charge up the steep slopes of Missionary Ridge. Cspan friday night, examines the history of the Civil Rights Movement with a tour of the medgar evers house, the 1917 race riots in st. Louis, Martin Luther king possible at her from birmingham jail, the bombing of the 16th street baptist church, and more, next friday. Union victory at antietam in 1862, president Abraham Lincoln wrote an order freeing all slaves in the states rebelling against the union, known as the preliminary emancipation proclamation. Its the only surviving copy of the document written in president lincolns on hand. Cspan got a look at the new york state exhibit on the proclamation. He begins, i, Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States of america and commander in chief of the army and navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter and , the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring th