Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 1

[498] were comparatively safe, as the only means of access from the west, was by trails allowing the passage of but a single man at a time, and these trails were held, at the top, by rebel pickets. On the Chattanooga side of the mountain, which is less precipitous, a good mountain-road exists, communicating with the summit by zigzag lines. Hooker believed, if he could gain this road, the rebels must evacuate their position, as it was their only line of communication with Bragg.

The ascent of the mountain is steep and thickly wooded; beetling crags peer out all over its sides from the masses of heavy foliage, and, at the summit, a lofty palisaded crest rises perpendicularly, as many as sixty or eighty feet. On the northern slope, about midway between the summit and the Tennessee, a plateau of open and arable land belts the mountain. There, a continuous line of earthworks had been thrown up; while redoubts, redans, and rifle-pits were scattered lower down the acclivity, to repel assaults from the direction of the river. On each flank were epaulements, walls of stone, and abatis; and, in the valley itself, at the foot of the mountain, long lines of earthworks, of still greater extent. The entire force, for the defence of the mountain, consisted of six brigades, or about seven thousand men.

Hooker's camps were all on the western side of Lookout creek, at the base of Raccoon mountain. Geary's division, supported by Whitaker's brigade of Cruft's division, was ordered to proceed up the valley, cross the creek near Wauhatchie, and then march down, sweeping the rebels from the right bank of the stream. The other brigade (Grose's)