Civil War Tour: Rivers, Rails & Mountains

After breakfast, you will visit the Atlanta History Center where you will see the famous Cyclorama as well as the restored locomotive, Texas, which pursued the Andrews Raiders in 1862. You will then go to the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, site of the last obstacle between Sherman and Atlanta in 1864.

You will continue your study of the Atlanta campaign at Pickett’s Mill State Historic Site, one of the country’s best-preserved Civil War battlefields. From there, you’ll go to Allatoona Pass, where Hood began his march north to Nashville, and Tunnel Hill, where General William Tecumseh Sherman encamped and planned his advance on Atlanta. You will end the day at the hotel in Chattanooga.

You will begin your day at Chickamauga National Military Park. The battle was a costly victory for the Confederates. Union Colonel John T. Wilder described it as two armies mauling each other “like two wild beasts, and each fought as long as it could stand up in a knock-down and drag-out encounter.” You will study key aspects of the battle in which General George Thomas earned the sobriquet, “Rock of Chickamauga” for covering the Union retreat.

You will start your study of the Chattanooga campaign atop Lookout Mountain, one of the most scenic spots in the region. The “Battle Above the Clouds” was fought here, and the mountain crest affords spectacular views of the city of Chattanooga, the Tennessee River, the Wauhatchie Valley, and Brown’s Ferry. Later, from Orchard Knob you will see the imposing Confederate position on Missionary Ridge that fell in November 1863.

This morning the group will travel 90 miles to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Here was fought the critical Battle of Stones River, the brutal New Year’s fight that was the first step down the Western & Atlantic RR to Chattanooga. This afternoon you will stop at Rippa Villa, a plantation in Spring Hill where Confederate soldiers slept as a Federal army marched through their position on the night of November 29, 1864.

When the Union wrested control of the Mississippi River in the west from the Confederacy and Robert E. Lee’s army of Northern Virginia was constricted in Petersburg and Richmond, the last mobile Confederate army made a final offensive led by the aggressive John Bell Hood. His army caught up with the Federals under John Schofield at Franklin. Schofield, while attempting to withdraw to Nashville, dug in and repulsed a furious Southern onslaught that resulted in devastating losses to Hood’s Army of Tennessee, including the deaths of six generals. Today, you will visit the Carter House in the heart of the battlefield, where families huddled in the cellar while the battle raged around them.

General Hood had positioned his weakened army of 30,000 just south of Nashville, where he dared George Thomas’ 55,000 strong Army of the Cumberland to attack. You will see Shy’s Hill as well as Fort Negley, the largest inland fort built during the war, and the Battle of Nashville Memorial. You will end this extraordinary week of touring with a farewell dinner in Nashville.

Morning transfer to Nashville Airport to catch your flight home.