Chattanooga is presented as a logistics campaign before it becomes a story of battlefield maneuver. Railways and rivers could move the large volumes needed by Civil War armies, while horse-drawn wagon trains were slow, damaging to roads, and poorly suited to long supply routes. Strategic movement over hundreds of miles still depended on the last mile between depots and troops. The same transport hierarchy also provides a useful comparison with the mass-supply problems of the First and Second World Wars.
Chapter · 5:40-7:26
Chattanooga was a campaign about supply networks
The campaign is framed around control of railways, navigable rivers, and the difficult last mile between bulk transport and an army in the field.