In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the first hostile shots of the Civil War being fired at Chattanooga, Chattanooga History Center Executive Director Daryl Black, and Civil War Historian Jim Ogden will tell of that often overshadowed story in a program, "the connonading was kept up briskly...": Negley's Raid & the First Shots at Chattanooga, June, 1862, at 7 p.m., Thursday, June 7.
The program will begin by the Renaissance Park restroom pavilion and then proceed down to the north bank riverfront and the view across the Tennessee into the "Gateway to the Deep South." The program is free of charge.
Historians Black and Ogden will discuss the background of the move on Chattanooga by Union General James Negley in June, 1862, that spread consternation and "shells and balls all through Market Street and over the town" unexpectedly on the 7th and 8th days of that month.
Unionist insurgents had burned bridges in the area the November before; Northern soldiers had shown up in Middle Tennessee and North Alabama two months before, and had come as close as Bridgeport; "Yankee engine thieves" had been foiled in the their plot to cut the rail connection to Atlanta; but, now, at the anniversary of the vote the year before that had taken the Volunteer State out of the Union, Federal artillery shells, fired from Stringer's Ridge, exploded around town. The war was coming to Chattanooga.
Come out and learn about this event that was a harbinger of the real storm that broke over Chattanooga a little more than a year later.