LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, Tenn. -- Joyous day, and sound the alarms! Literally walking in history's footsteps, the Federals have taken Lookout Mountain (just as they did 140 years ago).

The stalwarts in blue, a bully bunch whose homeplaces are a veritable geographic lesson of these United States, saluted Old Glory atop the rocky pinnacle in the early morning hours of a late November day. Chattanooga, her places of worship and temples of commerce hidden in a thick fog that rose from the gray waters of the Tennessee River, slept soundly below as the lads offered a lusty "Huzzah!"

Did Chattanooga, somnolent and silent, know that fellows representing the 149th New York Volunteer Infantry had seized opportunity and routed the Rebels who would stand in the way of Liberty? Or was she unaware of the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Lookout Mountain?

Col. Craig Hadley, who exhorted his 40-odd warriors as they retraced the steps of the division that won the day Nov. 24, 1863, preferred to think that the city over which peak looms was secure in knowing that history would repeat itself.

"This battle was one of the turning points of the war," observed the colonel, the event's coordinator, a soul so restless that he does double duty as director of education and research at Drayton Hall in Charleston, S.C. "Without the Battle of Lookout Mountain, Grant wouldn't have been sent to battle Lee, and Atlanta wouldn't have been open to Sherman."

Atlanta! The hub of Southern commerce then as now, she lay in the path of Northern armies bent on breaking the Confederacy, thereby ending the bloodshed that had consumed this great nation since Sumter fell in 1861. But until Chattanooga's demise, Atlanta lay far enough away from the war's tumult to continue business as usual, and remained the gem that glowed most brightly in the Confederate crown.

Without the boys of the 149th, who ran up Lookout and exchanged fire with an unseen enemy in heavy fog, such a glorious chapter in our nation's fabled history would not have been possible.

And thus they massed in the gathering twilight of Friday, Nov. 21, to honor those long-dead -- yea, Yankee and Confederate war dead alike. They also gathered, we must add, to report their progress in raising money for the acquisition of additional lands to be added to Lookout Mountain National Park. They had even given a name to their noble project -- the March for Preservation (www.walkforpreservation.com). At last dispatch, they had collected more than $4,000.

They came from points big and small, from one-stoplight hamlets to great centers shining as a thousand suns: Corales, N.M.; Clayton, N.C.; Lincoln, Neb.; and New York City. The lads ranged in age from a wide-eyed 19-year-old innocent -- unaccustomed, as yet, to some of life's cruelties, truly as "green as a gourd" -- to a leathery 58-year-old whose truck license plate proudly proclaims his service in the United States military.

Capt. Jim Butler, who hails from Paulding County, helped lead the assault. A resolute man who sells coaxial cable, he has a commanding voice, and used it with distinction as Saturday bloomed blue and bright. He urged his fellows to dress in the shivery, thin light, and do it quick; the mountain waited.

By 9 o'clock, the lads were on the move, marching at regular time for most of an hour along the banks of Chattanooga Creek. Among their ranks strode Justin Runyon, a sturdy 24-year-old from Terre Haute., Ind. He looked the part of a true Federal, right down to the goatee that curled about his resolute chin. It's always there, he said, "except when my girlfriend makes me cut it off."

The 149th paused long enough to let admiring civilians take photos, their soldierly mien softened by the sight of a 9-year-old clad in Union blue. His maroon sash, fashioned by his grandmother and given as a Christmas present, gleamed in the light of the young day.

The boy, Patrick Eytchison of Brentwood, Tenn., allowed that he had been interested in the Civil War since he was 4. He admired both sides -- the dashing boys in gray, those relentless fellows in blue -- and finally chose to favor the North. "I don't like slavery," he offered, repeating one of the clearer reasons for that complicated conflict.

His father, said the would-be soldier, forbade him to bring his drum to urge the boys on, but no matter. The sight of such a young admirer was enough to put a bounce in our heroes' steps, and they walked away a bit jauntier than when they had arrived, marching smartly into the the fading gold, red and yellow of late autumn's dying fire, heading for the place where the "Battle Above the Clouds" raged more than a century earlier.

The assignment: Duplicate the path taken by Col. Henry A. Barnum, whose warriors charged up the mountain in an hour's time, then flanked left, firing at the enemy as they probed deeper into the heart of the Confederate defenses -- an effort that may look simple to anyone ignorant of Lookout's treacherous terrain. Those who know Lookout's rills and hollows would be happy to differ.

Their going was tedious, at times tumultuous, as they marched ere deeper into the glade. Up, up, and still up; their voices echoed in the shadows, their hallos rising, and the land reached ever skyward. The mountain, its shoulders clouded, seemed indifferent to our boys' efforts. Late morning found them a third of the way up the promontory where, throwing down arms for a brief respite, a few Federals noted a red-tailed hawk, circling below on invisible currents. Was that bird of prey, like the fellows in gray somewhere above, quietly waiting to attack? Then the order came down from Col. Hadley: "Move again, boys."

Old sol was with us as the day grew older, and he seemed to lean forward for a closer look as the fellows changed tack, marching at a painful diagonal on no discernible trail. Slipping, sliding, the forces pushed through briers and knelt behind rocks, just as Col. Barnum's boys had done 140 years earlier in their bold push toward the sky. More than one soldier was heard to remark that he'd be "d--- happy" if the sun could turn its attention somewhere else.

Col. Hadley ordered the boys to fire, just as those earlier fellows had done at roughly the same spot. Enfields and Springfields boomed in the air, a terrible roar, and smoke rolled across the land -- truly, the "fog of war." A superstitious fellow would have declared that dragons were afoot on the mount.

By late afternoon, the 149th had reached the foot of the rocky precipice, the so-called palisades. Could Jericho's walls have been any more foreboding? Our fellows, grimy from their ascent, mustered that final bit of strength to march to the rocks above, and gratefully unrolled blankets in a hardwood hollow hardly a stone's throw from the monuments commemorating the struggle for Lookout.

Later, a handful of our stalwarts stood on a grassy point, admiring Chattanooga, her lights twinkling like jewels. A breeze, restless and cool, blew from the west. We slept well that night.

Morning came with the haze of seven campfires and the exhortations to rise, boys, rise! The fellows mustered quickly, for they knew a ceremony awaited -- a commemoration for the dead, a celebration of the life we know now.

They gathered before a granite monument remembering the 149th, the lads as unmoving as the stone figures atop that obelisk. Not an eye wandered as Cpl. Steve Houde, a Syracuse lad whose ancestors fought in the division, placed at the monument's base a photo of a Union soldier slain during the struggle for Lookout. It was a mournful moment, and an imaginative soul could be forgiven for feeling the presence of dead warriors all about.

For Cpl. Houde, the gesture was just. "I grew up hearing about them," said he, recalling his ancestors who bore arms in that awful conflict. "This is something I wanted to do."

The day proceeded in a sprightly fashion. A civilian, Mr. Chris Morgan of Pine Level, N.C., whose skills with a wet-plate camera are renowned, took at least 10 images of the men as they posed on the very rock where their victorious forebears had stood so many years before. As an apprehensive representative of the National Park Service watched, they stepped carefully onto that stony promontory, then squinted into the sun for Mr. Morgan.

The volunteers' exploits ended at Point Park at Lookout Mountain Military Park, where appreciative tourists and visitors from the city watched and listened as the 149th prepared to disband. "I think you should give yourselves three huzzahs!" exclaimed Col. Hadley, and the boys responded with the gusto to which their officers had come to expect: Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Leaves skirred along the pavement, clouds tumbled overhead, and everyone, volunteers and visitors, was silent. For a moment, those long-ago fellows were back in our midst -- indomitable, committed to their union, heroes all.