The Kentucky in the Civil War Message Board

Clarksville TN CWRT - December program

Hello,

The Clarksville Civil War Roundtable announces its December 2019 program and speaker. The meeting is always open to interested members of the public.

The next meeting of the Clarksville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Wednesday, December 18th, 2019 at the Bone & Joint Center, 980 Professional Park Drive, right across the street from Tennova Hospital. This is just off Dunlop Lane and Holiday Drive and only a few minutes east of Governor’s Square mall. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. Members please bring a friend or two – new recruits are always welcomed.

Our Speaker and Topic - “Horses in The War Between The States”

In the 1800s, horses and mules provided a majority of transportation in the U.S. Especially in the rural South, horses and mules were key to the agrarian society. At least half the population of the country was familiar with their use and care on a daily basis as they lived in rural areas. This was commonly true until just over 100 years ago when the internal combustion engine began to replace horse and mule locomotion.

When the War Between the States began, the armies on both sides depended upon horses and mules almost exclusively to move artillery, supply wagons, and cavalry in the field. The US Army developed systems to obtain horses in large quantities but the Confederate military depended much more on individual soldiers to do so. The result was the huge mobilization of equines into military service. Find out the hows and whys in “Horses in the War Between the States”.

Lt. Colonel (Retired) Ed Kennedy is an Army “brat” whose family is from Mississippi and South Carolina. Enlisting as a private during Vietnam, Ed subsequently graduated from West Point as an infantryman and served around the world in the Army. He served 19 years on the graduate faculty of the US Army Command and General Staff College (USACGSC) at Fort Leavenworth both on active duty and retired, teaching in three separate departments (tactics, leadership and history). He retired in 1997 as an assistant professor in the history department where he was the senior military instructor on the Army’s Combat Studies Institute Staff Ride Team.

Over the years Ed has taken military leaders to campaign sites and battlefields to study (both on staff rides and on tours) including those of: Charleston (S.C.), Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Vicksburg, Wilson’s Creek, Elkhorn Tavern (Pea Ridge), Lawrence (Kansas), Centralia (Missouri), Sioux Wars / Little Bighorn, Task Force Smith (Osan, Korea), and the Raid on Hammelburg (Germany). He is a frequent speaker and contributor of articles in professional military and history journals. He is currently the Communications Officer for the Tennessee Valley Civil War Round Table in Huntsville, Alabama.

Greg Biggs

Clarksville Civil War Roundtable