The Tennessee in the Civil War Message Board

Nashville CWRT - June 2019 meeting

Hello,

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

The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on TUESDAY, June 18th, 2019, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum.

The meeting begins at 7:00 PM and is always open to the public.

Our Speaker and Topic - “The Battle of Allatoona Pass”

Atlanta, Georgia, the industrial, food distribution and shipping center of the Confederacy, fell to the Union forces of William T. Sherman on September 2, 1864. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee fell back first to Lovejoy Station and then moved west to Palmetto, GA so as to be on the railroad from Alabama, part of his new base of supplies. After reorganizing the army , losing some commanders (notable William J. Hardee) and feting Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Hood soon planned to move north hoping to draw Sherman out from Atlanta and defeat him badly enough to force him to withdraw from Georgia. It was a forlorn hope at best, but in a campaign of maneuver, moving over many of the same battlegrounds that had been fought over on the way to Atlanta, Hood ruptured the railroad to Chattanooga that supplied Sherman in several places and set his sights on the Union garrison at Allatoona Pass, where warehouses bulged with food, something Hood would badly need as the campaign progressed. He sent a single division to attack the Federals who were heavily entrenched on two hills above the pass and some of their units were armed with repeating rifles and were supported by artillery. The attack was a defeat for Hood and it would help to exacerbate his food problems for the rest of the campaign. Was it the last battle of the Atlanta Campaign or the first of Hood's Tennessee campaign? Come see this month at the Nashville Civil War Roundtable!

Our speaker this month is Brad Butkovich of Atlanta, GA. Brad Butkovich has a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Georgia Southern University. He has published several books on the American Civil War including studies on the Battle of Pickett’s Mill and Allatoona Pass. He has always had a keen interest in Civil War history, photography and cartography, all of which have come together in his current projects. He is currently working on a 3 volume release of Ezra Carman's Antietam manuscript with a heavy emphasis on maps and visual content. His books will be for sale at the meeting!

We hope you can join us for this interesting meeting.