The next meeting of the Middle Tennessee Civil War Round Table is scheduled for Tuesday, March 21, 2006 (7:00 P.M.) at Bradley Academy. Anyone interested in open discussion of the Civil War topics with a local flavor are welcome to attend.
This month’s meeting features James (Jim) Ogden III, Historian at Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park. Mr. Ogden will present “To The Edge Of Glory: William S. Rosecrans’ Campaign For Chattanooga”
William Starke Rosecrans’ defeat at Chickamauga, and his removal from the command of the Army of the Cumberland soon thereafter, have shaped history’s perception of the man and his final campaign.
On the strength of his victories in Western Virginia, at Corinth in Mississippi, and at Stones River in Tennessee, Rosecrans had, by the summer of 1863, risen to be one of the Union’s most respected, most successful, and most promising commanders. All this changed, however, due largely to the impact of the ill-considered and ill-timed orders issued at mid-morning on the third day of the Battle of Chickamauga. This one bad day on a battlefield, September 20, 1863, cast William Starke Rosecrans from the limelight of Civil War history.
The defeat in Chickamauga’s bloody forest and fields has also colored how Rosecrans’ Campaign for Chattanooga has been and is viewed. The focus becomes the battle itself and the unfortunate orders of September 20th. Far less attention is given to his plan of campaign, a plan of campaign that even after the Chickamauga defeat, allowed Federal forces to maintain and then go on to secure total control of the Chattanooga region, the strategic “Gateway to the Deep South.”
Mr. Ogden will examine the plan the Army of the Cumberland’s commander developed and then implemented. He will explore the factors Rosecrans was forced to address and relate how those considerations shaped the 1863 Campaign for Chattanooga. He will show that Rosecrans’ campaign was not the hazardous, careless dispersal of his forces in the face of a numerically superior foe that it is often depicted to have been. He will show that it was a campaign that brought Old Rosy, to paraphrase William M. Lamers’ aptly titled Rosecrans biography, to “the edge of glory.”
The Middle Tennessee Civil War Round Table meets every third Tuesday of the month at Bradley Academy, located on Academy Street in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Membership applications are available at each meeting. Membership costs $10 per year for individuals and $15 for families. All meetings are open to the public regardless of membership status. Each meeting will include time for interested parties to share stories and memorabilia from the Civil War era with the membership.
For more information contact Jim Lewis at 615-890-1926 (before 8 PM) or by e-mail at lewisjb66@comcast.net.