The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, February 15th, 2010, 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. Members please bring a friend or two – new recruits are always welcomed.

"The Civil War On The Western Rivers"

The three major theaters of the Civil War had circumstances unique to each. The smaller Eastern Theater had smaller rivers that were not navigable for deep draft warships and only navigable for shallower draft vessels and even with those only to certain points. The Trans-Mississippi region had a few rivers where shallow draft vessels could be used and in a few campaigns, such warships were used.

It was in the Western Theater, however, where the bigger rivers made it possible for fleets of shallower draft warships to be built by both sides. The Union Navy, initially a deep-water oriented fleet, was forced by necessity to build a new fleet of river oriented warships and the first Confederate state to feel their wrath was Tennessee. Operating in a true combined arms manner, these warships, in conjunction with the Union Army, attacked and defeated every Confederate stronghold built to defend key points on the Mississippi, Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. Some 70,000 Confederate troops were captured, fortresses reduced and waterways deep into the Confederate interior were opened wide for Union invasion. The Confederates, although building a few warships to support their river fortresses, never built enough to counteract the superior Union naval forces of which the ironclad gunboats were the key.

Kent Wright, of the Tennessee Valley CWRT in Huntsville, Alabama, will inform us of the development of ironclad warships (among others) which would change naval theory forever, Union combined arms efforts to attack Confederate fortresses and the victory won in the west thanks to these combined arms operations. He will also cover the respective strategies used by both sides (warts and all) as well as the leading naval officers involved. Despite the many books written on the war in the West (and more are coming), there is still very little coverage of the naval aspects of the war. Mr. Wright’s program adds to this scholarship in a big way.

Kent Wright, a land-lubber from Nebraska, joined the nuclear U.S. Navy (1966-1972) and is a mechanical engineer by training. A graduate of Iowa State University, Mr. Wright has worked in the private nuclear industry for General Electric and the Tennessee Valley Authority where he trained nuclear engineers. His interest in the naval side of the Civil War sprang from his time living in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Now retired, Mr. Wright lives in Huntsville, Alabama with his wife Elizabeth. He is an officer with the Tennessee Valley CWRT in Huntsville and speaks to CWRTs around the South.

Greg Biggs
Nashville CWRT