The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, November 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 and Greer Stadium. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. There is no charge to attend.
OUR SPEAKER AND TOPIC:
“A Tale Of Two Orders: The Polk-Wood Controversy at Chickamauga”
Of all of the battles fought in the Western Theater, Chickamauga is the most difficult to understand. This is entirely due to the wooded terrain where lines of sight are not very long coupled with not having a single place from which can be seen most of the field. Into this north Georgia jungle two armies tangled for three days (there was a full day of battle on September 18th, 1863). The two commanders, William S. Rosecrans and Braxton Bragg, depended more on subordinates to fight their parts in it and reacted to information, good and bad, that came into their headquarters. Bragg’s Confederates were heavily reinforced and his command structure became even more unwieldy than it already was when he reorganized his army on the field during the night of September 19th-20th. He then ordered an attack for early the next morning and sent orders to his wing commanders to carry them out. This is the tale of one of those orders sent to General Leonidas Polk.
On Rosecrans’ side, a recon of his line “showed” a gap between Wood’s and Reynold’s Divisions. In reality, Brannan’s Division was between them but hidden in the woods. An order from Rosecrans’ headquarters went out to Wood which was poorly written. Wood obeyed what he could and that set up the disaster for the Federals later that day. This is the tale of the second order. Both orders were issued within hours of each other and they culminated on September 20th.
We are incredibly fortunate to have Dr. William Glenn Robertson of the Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Dr. Robertson is well known in the Civil War community as THE expert on all things Chickamauga Campaign and he wrote the brilliant five part series on the campaign in Blue & Gray magazine a few years ago. He is also the author of Back Door To Richmond: The Bermuda Hundred Campaign, April-June, 1864 along with numerous staff ride manuals for the U.S. Army. He has a supremely busy schedule working with the fine officers of our Army and it is very hard to get him away to talk to CWRTs.
Do NOT miss this program. You will learn more about Chickamauga than you have ever known.