The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table will hold its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, October 20, 2009. The meeting is at 7 PM and will be held in the Hospitality Room of the Sports & Activities Center on the campus of the McCallie School on Historic Missionary Ridge (enter off Dodds Avenue).

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park Historian Jim Ogden will be the speaker. “Captain John Brown and the Campaign for Chattanooga" is the title of Mr. Ogden's talk. The meeting is free and open to the public.

"The Riot at Harper's Ferry"..........an "invasion".............an "insurrection"............

One hundred and fifty years ago this week newspapers across the country and across Tennessee carried telegraphic dispatches of the events that had unfolded in Virginia over the last few days. The news was shocking and its full meaning was only beginning to be recognized......

Harper's Ferry might be five hundred miles from the "Gateway to the Deep South" and John Brown's body might have been "a-mouldering" in the grave for three and a half years before the Campaign for Chattanooga began, but the distance between the "raid" and the campaign, in time and space, is greatly reduced when you look at the close connections some of those who fought here in 1863 had with the architect of the now clearly ominous days in October, 1859.

From the first public awareness of him from his doings in Kansas, to the planning of his raid, to the immediate aftermath of his capture, and then even to the beginning of his body's "a-mouldering," contact some of those who fought at Chickamauga and Chattanooga had with "Captain" John Brown chronicle the height of his anti-slavery career.

In his talk this evening, "Captain John Brown and the Campaign for Chattanooga, " Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park Historian Jim Ogden will relate how some of those who were for or against John Brown were also for or against one another in the battles that helped decide the war that Brown's last words now seem to predict........"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood."

It's a fitting reminder, that from the perspective of those who experienced those days, the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War is essentially already unfolding.

James Ogden, III

President, Chattanooga Civil War Round Table

{The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table is a group of area citizens interested in the study of the American Civil War. The Round Table meets on the third Tuesday of each month, normally in the Millis-Evans Room of Caldwell Hall on the campus of The McCallie School on Missionary Ridge (enter off Dodds Avenue at Union Street).

At each month’s meeting, a historian or author from the region or from across the nation, or a member, makes a presentation on some aspect of the conflict. The meetings are free and open to the public and membership in the Round Table is open to all with an interest in the era of the War Between the States.}

For more information, contact Jim Ogden at jogden3@bellsouth.net.