The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table will hold its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 17, 2012. The meeting is at 7 PM and will be held in the Millis-Evans Room of Caldwell Hall on the campus of the McCallie School on Historic Missionary Ridge (enter off Dodds Avenue and follow the signs to the Academic Quadrangle). Historian and Author Bradley J. Quinlin is the speaker. Mr. Quinlin's talk is entitled, "Duty Well Preformed: The 21st Ohio." The meeting is free and open to the public.

This month, 150 years ago, members of the 21st Ohio were involved in two of the most daring efforts of the war. On the same day, April 12, 1862, several of its companies were part of a railroad borne offensive probe seventy-five miles from Huntsville to Stevenson, Alabama, and on toward Bridgeport, and nine of its members were part of an expedition aiming to knock the Western & Atlantic Railroad out of the war. Of the first venture, one of the participants said:

Our brigade immediately went on a novel expedition. We had three or four trains of cars with a regiment on each train, and went east about 75 miles (by route of the railroad) to Stevenson, Alabama, and Bridgeport, where the railroad crosses the Tennessee river, all of the way through the enemy's country.

We had train whistle signals, so that each part of the expedition knew how the others were progressing. When we pulled into a town or station, it was amusing to see the expressions on the inhabitants' faces when they saw the train was loaded with Yankee soldiers, as well as interesting to see drilling squads of enemy soldiers and citizens break up and take to the hills. We left a guard at each town and station to protect the railroad until our return.

And this was all before this regiment made a name for itself on a wooded hill mass at Chickamauga called Snodgrass Hill or Horseshoe Ridge when it was largely armed with one of the more advanced weapons of the war.

It is the story of this regiment that Historian Bradley J. Quinlin, with his co-author Joshua Haugh, tells in the recently released Duty Well Performed: The Twenty-first Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. In his talk this evening, Mr. Quinlin will relate part of that story in his talk, "Duty Well Preformed: The 21st Ohio." For two decades, Brad has tracked these Northwest Ohio boys in their campaigns across the south. Come out and learn about the "Colt Revolving Rifle Regiment," a regiment already drawing attention to itself before battling in the Valley of the River of Death.

Bradley J. Quinlin is a regular volunteer at Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield Park and has been a Living History Volunteer at many other historic site. He has appeared in the movies Glory and Gettysburg and has been a Historian on NBC's Who Do You Think You Are? Brad and his wife of 36 years have two sons and three grandchildren. He lives in Suwanee, Georgia.

James Ogden, III

{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.