The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table will hold its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, June 19, 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).

Educator, Musician, Historian, and Author Robert Lee Carter is the speaker. Mr. Carter will speak about the fighting on Snodgrass Hill in the latter stages of the Battle of Chickamauga and the walking tour guide to that fight he has now produced. The meeting is free and open to the public.

In his report on the role of his Provisional Division in the Battle of Chickamauga, Brigadier General Bushrod Rust Johnson related that in the midst of the breakthrough in the Union lines, late on the morning of September 20, 1863, Major General John Bell Hood told him, "'Go ahead, and keep ahead of everything.'"

Johnson went on to write, "How this order was obeyed will be best determined by those who investigate all the details of this battle." Johnson's admonition to "investigate all the details of this battle" should certainly be encouragement to all those might wonder what it was that happened in the valley of the "River of Death" on those three September days nearly 150 years ago.

There is much to be and that can be learned (as well as un- and re-learned). A new guide can help that process along—The Battle of Chickamauga: The Fight for Snodgrass Hill and the Rock of Chickamauga. A History and Walking Tour. Our speaker this evening is the author of this volume, Educator, Musician, and Historian, Robert Lee Carter.

A native of Chatsworth, Georgia, Mr. Carter was introduced to the Chickamauga Battlefield by his father when he was just six years old. His lifelong interest has matured into an ever greater commitment to follow Bushrod Johnson’s admonition to “investigate all the details” of the battle and has taken the form now of initiating a series of walking tour guides of the battlefield.

The last being first, this initial guide takes the investigator on a just over two mile walk through the Snodgrass Hill-Horseshoe Ridge complex and looks at the fighting through the use of firsthand accounts, historic images, maps, and the author’s own analysis and photographs. It is indeed a way to “investigate all the details” of at least that part of the battle. In his talk to the Round Table this evening, Mr. Carter will relate his work in developing the guide and tell a little about what he himself learned along the way.

Robert Carter is a 38 year music educator presently teaching in Carrollton, Georgia. He holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from Jacksonville State University in Alabama. Outside of “marching band season” and teaching, he also lectures on the Civil War era and serves as a tour guide to several different sites.