The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table will hold its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, May 15, 2007.
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. Enter the McCallie School campus on Dodds Avenue and follow the signs to the Academic Quadrangle.
Historian and author Greg Biggs will be the speaker. Mr. Biggs will speak about the Union horsemen in the cavalry battle at Shelbyville, Tennessee, in June, 1863, part of the early operations in the Civil War Campaign for Chattanooga. The meeting is free and open to the public.
There were no big battles. There was no great loss of life. As a result, what is usually called the Tullahoma or Middle Tennessee Campaign is often overlooked. But it shouldn’t be.
If you’d asked Union General William S. Rosecrans as the operations in Middle Tennessee began in late June of 1863, he would have told you that it was his initiation of his Campaign for Chattanooga, that he planned it as the decisive operation to win control of Chattanooga, the "Gateway to the Deep South," and that he hoped, expected, that it would be conducted so successfully that he would destroy Bragg’s Army of Tennessee and gain Chattanooga and free East Tennessee and push on to or toward Atlanta.
But we know things didn’t work out that way. In the end, because Rosecrans wasn’t able to bring Bragg to battle in the greater Tullahoma region, and was only able to "force" Bragg back on Chattanooga, the late June and early July Middle Tennessee events do look like a separate campaign, and, probably, because those events lack a big, bloody battle, fewer people spend much time looking at what, in the end, should be seen as an early phase of Rosecrans’ Campaign for Chattanooga.
But, there were some small battles. And, for the Western Theater, one of the larger all cavalry battles takes place during it, partly in the streets of Shelbyville. Fake right; fake right; fake right; fake right enough times and the enemy will believe it.
And, that happened in late June. Rosecrans used the bulk of his cavalry under his hand-picked cavalry chief David Stanley, to create the impression that he would strike with his right against the Confederate left.
As a result, Confederate Army of Tennessee cavalry commander Joe Wheeler concentrated the main body of his cavalry in front of Shelbyville. This set up the clash of the horse mounted arms on June 27.
The result probably wasn’t expected. The Union horsemen were coming into their own and that was clear by the end of the day.
Come out and hear the Union side of this unique cavalry fight that is part of our larger Campaign for Chattanooga. The speaker is Historian and author Greg Biggs.
Greg is a founding member of the Clarksville Civil War Round Table, is a previous speaker to our Round Table. He is also a principal in the fine www.confederateflags.org Web site.