The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table will hold its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, June 18, 2013. The meeting is at 7 PM and will be held in the Millis-Evans Room of Caldwell Hall on the campus of the The McCallie School (enter the campus from Dodds Avenue and follow the signs to the Academic Quadrangle and Caldwell Hall).
Civil War Historian Jim Ogden is the speaker. Mr. Ogden will speak on the Tullahoma Campaign, the opening phase of the larger Campaign for Chattanooga, 150 years ago. The meeting is free and open to the public.
Today, it is usually called either the Tullahoma Campaign or the Middle Tennessee Campaign. Because it occurred as the two armies in the East clashed outside that small Southcentral Pennsylvania college town of Gettysburg, and as the Siege of Vicksburg came to a conclusion, and because it did not include a big bloody battle, it is a military operation that is usually in the shadows and is little studied and understood.
BUT, if you had interviewed Union Army of the Cumberland commander Major General William S. Rosecrans at dawn on the morning when the main body of his army began moving from its camps around Murfreesboro, June 24, 1863, "Old Rosy" would have told you that in the coming next few days he was hoping that he'd be able to bring Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee to battle with in the band of southeast Middle Tennessee that lay within just say the next forty miles and fight and win his Battle for Chattanooga. Hopefully fighting Bragg in Duck River valley would be something that he could make happen because it is would be in the more open terrain of the valley of the Duck (and Elk), as opposed to the mountains around Chattanooga, would allow him to bring his numerical and artillery superiority to bear to his advantage.
But, as we know, Rosecrans' hopes were not realized and in the end the Tullahoma Campaign, the Tullahoma PHASE really, is usually written off as one of maneuver, if for no other reason than it lacks a big bloody battle. That simple analysis, though, obscures the real situation and definitely what could have happened. In our talk this evening, we'll talk about that phase that opened the Campaign for Chattanooga, both what was supposed to happen and what did happen, and, we'll do it on the eve of that phases' 150th anniversary.
{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.}