Author Frank Varney will appear at the Chickamauga Chattanooga National Military Park on Sept. 20 & 21. He will be signing copies of his book, General Grant and the Rewriting of History: How the Destruction of General William S. Rosecrans Influenced Our Understanding of the Civil War.
Mr. Varney offers the following synopsis: "General Grant was an outstanding soldier and, so we have long believed, a good man.
History's wholesale acceptance of his version of events has distorted our assessment of Rosecrans and other officers, and even of the Civil War itself. Grant intentionally tried to control how future generations would remember the Civil War, and in large measure he succeeded. The first of two volumes on this subject, General Grant and the Rewriting of History aptly demonstrates, however, that blindly accepting historical 'truths' without vigorous challenge is a perilous path to understanding real history."