A Deep Steady Thunder: The Battle of Chickamauga

by Steven E. Woodworth, Grady McWhiney (Editor)

Overview

In September 1863, Union Gen. William S. Rosecrans drives into Georgia flanking Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg out of Chattanooga. Bragg, heavily reinforced, turns on Rosecrans and nearly traps him before he can fall back. The two great armies finally meet at Chickamauga. Through woods and small clearings, a confused but vicious battle rages as each army gropes and grapples at the other trying to find the enemy's flanks. At nightfall, Rosecrans holds his ground and continues to slide his army northward to Chattanooga. The following morning, however, Bragg launches an attack that catches Rosecrans in the midst of a clumsy readjustment of his lines. Half the Union Army is crushed and sent streaming back to Chattanooga. The other half, led by the redoubtable George H. Thomas, stands firm, weathers furious day-long assaults, and salvages honor and survival for the beaten Union Army.

A brief, fast-moving, colorful account of one of the biggest and bloodiest battles of the Civil War by a widely published historian.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781886661103
Publisher:	State House/McWhiney Foundation Press
Publication date:	01/01/1998
Series:	Civil War Campaigns and Commanders Series
Pages:	140
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.03(d)
Age Range:	10 - 18 Years

About the Author

STEVEN E. WOODWORTH holds a Ph.D. from Rice University and is a Professor of History at Texas Christian University. He has received numerous awards including the Grady McWhiney Award presented by the Dallas Civil War Roundtable for lifetime achievement in Civil War history and preservation, the Society of Military History Distinguished Book Award, the Fletcher Pratt Award, and has had two books selected by the History Book Club as main selections. He is the author of numerous books, including This Grand Spectacle: The Battle of Chattanooga also from McWhiney Foundation Press. He can be reached for interview at [e-mail].

Read an Excerpt

The Chickamauga is a quiet brown stream that meanders between steep muddy banks on its unhurried way through a long Georgia valley to the Tennessee River. In 1863 its rich bottomlands were mostly cultivated, but beyond the open fields the land rolled upward in forest-covered hills dotted here and there with a farmstead and hard-scrabble field. The farmers' hogs, cattle, and goats ranged and rooted in the woods and kept the underbrush down so that a man could see a hundred yards or more through them except in a few dense patches of blackjack oak thicket. The name Chickamauga had come from the Cherokees, and legend said it meant "River of Death" in their tongue. It had seen its share of death when white man and Cherokee had struggled for the land the century before, but it had known little but peace since then until in the third year of America's Civil War, the tides of conflict carried two great armies to its banks for one of the bloodiest clashes of the war.

Table of Contents

Contents

1. To the Banks of the Chickamauga                                        13
2. Encounter in the Woods                                                        33
3. A Deep, Steady Thunder                                                       45
4. The Time for Fighting                                                            59
5. A Scene Unspeakably Grand                                                74
6. The Peculiar Fierceness                                                       89
Appendix A: Organization of Federal Forces                           100
Appendix B: Organization of Confederate Forces                   110
Further Reading                                                                       122
Index                                                                                         126

The brief biographies accompanying the photographs were written by Grady McWhiney and David Coffey.

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