Book Title: River of Death–The Chickamauga Campaign: Volume 1: The Fall of Chattanooga by William Glenn Robertson. California: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. ISBN-10: 146964312X; ISBN-13: 978-1469643120. Photographs. Maps. Appendix. Pp. xvi, 680. $45.00.
This highly detailed narrative of Union General William Rosecrans’ 1863 campaign against the key transportation center of Chattanooga, Tennessee, starts on July 4th of that year, just as his Tullahoma campaign—“a resounding success”—was prematurely stopped by the weather. The book describes the Union army’s operations up to its reaching Chattanooga and the commander’s fateful decision on September 9th to continue pursuit of Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee.
Dr. Robertson does an exemplary job in his extensive descriptions of the principal and subordinate commanders of both armies down to brigade level, even including important staff members, with critical observations about many of the participants.
After the Tullahoma campaign ended, the Union army faced the most difficult portion of its logistical operations. Its supply line was bound to the single-track railroad back to Nashville, Tennessee, and further back to Louisville, Kentucky. Going forward, it went up and over the relatively barren Cumberland Plateau, only to reach the barrier presented by the Tennessee River. After that, Sand and Lookout Mountains—geologic continuations of the Cumberland Plateau—and then ridge after ridge after ridge had to be crossed, in order to reach Chattanooga and another key railroad hub at Dalton, Georgia. The Union Army of the Potomac in Virginia and the Army of the Tennessee along the Mississippi River had no such obstacles in their respective theatres.
The author finely depicts Rosecrans’ arduous advance and the ensuing feints that worked so well to confuse Bragg, who did better in this situation than the standard version of American Civil War history usually credits him. The Union maneuvers that resulted in the crossing of the Tennessee River are especially well-told.
As the book notes, one historian—of the Army of the Cumberland—Rev. Larry Daniels, flatly denied that Union corps commander George Thomas had argued for a pause until the Union force could temporarily halt at the evacuated city of Chattanooga in order to adequately prepare for further operations. Dr. Robertson does not offer a definitive pronouncement—as first-hand evidence is lacking—but makes it clear that Thomas may well have done just that. He could have also supported such a conclusion with John Watts DePeyster’s account of a talk with Thomas, who stated that, “Rosecrans should have waited to get another ‘good ready’ before he pushed forward again.”
As is well-known, the campaign turned out badly. Lacking good information or supportive activity from General Ulysses S. Grant in Mississippi and being given misinformation by General-in-Chief Henry Halleck in Washington, Rosecrans and his Union Army of the Cumberland were unknowingly facing more and more Confederates, even as its supply lines lengthened. Chickamauga was one of the rare major battles in which the Confederacy’s forces outnumbered those of the Union.
The information contained in this book is thick upon every page. Even given the usual difficulties in ascertaining historical truth amongst the multiplicity of conflicting Civil War-related sources, there is little to quibble about concerning the author’s eminently reasonable judgments, descriptions, and analyses. The lengthy bibliography includes a very long list of manuscript collections, besides a multitude of published sources. In contrast to some historians who have only a single source in many of their foot- or endnotes (and often the same source in note after note), Dr. Robertson’s are chock-a-block with his research materials. At least one endnote exceeded a page in length. The book contains nine nicely-compiled maps and an appendix with the Union and Confederate orders of battle.
The second volume will pick up as the opposing armies maneuver and then meet in the bloody Battle of Chickamauga, where the fighting begins in earnest. It will assuredly be as valuable a history as the one under review.