The Chickamauga Campaign
Western Theater battles often lack the coverage that Eastern Theater battles receive. This discrepancy will never be erased, but lately there has been a surge of Western Theater material. Helping to fill this void is the Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland Series from Southern Illinois University Press. This second volume, covering the 1863 Chickamauga Campaign, follows on the heels of the wonderful Shiloh volume published last year. Editor Steven E. Woodworth has assembled eight essays that explore key aspects of the campaign and provoke some critical thinking. The collection focuses more on the Confederate than the Union side. There are essays on D.H. Hill, Alexander Stewart, James Longstreet, Patrick Cleburne’s night assault, James Negley’s actions on Horseshoe Ridge, the performances of Thomas Crittenden and Alexander McCook, the near-battle of McLemore’s Cove, and Henry Van Ness Boynton’s shaping of Chickamauga as a national park. There is not a weak essay in the collection. One conclusion stuck out as odd, and it appeared in two essays. In the D.H. Hill and Cleburne assault essays, the authors were not critical of Bragg’s restructuring his command in the middle of the two-day battle. Alexander Mendoza said that it was “correct procedure, given Longstreet’s rank and prestige,” and John R. Lundberg said, “in view of the circumstances, it seems that Bragg made the best possible decision.” Interestingly William G. Robertson’s essay on Longstreet did not address this issue. Since the restructuring had an influence on how the second day of battle was fought, it definitely is a topic that merits more critical discussion. The two essays on Longstreet and on Crittenden and McCook challenge our interpretations of their performances in the battle and campaign. Crittenden exceeds earlier evaluations, but Longstreet’s reputation suffers a little here. There are four maps at the front of the book, but all troop locations are shown as a horizontal box. On a theater map this is fine, but on a battlefield map this makes it appear as if all troops were facing north or south. Some maps from contributor David Powell’s recent Maps of Chickamauga would have been better. The problems with the maps are easily overlooked because of the outstanding quality of the essays. With two volumes in the Campaigns in the Heartland Series completed, this series is now established as one to watch for all future installments. Reviewer: Nicholas Kurtz Nicholas Kurtz graduated from the University of Colorado-Denver in 2001 with a B.A. in history. He loves wandering battlefields and is an aspiring author. Although he finds all aspects of the war interesting his primary interest is the Western Theater.
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Maps, bibliography, index, 199 pp., 2010, Southern Illinois University Press,