William Glenn Robertson - River of Death: The Chickamauga Campaign: Volume One: The Fall of Chattanooga

I first encountered the Chickamauga battlefield at age ten in June 1954 while on a family trip. When we unexpectedly encountered monuments and cannon while northbound on U.S. Highway 27, I asked to tour the battlefield park. We did so, and my grandmother climbed Wilder Tower with me when no one else would. The memories generated by that trip were reinforced by another visit in the summer of 1966. Thereafter I did not return to Chickamauga for many years, but those two visits remained with me. Sixteen years later, in the spring of 1982, as a military history instructor at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, I had occasion again to think of Chickamauga. The Combat Studies Institutes director asked me to look into the possibility of reconstituting a course from the early days of the Staff College called the Staff Ride. First proposed in 1895 but not implemented until 1906, the Leavenworth Staff Ride was an in-depth study of a historical campaign using as many media as possible in a classroom setting, followed by an extensive visit to sites associated with that campaign. The purpose of the course was not simply historical but to derive timeless lessons in the military art applicable to modern soldiers. The original course lasted only five years, ending in 1911 when the Army mobilized on the Mexican border.

I was unable to revive the Staff Ride at Leavenworth in 1982 and was given additional time to build the course for the following year. As part of the planning process, a fellow instructor and I visited Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Stones River to assess their suitability for a ten-week course culminating in a multiday site visit. As a result of this survey, I selected Chickamauga as the vehicle through which to return the Staff Ride to the Leavenworth curriculum. Chickamauga was chosen for three reasons: first, it represented a rich and diverse teaching scenario, with a complex campaign culminating in a large multiday battle; second, it was an excellent physical laboratory, preserved as the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park with hundreds of monuments and plaques, and an extensive trail network; third, it was logistically supportable, within reach of Leavenworth and capable of sustaining a class of Army officers. My choice was approved and the course operated for the first time in the spring of 1983 with thirteen students and a four-day site visit. Subsequently an additional day was added, permitting study of sites associated with the larger campaign. The course soon became wildly popular, eventually expanding to five iterations per year, and it remained in the Leavenworth curriculum for twenty-five years.

Part of the attraction for the Chickamauga Staff Ride was the opportunity to study a historical campaign in great depth. In order to facilitate the greatest possible degree of student involvement, my colleagues and I gradually provided for student use as many primary sources as we could collect on Chickamauga. All students had to read a common text, initially Glenn Tuckers Chickamauga: Bloody Battle in the West, later supplanted by more scholarly works by Peter Cozzens and Steven Woodworth. More important, each student was assigned a historical participant to research as deeply as possible, using the resources gathered by the Staff Ride faculty. As the years passed, and annual faculty research trips assembled ever more primary sources to supplement the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, student analyses became sharper and more knowledgeable. Indeed, many culminated in masters theses, and several resulted in original contributions to knowledge of the campaign and battle. My own insights were also honed by my association with hundreds of professional soldiers, many of them combat veterans, actively studying their profession through the vehicle of the Chickamauga Campaign.

Analysis of the published literature on Chickamauga during the life of the Staff Ride course led me to two conclusions. First the five-week campaign preceding the titanic battle of 1820 September 1863 was conducted over perhaps the most difficult terrain experienced by two contending Civil War armies. While U. S. Grants Army of the Tennessee struggled to overcome the swamps and disease of the Mississippi Delta, it always had the support of the U.S. Navy and enjoyed an unbreakable supply line. In contrast, William Rosecranss Army of the Cumberland had to cross three major mountain ranges and one of Americas major rivers just to come to grips with its opponent. Rosecrans was dependent on a single-track railroad stretching back to Louisville, Kentucky, in order to sustain his army in a barren country. Similarly, Braxton Braggs Army of Tennessee faced the same terrain and was equally dependent on a single rail line to Atlanta. The second conclusion sprang from the first. Although this difficult terrain and the resulting tenuous supply situation was acknowledged in passing by authors writing about Chickamauga throughout the years, the most of their words described the battle and not the campaign. I came to believe that the campaign itself was story worth telling in greater detail. In operational planning, logistical considerations, and engineering, the Chickamauga Campaign had few peers in American Civil War history.