David Alan PowellBesprekingen

This is more than just an appendix to the other two volumes of Powell’s magisterial Chickamauga trilogy. He covers the immediate aftermath of the battle, including a rebuttal of the myth that Bragg could have taken Chattanooga immediately following the battle. Appendices cover interesting aspects of the battle and the Order of Battle, combat strength and casualties analysis offers a fascinating insight into the historical process. If you enjoyed the first two volumes, this conclusion is well worth having.

Just so you know, this and Dave Powell’s accompanying volume in this series, “All Hell Can’t Stop Them” are a duplication of his “Impulse of Victory”, written for the “World of Ulysses S Grant” series. The three books even all use the same excellent Hal Jesperson maps. So buy these two or that one for the Chattanooga Campaign, but not all of them. There are only minor differences.

This volume is the expected excellent treatment from Powell. There are a few interesting appendices. A couple of well described auto tours, a fascinating Frank Varney discussion of whether things before Grant’s arrival were really as bad as has been portrayed in pro-Grant histories, and one on civil war tourism of lookout mountain.

Powell does his usual masterful job of laying out both the strategic overview and the tactical details in an engaging manner. The title reflects his perspective that while Sigel made mistakes, there is a lot more blame than just him to go around, from Grant on down to Sigel’s subordinates. The focus is on the command decisions of the Union side, as earlier books have primarily focused on the VMI cadets and other aspects of the Confederate side. (Ironic as Powell is a VMI graduate!). But Breckinridge, Imboden and others are featured with insight.

One star off because the editing is simply awful. Typos, incorrect capitalizations and even sentence fragments are found throughout the text. If you can overlook that, this slim volume (212 pages of text) is well worth your time.

I consider Dave Powell one of the leading current Civil War history writers. And I'm a Rosecrans fan and recognize the Tullahoma campaign as a great strategic achievement. The problem is, it just doesn't carry enough weight for 356 pages of text. You can only describe so many marches and rain and mud, with repetitive personal accounts. The cavalry actions - the triumphs of Wilder and Minty and the failures of Wheeler, Morgan and Forrest - are the most compelling parts. One problem seemed to be too much narrative and not enough analysis (until the final chapter).

It's interesting to compare similar maneuvering prior to Chickamauga as depicted in volume 1 of Powell's magisterial trilogy. There, the narrative is much more compelling, perhaps because the stakes seem higher, the possible destruction of Negley at McLemore's Cove plus we know it is leading to the big battle. With Tullahoma, it seems as if Bragg is hopelessly outclassed from the start and never has a chance. There's never even really much of a danger that he is going to be cut off and forced to fight. Just more retreat through the mud.

It's deeply ironic to give a review like this, since Rosecrans heard very similar complaints from Lincoln and Stanton in the light of the simultaneous victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Rosecrans retorted that he had captured all of Middle Tennessee, just without all the blood and glory. It's true...but 356 pages is just too much to tell the story.

Definitive. Exhaustive. Brilliant. Every charge, every regiment, but with enthralling prose. Perfect balance of first hand descriptions of combat with high level strategy and analysis.

Exhaustive and detailed work on this complex campaign. The battle itself is one of thrust and counter-thrust but maps provided do n ot in any sense convey the dynamics of the conflict. If anything this feature is the only weakness that I have found.½

This is a book in Savas Beattie’s Military History Series. I downgraded by half a star because of numerous small errors. One example: In Map Set 1, there is a certain small Tennessee town identified as “Bradleyville” on the map and “Bradyville” in the text. I am not all that familiar with Tennessee geography, so I turned to a modern road atlas, and found that the town is actually called “Bradyville”, so the error is mapmaker Friedrichs’, not author Powell’s.

On the other hand, there has to be a certain art to making the text fit onto one page, no more, no less, so that it fits exactly on the page opposite the map it is describing. In addition, I thought that Friedrichs’ did a slightly better aesthetic job with the maps than did Bradley M. Gottfried, who authored the other books in the series.½

Battle Above the Clouds is the first of a planned two-volume series on the fighting that followed the battle of Chickamauga; the second will cover the battle of Missionary Ridge. It is brief but contains many illustrations. Of course, the photographs are all in black and white. The period photographs are often too small and/or too dark to enable the reader to tell for sure what he is looking at. The modern photographs, by Harvey Scarborough, are generally better, although one has to question the picture, on p. 122, of the Walmart parking lot. Although from here one is said to have an excellent view over the Wauhatchie Valley, where some significant fighting occurred, none of that is visible in the photo. It looks like a hundred other Walmart parking lots one has seen.

Two major battles are covered in the book. One is the night action at Wauhatchie, and the other is the one for which the book is named, the “Battle Above the Clouds” on Lookout Mountain. The maps for these two battles, by Hal Jespersen, are almost excellent. My only criticism is that the Lookout Mountain map is a little bit confusing, as it is not always easy to tell which way the contour lines are facing.

One final word concerns the appendix by Dr. Frank Varney of Dickinson State University in North Dakota. Entitled “The Myth of the Cracker Line,” in it Dr. Varney argues that, despite what Grant writes in his memoirs, the celebrated “cracker line” supply route into Chattanooga was not Grant’s idea, and that the supply situation of the Union troops in the city was not really that desperate.

I like the way the author covered each of segments of the battle. This emphasized the degree of complication throughout the days battle. Many of the details haven't been covered on previous books. Its impressive the degree of research that was required to write the whole story.½

The third selection in the excellent Savas Beattie Military Atlas series.

By the fall of 1863, the news for the Confederacy on all fronts was grim. In the East, Lee failed at Gettysburg, while in the West, the news was even worse: Vicksburg had fallen and the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee, under the inept command of Braxton Brag, suffered a series of defeats and withdrawals. The Tennessee situation was serious; The Union Army of the Cumberland under William Rosecrans had advanced to Chattenoooga, which meant that the heart of the Confederacy was now vulnerable to attack. Rosecrans, eager to finish off Bragg’s army, continued to chase the Confederates into Georgia, over wild and difficult terrain.

The result was the Battle of Chickamauga, one of the bloodiest and certainly one of the most confusing of the war. Added to the difficulties presented by hilly terrain much of which was covered with brush and woods was the fact that both commanders spent the better part of the two days of the battle constantly shifting troops around. Include the smoke of cannon and musket fire, and “the fog of war” becomes peculiarly applicable. Division and sector commanders could not see from one end of their respective lines to the other and coordination between divisions, particularly on the Confederate side, was a nightmare.

Using the format pioneered by Bradley Gottfried in The Maps of Gettysburg, Powell and Friedrichs have done a masterful job in breaking down the battle into more readily understandable segments. The format of text on the left page and map on the right works brilliantly, especially in understanding the various troop shifts.

In addition, Powell brings additional insight into the battle itself. Brigadier General Thomas Wood, who commanded the First Division in Crittendon’s XXI Corps, has long had the onus of losing the battle for the Union side. On the afternoon of the 2nd day, Wood received an order to pull out to support Thomas’ desperate fight on the Union left flank. It has been the received wisdom that Wood, who had been reprimanded earlier in the march to Chickamauga by Rosecrans for not following orders, knew that the pullout would open up a gap in the Union right flank but did it anyway out of spite. Powell gives evidence that Wood did indeed realize what would be the result--and asked for clarification from Crittendon who told him to obey the order. It may be nearly 150 years later, but Powell has done much to restore Wood’s reputation.

Powell also emphasizes a point that is often overlooked concerning Longstreet: while Longstreet has always been admired for his defensive capabilities, he was a powerful offensive fighter as well. The massive blow he delivered at Second Manassas was the turning point of that battle. Longstreet later said that no one could have withstood the assault he made with his corps on the Union right flank, and he may have been right. What is not in any doubt was that Wood’s pullout left a gap of 300 yards in the Union line, making Longsteet’s assault certain of success, although not without casualties.

Another contribution of Powell’s is to emphasize the contributions of certain commanders who often go overlooked. For example, who remembers Colonel John Wilder? Yet his innovative use of mounted infantry saved the Union lines time and time again, particularly on the first day.

There are flaws in the atlas. Sometimes unit designations do not correspond between text and map--describing in the text the action of the 65th Ohio when the map shows it as the 64th Ohio, for example. More problematical is the lack of names on the various roads. LaFayette Road, crucial to the 2-day battle is relatively easy to figure out, but some of the more minor roads mentioned in the text are not shown on the map, leading to ambiguity at times. But these are the type of errors that are usually corrected in a second edition and should not deter anyone from studying this book.

While the major interest will be in Chickamauga, the atlas does include as well maps and description of the battle of Tullahoma which preceded Chickamauga.

Not to be missed for those with more than a casual interest in the US Civil War.

Failure in the Saddle indicts Joe Wheeler for mishandling his new cavalry corps prior and during the battle of Chickamauga. The text is fine (despite its lazy editing which gets progressively worse ("ankee", "Rscrans"), a publisher should actually read the stuff they publish). It is unfair to blame Wheeler for his failure to lead his forces effectively. He was new at his job and the creation of not one but two cavalry corps created unnecessary layers upon layers of commands (similar to Burnside's Grand Divisions). Both Wheeler and Forrest acted like brigade commanders concentrating on local matters instead of on the big picture. The main failure rests with Bragg, however, who never developed a clear defensive strategy. Where was the South's "Ills ne passeront pas" line?

In reality, it was not a failure in the saddle at all. The Army of Tennessee had an oversupply of rear ends. It just took two years for the Federals to build up better armed, disciplined cavalry. Both Bragg at Chickamauga and Lee at Gettysburg lacked mounted reconnaissance and flank protection, a service splendidly done by the Federal cavalry. The missing comparison to its outstanding Federal counterpart as well as to Stuart's cavaliers prevents the book from being above average.½