Every time I visit the
Chickamauga/Chattanooga National Military Park I end up in a specific area of
the Park. I’ve studied that location. I’ve walked it. I’ve read reports and
letters while walking it (which is sort of spooky) and I’ve photographed it.
I have stood in various vantage points
and tried to listen into the past to hear the rifle fire and blasting boom of
artillery pieces. Above all, I have tried to listen to the human sounds, the
shrieks and cries of the wounded. Those sounds are all around you if you listen
hard enough. You can hear the history if you stand long enough on That Bloody
Hill.
The Federals defended hills one, two
and three along Horseshoe Ridge during the afternoon and early evening hours of
September 20, 1863 as the determined Confederates attacked. Eventually the
Confederates pushed the heroic Union soldiers off the hill and away from the
fighting. Some have termed the Battle of Chickamauga the Battle of Iron Hail and I shudder when I think of that description
while visiting that area.
I have written a book about those
final hours of the three-day fight at Chickamauga. Specifically, my book
follows a Confederate command that was part of a brigade commanded by Brigadier
General Archibald Gracie through its movements during the battle. It took me
thirteen years to complete the project and the result, which I completed the
last work on this week, is named That
Bloody Hill: Hilliard’s Legion at Chickamauga, will be published by
McFarland early next year.
 |
| Looking at Hill 1 from Hill 2. |
During the research there were
occasional moments of clarity but many more of confusion. At the suggestion of
a professional historian I once taped together several sheets of legal-sized
note paper and began writing a long timeline for the fighting on the Ridge and
it was while performing that exercise that I began understanding how many
events that happened in different places must have happened at the same time.
Time estimates by the soldiers who fought along that Ridge vary greatly. In one
important instance, the time variation was due to the similarities of two
different events that seemed to be
the same event. Go ahead, deal with that one for a while.
My admiration for the soldiers on both
sides of the fighting is complete. After more than a decade of trying to make
sense of the whole thing, I told a friend that while I thought I knew what happened, I wasn’t sure how they did it.
Chickamauga pitted the Confederate
Army of Tennessee, reinforced by a portion of the Army of Northern Virginia,
against the United States Army of the Cumberland. There are heroes on both
sides of the story and there are goats, examples of good battlefield decisions
by commanders and poor judgement, there is both praise and condemnation for the
same soldier in many cases and there are personality conflicts galore. If the
bloodletting along Horseshoe Ridge is a sad tale of killing, it is also a tale
of failure and success, of valor and the vanquished and of victory and defeat.
I hope you’ll buy a copy of my book
when it is published. In fact, I suggest you buy vast quantities of copies.
Anyone who does pick up a copy will hold in their hands the results of a journey.
That journey included visits to archival collections, university libraries,
homes of descendants of the armies, cemeteries and the battlefield. Lots of
trips to the battlefield. I honestly don’t know how many trips I made to a
local library so that I could use a microfilm reader to go through a collection
of papers.
Part of the book is a roster of the
original members of Hilliard’s Legion. I will never again produce a book with a
roster of names. My thumb, wrist and elbow were sore for months after I completed
the roster, the victims of prolonged computer use.
I spent so much time following those
men through their military careers – in some instances through the end of their
lives – that I felt as though I knew them. When I found a grave stone of a Legion
soldier I frequently recognized the name even before I saw the regimental
affiliation. It was always a solemn moment for me to reach the final resting
place for a Chickamauga veteran, regardless of which side they served. My wife
and I found two cemeteries in Ohio that had been on the grounds of POW camps
during the war and there were Legion veterans in both cemeteries. Few
experiences in life are as desolate as feeling your health fail while locked up
as a prisoner of war.
One location I visited was once a home
for elderly Confederate veterans in Alabama. It is now called The Confederate
Memorial Park and has two cemeteries. In one of them is a sign indicating that
a tree had been planted in memory of a Legion member who immigrated to Brazil
after the war. He was one of several former Legion men who became Confederados
in Brazil. Now we’re talking about international history. As my long-time pal
and fellow Civil War student Bucky Weber says, I’m not going down that rabbit
hole, thank you very much.
You can pre-order a copy of my book, That Bloody Hill: Hilliard’s Legion at
Chickamauga, on the McFarland website, on Amazon or on the Barnes &
Noble’s website. I hope you do.
Thanks for reading.
