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In 1863, northwest Georgia was desolate country—the westward expansion of the 1800s largely sidestepping this part of eastern America. In fact, even today its values are more similar to those of America’s old frontier than to those of the rest of the postmodern South. Although the metropolitan reach of Chattanooga from the north and Atlanta from the south is swiftly maneuvering throughout north Georgia, and while this encroachment is quickly bringing the accoutrements of modernity— fast-food eateries and strip malls—it is not bringing a sudden change in values and beliefs. This area is more anxious about the present and future than about the past. Despite the pockets of wealth made from the tufted-carpet industry—in this, the carpet capital of the world— northwest Georgians defiantly refuse to change; they like who they are and for good reason—they are good people. I know this because I am one of them. On the eighteenth and nineteenth of September 1863, Union Major General William S. Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland lumbered into Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s pensive, bickering Army of Tennessee at Chickamauga Creek, exactly on the line between Catoosa and Walker counties in Northwest Georgia. The result of this maneuver—a clumsy dance between two forces of immense destructive power—was 34,633 total casualties, the most devastating two-day battle of the Civil War—not far behind the three-day carnage at Gettysburg. I know the Chickamauga battlefield less as a historical event than as an actual place where too many good Americans suffered and died. As a young boy, I not only covered the Chickamauga National Battlefield Park, I traversed all the other places both armies traveled before and after the main battle—places like Alpine, Ressaca, Kennesaw. In fact, my hometown of Summerville almost became the epicenter of the battle, missing its place in history and the horrors of unimaginable misery by : j a m e s h . m e r e d i t h My Chickamauga 6 4 | J A M E S H . M E R E D I T H some quirk of military expediency and luck. Evacuating the dead and wounded must have been a nightmare for the few locals at Chickamauga, equal to the fighting itself. The total casualties of that battle are roughly equal to the present populations of Rome, Georgia; Gadsden, Alabama; Fort Dodge, Iowa; or Elk Grove Village, Illinois. I feel a personal connection to this Civil War battlefield. I did not have a relative who fought there (at least not that I know of; my family never kept track of such things), but it is a place where my mother took me to satisfy my hunger to understand this conflict. It was one of those times she was able to take time off from her busy adult life (time that I now can appreciate the value of) to take me to a place she had no particular interest in. She did it just for me. Recently, I found the 35 mm slides I took on that trip. Among those slides was one that I had “wasted” on my mother. She was standing next to one of the blue-green bronze cannons that festoon the park; she was wearing clothes that she had made herself, smiling, distracted, but satisfied that she was doing her duty for her son. I’m so glad now that I took that photo of her then because it is the last full image of her that I can now muster twenty-nine years later. Soon after that photo was taken, my mother began her own dance with death, eventually succumbing to the onslaught of cancer. I don’t mean to be sentimental here; my point is that history— especially military history that records suffering and death—can be extremely personal. I connect emotionally to this historical event that occurred ninety-one years before I was born not just because it happened in my backyard but also because my backyard metaphorically took place in it. While learning about the mortality of soldiers, I have learned about my mother’s mortality, as well as about the importance of time and memory. Chickamauga demonstrates to me that history lives in the mind, imagination, and heart, and unlike others from northwest Georgia , that I seem to have a lot more anxiety about the past than about the future. ...

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