River of Death: The Chickamauga Campaign. Vol. 1: The Fall of Chattanooga by William Glenn Robertson (review)

William Glenn Robertson’s study of the Chickamauga campaign is the culmination of many years of research, much of it accumulated during staff rides sponsored by the United States Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This work, the first of two volumes, covers the campaign from its opening operations in July 1863 through the evacuation of Chattanooga, Tennessee, two months later. In his preface the author notes his belief that the subject deserves greater examination than ever before given that “in operational planning, logistical considerations, and engineering, the Chickamauga Campaign had few peers in American Civil War history” (pp. xii–xiii). As such, River of Death: The Chickamauga Campaign follows a recent trend in lengthy, minutely detailed Civil War campaign studies, including Edward G. Longacre’s The Early Morning of War: Bull Run, 1861 (Norman, Okla., 2014) and D. Scott Hartwig’s To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 (Baltimore, 2012).

Because Chattanooga was an important source of war matériel and a strategic strongpoint in the Confederate defense line in the West, its security was a high priority for the Confederate government. It was also important to the Union army; East Tennessee was a bastion of Union sentiment, and its citizens constantly appealed to the United States government for relief from Confederate occupation. Robertson utilizes voluminous primary source material to analyze the thought processes of the rival commanders who fought to control Chattanooga: Union major general William S. Rosecrans and Confederate general Braxton Bragg. The author’s ability to supply real-time operational information enables the reader to appreciate the choices the adversaries made during the opening phase of the campaign. Robertson also offers a discerning analysis of the personalities of the two men. Rosecrans was self-confident to the point of haughtiness, and he micromanaged his Army of the Cumberland to a sometimes alarming degree. Bragg, also a micromanager, was taciturn and aloof; in planning the operations of the Army of Tennessee he drove himself to the brink of physical and mental collapse. Robertson likewise highlights the personalities and abilities of the principal subordinates and staff officers of both armies. Nor does he overlook the point of view of the common soldiers, in blue and gray, whose opinions, hopes, and concerns changed as the campaign unfolded.

River of Death is not a book for the casual buff; it is aimed at the serious scholar. One of its few shortcomings is the need for more maps, especially area maps that locate the numerous cities, towns, and hamlets mentioned in the text. This criticism aside, the work is must reading for any student of the Chickamauga campaign. One awaits Volume 2 with great anticipation.