In 2014, Eric J. Wittenberg published "The Devil's to Pay" John Buford
at Gettysburg. A History and Walking Tour, an award-winning study of
Union cavalry delaying actions at Gettysburg. Fast-forward four years to
2018 and Wittenberg's latest release, a companion Western Theater study
entitled Holding the Line on the River of Death: Union Mounted Forces at
Chickamauga, September 18, 1863.
This volume focuses on the two important delaying actions conducted by
mounted Union soldiers at Reed's and Alexander's bridges on the first
day of Chickamauga. A cavalry brigade under Col. Robert H. G. Minty and
Col. John T. Wilder's legendary "Lightning Brigade" of mounted infantry
made stout stands at a pair of chokepoints crossing Chickamauga Creek.
Minty's small cavalry brigade held off nearly ten times its number on
September 18 by designing and implementing a textbook example of a
delaying action. Their dramatic and outstanding efforts threw
Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's entire battle plan off its timetable by
delaying his army's advance for an entire day. That delay cost Bragg's
army the initiative at Chickamauga. Wittenberg brings his expertise with
Civil War cavalry operations to bear with vivid and insightful
descriptions of the fighting and places the actions in their full and
proper historic context.
This thoroughly researched and well-written book includes three
appendices--two orders of battle and a discussion of the historic
context of some of the tactics employed by the Union mounted force on
September 18, and an epilogue on how the War Department and National
Park Service have remembered these events. It also includes a detailed
walking and driving tour complete with the GPS coordinates, a trademark
of Wittenberg's recent works. Complete with more than 60 photos and 15
maps by master cartographer Mark Anderson Moore, Holding the Line on the
River of Death: Union Mounted Forces at Chickamauga, September 18, 1863
will be a welcome addition to the burgeoning Chickamauga historiography.