July 1863 was a momentous month in the Civil War. News of Gettysburg and
Vicksburg electrified the North and devastated the South. Sandwiched
geographically between those victories and lost in the heady tumult of
events was news that William S. Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland had
driven Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee entirely out of Middle
Tennessee. The brilliant campaign nearly cleared the state of Rebels and
changed the calculus of the Civil War in the Western Theater. Despite
its decisive significance, few readers even today know of these events.
The publication of Tullahoma: The Forgotten Campaign that Changed the
Course of Civil War, June 23 - July 4, 1863 by award-winning authors
David A. Powell and Eric J. Wittenberg, forever rectifies that
oversight.
On June 23, 1863, Rosecrans, with some 60,000 men, initiated a classic
campaign of maneuver against Bragg's 40,000. Confronted with rugged
terrain and a heavily entrenched foe, Rosecrans intended to defeat Bragg
through strategy rather than bloodshed by outflanking him and seizing
control of Bragg's supply line, the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, at
Tullahoma and thus force him to fight a battle outside of his extensive
earthworks. It almost worked.
The complex and fascinating campaign included deceit, hard marching,
fighting, and incredible luck--both good and bad. Rosecrans executed a
pair of feints against Guy's Gap and Liberty Gap to deceive the Rebels
into thinking the main blow would fall somewhere other than where it was
designed to strike. An ineffective Confederate response exposed one of
Bragg's flanks--and his entire army--to complete disaster. Torrential
rains and consequential decisions in the field wreaked havoc on the
best-laid plans. Still Bragg hesitated, teetering on the brink of losing
the second most important field army in the Confederacy. The hour was
late and time was short, and his limited withdrawal left the armies
poised for a climactic engagement that may have decided the fate of
Middle Tennessee, and perhaps the war. Finally fully alert to the mortal
threat facing him, Bragg pulled back from the iron jaws of defeat about
to engulf him and retreated--this time all the way to Chattanooga, the
gateway to the rest of the Southern Confederacy.
Powell and Wittenberg mined hundreds of archival and firsthand accounts
to craft a splendid study of this overlooked campaign that set the stage
for the Battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, the removal of Rosecrans
and Bragg from the chessboard of war, the elevation of U.S. Grant to
command all Union armies, and the early stages of William T. Sherman's
Atlanta Campaign. Tullahoma--one of the most brilliantly executed major
campaigns of the war--was pivotal to Union success in 1863 and beyond.
And now readers everywhere will know precisely why.
