The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 103, July 1999 - April, 2000 Page: 386

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

this is not just a closely researched administrative or logistical study. Pickenpaugh
also tells readers about the men in the ranks and describes public response to the
long trains that snaked their way through the Midwest and Upper South. Weary
infantrymen, it seems, thoroughly enjoyed this novel method of travel. "why
didn't .. .Joe [Hooker] think of it before?" one soldier asked, while another man
insisted, "From this day [forward] I do my marchin' on wheels and my fightin' by
proxy" (p. 82). Northern communities along the route turned out to wave at the
passing cars and to heap food and other luxuries on the men whenever the cara-
van halted. There were hecklers, too, especially in the Copperhead regions of
Ohio, but the angry soldiers scattered them by hurling stones.
The story concludes with some combat action, including a skirmish between
the recently transferred units of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of
the Potomac in the valley below Lookout Mountain. The significance of that
seemingly minor event was enormous, says Pickenpaugh, for the confrontation
between men who had been battling each other in Virginia just weeks ealier
"verified that railroads had come of age as tools of war" (p. 171). Similarly,
Pickenpaugh's own work has significance beyond its apparently narrow topic, for
his careful reconstruction of Union and Confederate troop movements in the
autumn of 1863 is an excellent case stuy in the role of logistics in warfare.
University of Arkansas DANIEL E. SUTHERLAND
Six Armies in Tennessee: The Chickamauga and Chattanooga Campaigns. By Steven E.
Woodworth. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Pp. xvii+257.
Illustrations, maps, introduction, preface, acknowledgments, notes, biblio-
graphic essay, index. ISBN o-80o32-4778-8. $29.95, cloth.)
Steven E. Woodworth, an assistant professor at Texas Christian University, has
crafted a fine overview of some of the decisive campaigns of the Civil War. Six
Armies in Tennessee is the first volume in the University of Nebraska Press's "Great
Campaigns of the Civil War" series. The intent of the series is to provide "readers
concise syntheses . . . reflecting the findings of recent scholarship. The series
points to new ways of viewing military campaigns by looking beyond the battle-
field and the headquarters tent to the wider political and social context within
which these campaigns unfolded" (p. xi). Woodworth fulfills admirably the
intent of the series with analyses of the Tullahoma campaign, the battle of
Chickamauga, the siege of Chattanooga, and the Knoxville campaign.
Altogether, six armies, four northern and two southern, participated in some
phase of these campaigns.
The book is organized chronologically and begins with a clear description of the
nine-day Tullahoma campaign that pushed Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's
army out of Middle Tennessee to Chattanooga. After a rest period of several
weeks, the cautious Union Gen. William S. Rosecrans divided his forces and
maneuvered Bragg's men out of Chattnooga. Mistakenly believing that Bragg's
army was severely demoralized, Rosecrans issued orders to insure the destruction
of Bragg's Army of Tennessee. Rosecrans's miscalculation nearly led to the
destruction of part of his own widely separated army by the Confederates, who
were far from demoralized. Only the bickering Confederate leadership's tardiness

386

January