The Chickamauga Campaign: Volume I – A Mad Irregular Battle

Well, it is finally here.

Volume I is almost back from the printers, and will be ready to ship soon. If you want to place an order, now is the time. You can order signed copies through Savas-Beatie ( ) or unsigned copies through your usual outlets, once they get their books via distribution. If you want to buy it at the Chickamauga-Chattanooga Visitor’s Center, I imagine they will have copies within a month or so.

For me, this is the culmination of fifteen years’ study and work – a process that won’t finally draw to a close, I admit, until the final volume is published – all in good time.

Once I hold the first book in my hands, I will let everyone know.

March, 2015 Seminar

CCNMP Study Group 2015 Seminar in the Woods.

Mission Statement: “. . . for the purpose of preserving and suitably marking for historical and professional military study the fields of some of the most remarkable maneuvers and most brilliant fighting in the war of the rebellion.”

Tour Leaders: Jim Ogden and Dave Powell
Date: Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7, 2014; By bus and car caravan.

By Bus:
Friday: 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 – Resaca in 1863 and 1864.
By bus: We will drive to Resaca, which for a nearly week in September 1863, was the Army of Tennessee’s railhead while the Confederate army was concentrated at LaFayette. We will discuss Bragg’s logistics in 1863, the importance of the railroad, and the first steps taken by the Confederates to defend this location.

We will also spend time discussing the 1864 battle of Resaca, and explore the new state park covering that battle.

This will be a day-long tour, stopping for lunch, probably in Dalton.

On foot and by car caravan:
Saturday Morning: 8:30 a.m. to Noon. Liddell Attacks, September 19th
Saturday morning we will return to the vicinity of Winfrey Field, to explore the developing fight on September 19th. Our primary focus will be on St. John Liddell’s counter-attack against Baird’s division.

Saturday Afternoon: 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. John B. Turchin on September 19.
We will discuss Turchin’s fight in Brock Field, and then his counter-attack westward along the corridor of the Brotherton Road in response to A. P. Stewart’s breakthrough at about 4:00 p.m..

Cost: Beyond the fee for Friday’s Bus, there is no cost for tour participation. Meals lodging, transportation, and incidentals, however, are the individual’s responsibility.

Lodging and Meals: Everyone is responsible for their own lodging and meals

Note: Friday’s Tours will be by Bus. Pre-registration Fee: $45 Due by February 1st

 
Send to (and make checks payable to):
Dave Powell
522 Cheyenne Drive
Lake In The Hills IL 60156

Please also note that this fee is NON-REFUNDABLE after February 1st, 2014. Once we are committed to the bus, we will be charged the booking fee.

On-site Sign up Fee: $50

Things that catch my ear…

On September 23rd, Confederate soldier Larkin Poe rode a borrowed horse down the Brotherton Road, turning north on the LaFayette Road once he reached the Brotherton cabin. Inside, he found his father in law, George Brotherton, who joined him. A quarter-mile on, they stopped at the still-smoking ruins of his own farm, at the southern end of Poe Field. His acreage was still carpeted with bodies. His fences were destroyed, whatever crops they protected trampled. His wife Sarah and his two children (Hilliard, aged 2, and Gussie, just ten months old) were missing. The view was grisly, including a dead Federal whose legs had been burned away by the fire.

Poe was a member of Company K, the 4th Georgia Cavalry. He was a teamster, hauling supplies. He and his company camped at Jay’s Mill on the 22nd, and this was the first chance he had to find out what had become of his family.

Later that day, Poe discovered that his family survived, and were sheltering in a ravine with about two dozen other locals behind the Snodgrass farm. That was a relief, to be sure, but his farm was destroyed, and his dependents were now refugees. All Poe could do was leave them a sack of grain before he had to rejoin his command.

Harry Smeltzer, at Bull Runnings, likes to do a thing he calls “pulling threads.”

Last evening, I was listening to Slacker when a new song came on. The band was called “Larkin Poe.” That caught my attention. Couldn’t possibly be, right?

Here is their website: http://www.larkinpoe.com/

Turns out I knew these singers previously, as the Lovell Sisters, having heard them on the radio and internet from time to time. In the internet age, though, no question goes unanswered for long.

From their own website:

We have a very colorful family history,” explains lead singer/guitarist Rebecca, 23, who also plays mandolin and violin. “There were a lot of creative, hot-headed, and intelligent branches that went against the grain in our family tree. Our paternal grandfather suffered from schizophrenia, while our great, great, great, great grandfather, Larkin Poe, was a Civil War wagon driver turned historian and a distant cousin to Edgar Allen Poe. Growing up with their crazy stories definitely shaded our perception of normal. As artists, I think some of those innate eccentricities, passed down from generation to generation, have been even further exaggerated in us!” Megan, 25, who contributes lapsteel and dobro to the line-up, chimes in, “As sisters, we just wanted to pick a band name that had familial significance, so we decided to tip a nod to our ancestors and take on the name Larkin Poe.”

So there you go. It’s the same guy. Will I buy this album? You bet. I Wonder if I should include it in my bibliography?