Holding the Line on the River of Death

Everyone who spends time reading about Civil War mounted operations knows that Eric Wittenberg's favorite Union cavalry general is John Buford, and he's done a pretty good job of justifying it over the years (he puts it all together here). That said, Eric has often favorably compared the Union cavalry's delaying actions and tactics at Chickamauga to Buford's at Gettysburg on July 1. Now he has a book in the works about the notable exploits of the Union cavalry at a key point in the Chickamauga fight, to be titled Holding the Line on the River of Death: Union Mounted Forces at Chickamauga, September 18, 1863 (Savas Beatie).

The book "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." It will also have Mark Moore maps (which is great, as he is one of the best cartographers around) and a touring section.

Earlier in the year, I mentioned Dennis Belcher's The Union Cavalry and the Chickamauga Campaign . With Belcher aiming at a broad treatment and Wittenberg drilling down to those cavalry actions that occurred on a single day of particular moment, it looks like both volumes might complement each other nicely. Apparently, Wittenberg has even penned the foreword to Belcher's book. With the general slipperiness of initial publication dates attached to SB's more down-the-line titles (they have a lot of irons in the fire at any given moment, and I don't recall this one even being mentioned in the 'under contract' section of their newsletter yet), I would hesitate to even guess when Holding the Line will actually be released.