The Chickamauga Campaign—Glory or the Grave Quotes

“Ambrose Bierce heard the yell and described the effect it had on those occupying the dark gloomy woods: “Away to our left and rear some of Bragg’s people set up ‘the rebel yell.’ It was taken up successively and passed round to our front, along our right and in behind us again, until it seemed almost to have got to the point whence it started. It was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“Hotchkiss was not a scientific gunner, as his straight-ahead, charge-’em-and-to-hell-with-the-consequences manner so aptly demonstrated in Winfrey Field the evening before. Semple, by contrast, was a canny veteran tactician. Close range was fine—if you could get there and deliver accurate fire without getting shot to pieces first—but what Hotchkiss failed to grasp was that artillery was most effective when it delivered a converging fire.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“In 1880, “Garfield’s Ride” became a centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency, so much so that other witnesses later marveled at the mythology that sprouted up around the tale. In fact this mission, as noted by Garfield’s most reliable biographer, historian Theodore C. Smith, “although a creditable display of courage, involved no unusual risk.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“By the time the official reports were written everyone understood careers teetered on the brink, and great care was taken in the penning of those missives.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“returned with several cases of .577 Enfield rounds. These provided for the roughly one-third of the 21st carrying the English muskets, but left the men armed with Colt rifles unsupplied. Necessity being the mother of invention, the men soon discovered they could force the rounds into the chambers of the cylinder, but that firing them burst the barrels; by affixing bayonets, however, the muzzles were reinforced just enough to prevent splitting.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“The real problem was that in the space of a quarter of an hour, General Rosecrans set virtually the entire Union right wing in motion. He did so in the face of a powerful enemy already attacking his left wing, and who at that moment was preparing to attack his right wing.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“Breastworks, however rudely and hastily constructed, would be a feature of Union battle positions wherever possible from now on.39”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“but if Leonidas Polk had left things entirely up to Daniel Harvey Hill, nothing at all would have been done.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“Polk regarded orders as suggestions, to be routinely ignored if he had a better idea.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863

“In a single stroke an inexperienced Episcopal bishop became one of the senior generals in the budding Confederate army.”
― David A. Powell, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, Union Collapse, and the Retreat to Chattanooga, September 20–23, 1863