The Civil War Letters of Joshua K. Callaway by Joshua K. Callaway

Author:Joshua K. Callaway
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2014-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Chickamauga

August 27–September 24, 1863

JOSHUA’S STRATEGY of deviling General Bragg with applications for a furlough proved successful, and he spent most of August with his family. When he returned to the Army of Tennessee late in the month, Bragg had already begun shifting the troops about in a bewildered response to threats from the advancing Federals under General Rosecrans. Indeed, Joshua’s brigade was not where he had left it a few weeks earlier, and such was the confusion in Chattanooga that no one could immediately tell him where to find it. He finally reached his comrades the following day, seven miles from the city, just in time to turn around and march back through town to a new position. This proved an apt beginning to Callaway’s participation in the Chickamauga campaign—a series of marches, countermarches, and recountermarches.

During Callaway’s absence General Thomas C. Hindman replaced General Jones M. Withers as division commander—“and the change was truly an unfortunate one for us,” declared brigade commander General Manigault. “[He was] a scheming, maneuvering, political general …. Morally, he stood deservedly low in the opinions of most of the officers … the cunningest, most slippery intriguer that I ever met with.” The five-foot one-inch Hindman, much given to snug clothing, ruffled shirts, and patent leather boots, did not impress his soldiers, either. “All I have to fear now is our new general,” asserted soldier Thomas Hall, who related an incident that proved Hindman a “regular low life rowdy.” During a night march, upon finding General Polk’s staff camped on the site Hindman had selected for himself, he roused the interlopers by referring to them as “unprincipled curs.” “To say the least,” Hall concluded, “he was challenged to a duel, which he did not accept”—thereby proving, in some minds, his cowardice. Hindman’s performance during the coming weeks bears out these assessments by his subordinate and by his common soldier.1

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