(Directions to Caldwell Hall-Enter the McCallie School campus off of Dodds Avenue opposite the end of Bailey Avenue. Take the main drive into the campus and follow the signs for the Academic Quadrangle. There is a parking area there beside the Chapel and you will have passed Caldwell Hall on the right as you approach the parking area. Find a place and park. Caldwell Hall will be behind you as you park. Come in either the first or second floor doors and follow the signs to the Millis-Evans Room.)

One hundred and forty years later, it all seems pretty desperate. But, in the last days of summer of 1864, as Army of Tennessee commander John Bell Hood and Confederate President Jefferson Davis met at Palmetto, Georgia, what other strategy could be pursued? And so, the Army of Tennessee set off to wreck a railroad.

In his talk this evening, our speaker, Lee White, will relate the events of Hood's North Georgia Campaign as the men of the Army of Tennessee deconstructed a railroad and fought successful and unsuccessful battles and actions along the very route they had been driven in May and June. Big Shanty, Allatoona, Resaca, Tilton, Dalton, Mill Creek Gap, all would be important scenes again. He'll also relate what it means in the bigger picture of the Western Theater campaigns too.

Lee White is a Walker County, Georgia, native long interested in the War Between the States in the Western Theater and particularly in Northwest Georgia. He is widely recognized for his expertise on Confederate military material culture and is noe of the best advisors for Living Historians who want to do it right or better. He has been a volunteer, and a contract and seasonal employee at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park and is presently a Park Guide there. Attending both Dalton College and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Lee has a degree in American History and continues to live in Walker County. Previously, he has spoken to our Round Table on such subjects as Confederate flags at Chickamauga and Chattanooga and the Battle of LaFayette.

Saturday, November 13, 11 PM, & Sunday, November 14, 8 PM - Author Walter Borneman will appear on C-SPAN2's Book TV to discuss his recent volume 1812: The War that Forged a Nation. It's War of 1812, but, particularly for Tennesseans, the Creek War aspect of the war had an influence on the Volunteer State and, of course, out of it arose a man, Andrew Jackson, who would so help define the decades before the nation split North and South.

Monday, November 15, 10 PM - The History Channel's "Investigating History" series will present an episode entitled "The Lost Battle of the Civil War." The story is about the October 25, 1864 Battle of Mine Creek in Kansas. Like most of the Trans-Mississippi battles, they are little known and are usually overlooked, often despite the nature of their fighting. At Mine Creek, 2,800 Union cavalry defeated 7,000 Confederate cavalry in a battle that lasted less than an hour. In addition to the battle itself, the program will relate the efforts being made by the Mine Creek Battlefield Foundation to preserve, document, investigate, and interpret this engagement in "Bleeding Kansas."

Sunday, November 28, 8 PM - In one of the final, really the next to last, of C-SPAN's Booknotes programs, Brian Lamb will interview author and historian Peter Wallner regarding his recently published Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire's Favorite Son. Pierce is usually overlooked as a President, but many of the events that occurred during his term in office are ones that helped increase the sectional divide and lead to the war in 1861. Pierce is another one of those immediate pre-war characters we all need to know more about.

So, one war-time, one immediate pre-war, and one way-pre-war; but, they will certainly help expand your knowledge of the 19th century United States, the era that so shaped our nation.