(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.)

The Battle of Champion Hill on May 16, 1863 was the climatic land engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign. The Confederate defeat in the wooded, ravine-strewn terrain just east of the Big Black River sealed the fate of Vicksburg and John Pemberton's Southern army defending that vital point. Its result meant Pemberton was cooped up in Vicksburg, cut off from other, albeit small, Confederate forces in Mississippi. Union success in finally re-opening the Mississippi River was just seven weeks away.

For those of the Round Table with long family ties to the Chattanooga area, East Tennessee, and Northwest Georgia, Champion Hill was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, battle for many of the units from those areas. Colonel Alexander W. Reynolds' Tennessee Brigade, including Newton Lillard's 3rd Tennessee and James Gillespie's 43rd Tennessee, helped open the battle and Brigadier-General Alfred Cumming's Georgia Brigade, including the 34th, 36th, and 39th Georgia Infantry from Northwest Georgia, wound up in the maelstrom at the angle in the Southern line - loosing 995 killed, wounded, and missing of 2,500 engaged. "Baker's Creek," as the battle was also known, would be an engagement not forgotten by those Confederates of the great valley.

Our speaker this evening, Dr. Timothy B. Smith, will relate some of the key points of this frequently overlooked battle. Come out and learn about the fight that sealed Vicksburg's fate. Dr. Smith holds a Ph.D. in history from Mississippi State University and is presently a historian at Shiloh National Military Park. He has authored articles for the Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, and North and South. While in graduate school, he undertook to write an administrative history of Shiloh National Military Park. A version of that work was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2004 as This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Membory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. He speaks to us tonight on the subject of his other book-length study, Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg (New York: Savas Beatie LLC, 2004).

There are four items again this month for the Speaker's Fund. The first is a copy of Dr. Smith's Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg. The second item is a copy of Jeb Stuart: The Last Cavalier by Burke Davis. The third item is Volume 1 of Virgil Carrington Jones's Gray Ghosts and Rebel Raiders: Manassas to Gettysburg. The fourth item is all six issues from 1995 of America's Civil War with articles with such titles as "Fighting With Forrest in the Tennessee Winter," "Ironclad Assault at Trent's Reach," "Confederate Cloak and Dagger," "Lightning Brigade Strikes Fighting Joe," "Great Escape From Rebel Prison," and "Ben Butler's Powder Boat Scheme." The last three of the four items this month were donated to the Round Table to support the Speaker's Fund. To those donors go our thanks. Proceeds from the Speaker's Fund go toward bringing speakers in from outside the area. Your support of the Speaker's Fund is appreciated.

September 20, 2005 - To be announced
October 18, 2005 - Dr. Kit Rushing, "Civil War Memoirist Fanny Andrews' A Family Secret"
November 15, 2005 - Harvey Scarborough, "Thomas' Demonstration Takes Orchard Knob"
December 20, 2005 - To be announced

September 16-20, 2005--Tours, talks, walks, and Living History presentations at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park to commemorate the 142nd Anniversary of the Battle of Chickamauga. More details in next month's newsletter and at www.nps.gov/chch
September 19, 2005--Friends of Chickamauga and Chickamauga National Military Park Leonard Fant "Play for the Park Golf Tournament," Battlefield Golf Club, Fort Oglethorpe, for more information, www.chickchatt.org, 423-624-6914
November 10-12, 2005--13th Annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression, sponsored by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Department of Communications; more details later.