(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 city of Chattanooga was taxed to the limit of its capacity to entertain in comfort the throng of veterans and their friends, but the open heart of it hospitality met all needs...Proudly bearing tatered battle flags, dimmed by powder smoke and time, the gray-clad survivors of the Confederate army marched through the streets, wall on each side with cheering thousands...monuments to the heroic dead of Alabama and Florida were unveiled by representatives of those States in the presence of a throng of visitors who had come to do honor to the occasion...The people of Chattanooga, by their unstinted hospitality and persistent labors, secured the appreciation and lasting gratitude of thousands of Confederate veterans...."
-- Confederate Veteran, Vol. 21, 1913, pp.329-333, 354-355

So reads the report of the United Confederate Veterans Reunion in Chattanooga in late May, 1913. It was near 50 years since their deeds, and those of their opponents, and the events of the war, that had hallowed much of the ground around Chattanooga. Now they were back, many of them, again to the place where they had made their name half a century before. It was the last big Reunion....

The United Confederate Veterans was the largest of the Southern veteran organizations. Created to unify a number of smaller, more locally based organizations, the UCV came to be the voice of the former Confederate soldiers. Never as large nor as politically powerful as the Northern Grand Army of the Republic, the UCV still led many of the efforts to memorialize and commemorate those who had fought for Southern independence. It, and many of its members, had been involved in the creation of the National Military Parks at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Shiloh, and Vicksburg; it had encouraged and urged the recording of the history of those days.

Our speaker this evening is longtime Round Table member Dr. Anthony Hodges. A former Round Table officer, Anthony is perhaps best known for many in the WBTS field for his knowledge of the medical practices of the period. But, another area of his interest is the Southern veterans' activities. In addition to speaking on the UCV this evening, he will bring some of the items from his Chattanooga UCV reunion collection.

Anthony Hodges is a dentist in Red Bank. He, his wife Jill, and their three kids live in Chattanooga.

Round Table member and Professor Dr. Paul E. Fuller is the March speaker in the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library's "Books That Changed My Mind" discussion series. Dr. Fuller will be discussion Robert E. Lee: A Biography. The program will be held in the main or downtown branch of the Library at 1001 Broad Street at Noon on Wednesday, March 22, 2006. You are welcome to bring your lunch to the talk or you may order a box lunch from The Cupboard Catering by calling 423-266-1356.

There are four items again this month for the Speaker's Fund. The first is a copy of Reminiscences of the 41st Tennessee: The Civil War in the west, edited by John A. Simpson. The volume is the account of Sumner A. Cunningham, a member of the 41st and later the founder and editor of the Confederate Veteran magazine, that treasure trove of information on the Southern experience in the war and of the activities of the United Confederate Veterans. The second item is a copy of Shelby Foote's magisterial The Civil War: A Narrative--Red River to Appomattox. The third item is a selection of booklets on two Civil War events that have anniversaries in April--Fort Sumter and Appomattox. There's copy of the old National Park Service handbook for Fort Sumter, the special issues from Civil War Times Illustrated on both of those events, a reprint of an 1861 account by a Southerner of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, a copy of Chris Calkins' Thirty-Six Hours Before Appomattox, Mr. Calkins' wonder account of the Battle of Sayler's Creek. The fourth item is a collection of three issues of Civil War Times Illustrated from 1982 and 1983 with articles on such topics as Terry's Texas Rangers, Bragg's missed opportunity in McLemore's Cove, and the shooting of Earl Van Dorn. 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.

There are not a great number of WBTS programs on the tube in the coming week or so from what I can learn. C-SPAN's website was off-line the two times I went to check it so I couldn't learn if its Book-TV has any Civil War programming coming up. You might want to check yourself. The couple I could learn of are:

HISTORY CHANNEL

March 21, 7 AM - Civil War Journal: "The Monitor vs. the CSS Virginia"

March 25, 8 AM Unknown Civil War: "Lee's Commanders" --A round table discussion held at the White House of the Confederacy to discuss Robert E. Lee's right hand men.

April 18, 2006 - Morris Penny, "Grant's Deceptions To Vicksburg"
May 16, 2006 - Rebecca Karcher, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, "New Jersey in the Atlanta Campaign"
September 19, 2006 - Since it will be the 143rd anniversary of the fighting on September 19 at Chickamauga, we'll have an evening walking tour meeting on the Chickamauga Battlefield; bring a flashlight.
October 17, 2006 - Russell K. Brown, author of To The Manner Born: The Life of William H. T. Walker, Augusta's "Pet Company:" The Washington Light Artillery of August, Georgia, and "Our Connection With Savannah:" History of the FIrst Battalion Georgia Sharpshooters, 1862-1865, presenting a subject from the latter book, "Sharpshooters in the Valley of the River of Death: A Georgia Sharpshooter Battalion at Chickamauga."
November 21, 2006 - Sam Davis Elliott, "The Southern End of the Battle of Missionary Ridge"

November 9-11, 2006--14th 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.

After the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga themselves, the story of Chattanooga as a hospital center, for first the Confederacy and then the Union, is perhaps next most widely recognized. Thousands and thousands of sick and injured Confederates were cared for in the town itself, up on Lookout Mountain, out at Tyner, and a lot of other places close by. Many desire more information on that subject. Well, Mercer University Press has just published a book that will probably be of interest to those in search of an understanding of Chattanooga as a Confederate hospital center. The book is not actually on any of Chattanooga's hospitals; its about two in Atlanta (and other points after they moved from Atlanta). But, those two hospitals, Fairground Hospital No. 1 and No. 2, were part of the same hospital system serving the Army of Tennessee and had the same man, Dr. Samuel H. Stout, as their senior administrator. Dr. Jack D. Welsh, in Two Confederate Hospitals and Their Patients: Atlanta to Opelika, gives the history of those two facilities and analyzes their performance as reflected in extgensive surviving records. In addition to the normal written text, the volume includes a CD with extensive patient rosters. You might check it out. It looks interesting. I just got my copy this week so I'll let you know more as I get through it.

Click here to view the insert: Park Day Insert

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