Coming Sept. 10, 2016: Our First Speaker of the 2016 - 2017 Season:

Greg Biggs will present:

 The Question Was One of Supplies: The Logistics for William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign

        

Greg Biggs has been a student of military history for 50 years. His interests cover the ancient Greeks through modern military events with concentrations on the Revolutionary War, the wars of Frederick the Great, the Napoleonic era, the Civil War and World War 2. His primary focus on Civil War history is the war in the Western Theater. He has lectured all over the country to history, civic and Civil War groups since 1990 and began leading Civil War tours in 1993. Greg has had articles published in Blue & Gray Magazine, North-South Trader, the Civil War Trust's "Hallowed Ground," the Battle of Franklin Trust's "Battlefield Dispatch," Civil War Regiments journal and Citizen's Companion and several other publications.  A Nationally known historian on Civil War flags, Greg has consulted for numerous museums, auctions house and private concerns. He has also contributed to books on Georgia's Civil War flags as well as those of Tennessee. Greg is a member of the Company of Military Historians and is president of the Clarksville, TN Civil War Roundtable, one of five he has founded or co-founded. He also programs the Nashville and Bowling Green CWRTs.

The Question Was One of Supplies: Logistics for Wm. T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign

 No army in history moved without a secure line of supplies especially if it moved into enemy territory. If an army got cut off from its supplies then calamity usually followed often ending in defeat and/or destruction. When William T. Sherman set his sights on Atlanta he prepared for the supplying of his army in a manner that surpassed every other Civil War general. Rebuilding railroads and confiscating locomotives and rail cars to haul supplies, Sherman set a daily goal for shipments to his forward base in Chattanooga. Ruthless in making sure that only supplies got on the cars, Sherman also had to worry about protecting the line of rails that ran back to Louisville, Kentucky from Confederate raiders. Building on a system begun by William S. Rosecrans, Sherman's engineers built forts and blockhouses and prepared pre-fabricated trestles for replacing those brought down by Confederate raiders. While his preparations were masterful and thorough, they were not without some flaws. This program will examine the nuts and bolts of these logistics and cover the errors that were also made. In the end, his supply line performed as expected and Atlanta was captured. This set the stage for two more campaigns that Sherman would undertake before the war ended in April 1865 as well as logistics for more modern wars.

For more information about us, please visit our website: Louisville Civil War Round Table