CLARKSVILLE, Tenn.- Author Stephen Davis will be giving a talk, “Gen. John Bell Hood and Confederate Army Command in Tennessee” and signing copies of his book, A Long and Bloody Task.
The event is at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 21 at the Fort Defiance Civil War Park & Interpretive Center (120 Duncan St, Clarksville, TN).
Spring of 1864 brought a whole new war to the western theater, with new commanders and what would become a new style of warfare. Federal armies, perched in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after their stunning victories there the previous fall, poised on the edge of Georgia for the first time in the war. Atlanta sat in the far distance. Major General William T. Sherman, newly elevated to command the union’s western armies, eyed it covetously- the South’s last great untouched prize.
“Get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources,” his superior, Lt. Gen, Ulysses S. Grant ordered, And so began one of the last great campaigns in the West: Sherman’s lone and bloody task.
The acknowledged expert on all things related to the battle of Atlanta, historian Steve Davis has lived in the area the majority of his life, and in A Long and Bloody Task, he tells the tale of the Atlanta campaign as only local can. He brings his Southern sensibility to the Emerging Civil War Series, known for its engaging storytelling and accessible approach to history.
“The Emerging Civil War Series is happily offering more volumes on the Civil War’s Western Theater”, said Davis. “I’m privileged to write for it about the Atlanta Campaign of 1864. The very format of the series- concise narratives with rich pictorial complement- has allowed me to make what I consider to be the essential points about Sherman and Johnston in a brisk and (I hope) engaging manner. In this way I think I’ve added something of value to the literature of the Atlanta Campaign.”
About the Author: Stephen Davis, longtime Atlantan, has been a Civil Warrior since the fourth grade. He served as Book Review Editor for Blue & Gray magazine for more than twenty years, and is the author of more than a hundred articles on the Civil War in both scholarly and popular journals. He is the author of Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston and the Yankee Heavy Battalions (2001) and What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta (2012). Davis’ companion volume on the Atlanta Campaign, All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign form Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrender, July 18 through September 2, 1864, will be released by Savas Beatie later this summer.