Savas Beatie has become my favorite publisher of Civil War history. Failure in the Saddle is a good example of why that is:
The standard narrative of Chickamauga is that Bragg's Army of the Tennessee won in spite of Bragg rather than because him. The litany of complaints about Bragg's generalship is long and colorful. But most of the literature on the campaign focuses on Bragg's failures, and the cavalry operations are given little attention. Powell is the first serious examination of these operations in quite some time (ever?). He makes a strong case that considerable blame should also be placed on the commanders of Bragg's two Cavalry Corps, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joe Wheeler.
Forrest is a challenging subject. He is deified by many, vilified by many others (Note: I'm not going to address here any of the issues related to atrocities like the Fort Pillow Massacre or his involvement in the early years of the KKK). His advocates consider him a military genius. Forrest had little military training, but a gift for independent operations. The Chickamauga Campaign exposes his flaws; as a freshly promoted Corps commander he was placed in a position for which he did not have the training, instincts or preparation. He found it difficult to stay out of low level tactical details, often didn't fully understand his role or the role of his corps, and made key mistakes in intelligence collection. This is not to say that he was consistently awful; there were a number of things that he did well in the campaign.
Unlike Forrest, Joe Wheeler, who did have the professional training requisite for the job of Corps commander, was just plain awful. He was lazy, insubordinate, and sluggish in responding to orders.
Failure In The Saddle examines the operations of the cavalry in the campaign fairly carefully. Chapters at the end provide assessments of both the commanders and of the historians. And in a nice touch that is becoming common in books from Savas Beatie, an appendix contains a driving tour with GPS coordinates for those who would like to go see the locations of the campaign themselves.
