Author: Greg Biggs – The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable

A Rebuttal to “Shelby Foote Was Wrong!”

By Greg Biggs, President, Clarksville TN CWRT
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2014, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in October 2014.

I read with interest the Dick Crews op-ed on how Shelby Foote got it wrong when he called Nathan Bedford Forrest one of the two geniuses of the Civil War. Forrest remains a controversial figure of the Civil War but he was, as Foote suggested, a true genius.

Decisive Battles of the Civil War? None

By Greg Biggs
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: Greg Briggs has authored or co-authored several books and many articles on the Civil War. He has held executive positions with several Civil War Roundtables and preservation and historical societies and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Center For the Study of the Civil War in the West at Western Kentucky University. Mr. Biggs spoke to the CCWRT at its December, 2007 meeting; this article is a follow-up to that presentation.

In my program “Napoleonic Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forrest” at the December meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable, I stated early on that the Civil War had no decisive battles despite Civil War historians constantly writing that this or that battle was “decisive.” I also stated that most Civil War historians do not study warfare prior to the Civil War, most importantly the Napoleonic Wars, when decisive battles were fought. Lastly, I argued that the primary reason for the lack of decisive battles in the Civil War was the misuse of cavalry, particularly in the pursuit phase, which rarely existed after a typical Civil War engagement.

Fort Pillow and Ball’s Bluff: A Response

By Greg Biggs
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2012, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: Greg Briggs has authored or co-authored several books and many articles on the Civil War. He has held executive positions with several Civil War Roundtables and preservation and historical societies and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Center For the Study of the Civil War in the West at Western Kentucky University. Mr. Biggs spoke to the CCWRT in December 2007 and was our guide for our 2012 field trip to Forts Henry and Donelson. This article originally appeared in the Charger in response to a book authored by our November 2012 speaker, Dr. John Cimprich.

In the November 2012 issue of the Charger, President Michael Wells wrote about the controversy of Fort Pillow. He made mention of our time at the Tilghman House in Paducah and how the guide there compared the casualties at Ball’s Bluff to Fort Pillow and wondered why, since Ball’s Bluff had very similar casualty rates, it was also not called a “massacre.” The person who brought up this discussion was not the house guide, it was me.