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The 2023 Moccasin Bend Fall Lecture Series continues on Monday, October 2nd at 7 p.m. featuring Dr. Frank Varney. Chattanooga might rightly be described as the Gateway to the Confederacy. It was a vital point, the springboard for the campaigns which led to the capture of Atlanta and Savannah, and so helped to break Southern resistance and end the Civil War. It is ironic, then, that so much of the commonly-accepted history of the struggle for this city is laden with misinformation. And the source of much of that misinformation is Ulysses S. Grant. He was an effective general, and in some ways a good man; yet he has contributed greatly to our misunderstanding of the pivotal events which took place here. From his role in the Chattanooga Campaign to his relief of the general who took and held the city, to his exaggeration of the part he played in opening the “Cracker Line,” to his attempt to take unwarranted credit for the battle which ended the siege, to his minimizing the contributions of other officers, Grant has left us a legacy of untruth and exaggeration. It is time to look beyond his version of the story, and to see what other sources can tell us about what really happened here, in the Gateway to the South.
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Dr. Frank Varney earned his undergraduate degree at William Paterson University, and his MA and Ph. D. at Cornell University. He retired as a Distinguished Professor of US and Classical History, and recently began teaching at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. He frequently speaks to Civil War roundtables, history societies, and other interested groups, often takes student groups to visit historical sites, especially Civil War battlefields, and makes frequent guest appearances on television and radio.
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