Hello,
December 17th, 2014 – Our 129th meeting. We continue our eleventh year!
The next meeting of the Clarksville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Wednesday, December 17th, 2014 at the Bone & Joint Center, 980 Professional Park Drive, right across the street from Gateway Hospital. This is just off Dunlop Lane and Holiday Drive and only a few minutes east of Governor’s Square mall. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. Members please bring a friend or two – new recruits are always welcomed.
OUR SPEAKER AND TOPIC: - ““Divided Allegiances: Survival on the Home Front: Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee”
History books are filled with accounts of Civil War armies, troops and battle tactics, but its impact goes far beyond the battlefield. In his new novel, “Broken Valley: A Wartime Story of Isolation, Fear and Hope in a Remote East Tennessee Valley”, author Gregory L. Wade examines how the Civil War affected average people in their day-to-day lives and describes the conflict that existed between families with different allegiances. “It wasn’t all black and white with some families having members who served on either side,” says Wade. “Not only did people have the usual struggles to survive off the land, they had the war and lawlessness to contend with.”
Set primarily Sequatchie Valley, an area tucked in between the Cumberland Plateau and Walden’s Ridge near Chattanooga, Tennessee, “Broken Valley” centers on William Barker and his son, Will Jr. Readers see the world through their eyes, as the man and his teenage son cope with the confusion and uncertainty caused by the Civil War. The book also looks at the experiences of a Cherokee man to illuminate the difficult position Native Americans found themselves in, and a downtrodden Georgia man’s struggles with the emotional impact of war. The characters’ interactions show how common lumbermen, farmers and millers found ways to get along in spite of their political differences. While the book is a novel, actual events of the Sequatchie Valley were the inspiration to it. This valley changed hands several times during the war and was split in Confederate and Union allegiances. In October 1863, Confederate cavalry under Joe Wheeler attacked the Union wagon trains parked there that were on the way to Chattanooga for the Army of the Cumberland.
Gregory L Wade was raised in Chattanooga. After graduation from Middle Tennessee State, most of his adult life has been in the mid state area where he is very active in battlefield preservation, especially in Franklin where he has served as president of Save the Franklin Battlefield and currently serves on the board of Franklin’s Charge. In the last ten years he has helped save about 115 acres of Franklin core battlefield, once thought to have been lost to development. He has written as a staff member for the Civil War News for several years and has been published in many historical magazines such as Sea Classics and North and South. He currently writes a monthly guest column on the Civil War for the Franklin Home Page. He founded the Franklin Civil War Round Table in 2008 which now has over 125 members. He has spoken to numerous history related groups, including this past April as a guest historian at the Civil War Trust annual meeting in Nashville. He and his wife, Beth, reside in Franklin. Wade has three children, two of which serve in our military and one is a police officer. He works for Travelers Insurance in the construction division assisting large contractors with their risk and safety programs.