The Rock of Chickamauga A Story of the Western Crisis

The Rock of Chickamauga is one of Joseph Alexander Altsheler’s books in his Civil War series, the long running historical adventure sequence that took young protagonists through the major events of the war for a generation of American boys reading in the early twentieth century. Altsheler had built his reputation writing historical adventure novels for boys, particularly the Young Trailers series about the Kentucky frontier, and the Civil War books extended that approach to the more recent national conflict that still shaped American memory in the years he was writing.

The rock of Chickamauga of the title refers to General George H. Thomas, the Union officer whose stand at the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863 saved the Army of the Cumberland from total destruction and earned him the nickname that the title uses. Chickamauga was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War and one of the major engagements of the western theater, fought in northwest Georgia near the Tennessee border, and Altsheler uses the historical material as the structural anchor for his fictional narrative about a young protagonist caught up in the events.

The western crisis subtitle points to the wider strategic situation that Chickamauga was part of. The struggle for control of the Tennessee River valley, the campaigns leading toward Atlanta the following year, and the long ordeal of the Union effort to break the Confederate hold on the western Confederacy. Altsheler put a lot of effort into rendering the actual military history with reasonable accuracy for a young readers’ adventure novel, and his battle scenes capture something of the chaos and the moral weight of what nineteenth century combat was actually like for the young men who fought in it.

Altsheler’s prose is brisk and his action sequences move at the pace his young readers expected. The moral lessons about courage, loyalty, and the costs of war are delivered through the narrative rather than imposed in lectures. Modern readers should be aware that the period assumptions about race and the moral character of the various participants in the war are very much present in Altsheler’s Civil War fiction.

For scholars of early twentieth century American children’s literature, of how the Civil War was translated into adventure fiction for the young, or of the wider career of Joseph Alexander Altsheler, the Civil War series is essential.