Rescue by Rail: Troop Transfer and the Civil War in the West, 1863
Pickenpaugh, the best sort of amateur historian, combines academic thoroughness and journalistic clarity, merging Civil War and railroad history in highly readable fashion. He describes the movement of the XI and XII Corps of the Union's Army of the Potomac from Virginia to Tennessee in the fall of 1863 to help lift the siege of Chattanooga. He covers the prewar history of all the railroads involved, their ordeals during the war (nobody could have convinced a Union railway operator that Confederate cavalry raiders were "marginal" combatants), and the achievements in organization, planning, and logistics required for the movement. Contributors to those achievements included Secretary of War Stanton, General Grant, the corps and division commanders, dozens of railroad personnel, and thousands of individual soldiers, whose accounts of everything from accidents to lavish feasts laid out for them by towns on their way are extensively quoted. The narrative also includes a contrasting account of the ordeal of Longstreet's corps, traveling over the Confederate rails to Chickamauga.Roland Green