This Terrible Sound

Peter Cozzens is a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State and the author of No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River and The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga. He has contributed articles to the Illinois Historical Journal and has written introductions to new editions of Thomas Van Horne's History of the Army of the Cumberland and Henry Cist's Army of the Cumberland.

• CoverTitle PageCopyright PageTable of ContentsList of MapsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsOne / My Dear General, You are Thoroughly OutdoneTwo / Golden Moments are PassingThree / I Have Never Felt so Glad to be a SoldierFour / A Glimmer in the TwilightFive / We are in a Ticklish Place HereSix / Sounds of Ill OmenSeven / Withdraw if not Already Too LateEight / They are Coming like a Pack of WolvesNine / We Shall Soon be in itTen / Give Help where it is NeededEleven / A Bellyful of FightingTwelve / They Skedaddled in Fine StyleThirteen / We Bury Our DeadFourteen / The Night Seemed to Quake and TrembleFifteen / If I Could Only Drown this Terrible SoundSixteen / God Grant that it May be SoSeventeen / If they Begin it, We will End itEighteen / The Left must be HeldNineteen / To Fire at Those Breastworks Seemed FoolishTwenty / Gentlemen, I Hold the Fatal Order of the DayTwenty-One / All was a Sickening ConfusionTwenty-Two / No More Show than a Broken-Backed CatTwenty-Three / The Signs Grew Rapidly WorseTwenty-Four / They can Kill us, But Whip us NeverTwenty-Five / Give us a Position to HoldTwenty-Six / Thomas is having a Hell of a FightTwenty-Seven / A Few are Holding out up YonderTwenty-Eight / I Never Saw Better FightingTwenty-Nine / Don't waste any Cartridges Now, BoysThirty / The Storm Broke LooseThirty-One / God Help Me to Bear it ArightThirty-Two / Denunciations Fierce and StrongAppendix / The Opposing Forces in the Chickamauga CampaignNotesBibliographyIndex

"Cozzens expertly renders the furious ebb and flow of the two-day battle, capturing both the evolving strategies of each side and the horrendous experience of the fight. . . . [This book] is built upon a bonanza of primary research, with the author having combed hundreds of diaries, letters, memoirs, interviews, official reports, and regimental histories. The individual voices and the rich experiences they represent are unforgettably presented here… Five hundred thirty-six pages of the two-day Battle of Chickamauga? Thanks to Mr. Cozzens's bracing, vivid prose style and marvelous eye for personal detail, this reader hankered for even more."--David Haward Bain, New York Times Book Review  "Cozzens magnificently conveys the madness of it all. He sketches dozens of biographies and quotes from letters and memoirs to give an intimate sense of how men acted in those days: the pompous, the sentimental, the fatalistic; the stalwarts who died with a one-liner; the thieves and clowns and quiet heroes in the ranks."--Michael Keman, Washington Post Book World  "This massive volume is likely to remain the definitive account of the battle for a generation or more… It cannot be too highly recommended for Civil War collections."--Roland Green, ALA Booklist  "Battle history as it was meant to be written. Mr. Cozzens has produced not only the definitive narrative account of Chickamauga but also one of the season's pre-eminent Civil War books."--Curt Johnson, Washington Times