A collection of ten new essays from some of our finest Civil War historians working today, Gateway to the Confederacy offers a reexamination of the campaigns fought to gain possession of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Each essay addresses how Americans have misconstrued the legacy of these struggles and why scholars feel it necessary to reconsider one of the most critical turning points of the American Civil War.

The first academic analysis that delineates all three Civil War campaigns fought from 1862 to 1863 for control of Chattanooga -- the trans-portation hub of the Confederacy and gateway...