Nowhere in the annals of United States military history is there a more tragic, yet valorous, story than that of the Army of Tennessee. Unlike its companion fighting unit, the Army of Northern Virginia which was commanded throughout the Civil War by one of the great military figures of all time, Robert E. Lee, the history of the Army of Tennessee is one of ever-changing commanders, of bickering and wrangling among its leaders, and a discouraging succession of disappointments and might-have-beens.
