Donald Trump Set to Give Speech at Site of Civil War Battle -- That Didn't Happen

Red State is fast jumping on the #NeverHillaryNeverTrump bandwagon. Today, they reported that Donald Trump will give a speech at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling (VA). It is being billed as a major policy speech against Hillary Clinton. The golf course contains a monument to a civil war battle and labels that are of the Potomac River, “The River of Blood.” Told that civil war historians were saying that there was no battle there, Trump was quoted on Twitter by National Review’s Liam Donovan as saying, “How would they know? They were not there.”

Trump shows off his “expertise” as a “historian:”

“That was a prime site for river crossings,” Mr. Trump said. “So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them.”

The club does indeed lie a stone’s throw from Rowser’s Ford, where, as an official historical marker notes, Gen. J. E. B. Stuart led 5,000 Confederate troops including cavalry across the Potomac en route to the Battle of Gettysburg.

But no one died in that crossing, historians said, or in any other notable Civil War engagement on the spot.

There really was such a place called the River of Blood. Except that it happens to be Georgia and it was known as the Battle of Chickamauga.

Early on the morning of September_19, 1863 Col. Daniel McCook was ordered to give William S, Rosecrans army a little more protection as it moved north towardsChattanooga, Tennessee by destroying Reed's Bridge over Chickamauga Creek. As McCook advanced he brushed up against the extreme rear of Confederate General Bushrod Johnson's division.

Shortly after midnight McCook set the bridge on fire and reported a brigade of Rebels in the area to George Henry Thomas. What McCook thought was a brigade of Rebels was actually the extreme rear of Longstreet's Corps. General John Croxton was sent forward to flush out McCook's "Rebel brigade" and at 9:00am wired Thomas from Jay's Mill, "Which of the 4 or 5 Rebel brigades do you want me to flush out?" The battle of Chickamauga had begun.

Senior Union officers thought that the Confederates were still east of Chickamauga Creek and were shocked when they finally realized the majority of the Confederates under Braxton Bragg were already across the creek.

Neither side had planned for this battle, yet it was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. But Donald Trump is a showman, not a historian, and for him, the show must go on.