Category Archives: “Knoxville 1863″

General Humphreys’ honorable mention

General Benjamin Grubb Humphreys, commander of the Mississippi Brigade after the death at Gettysburg of its fiery brigadier General William Barksdale, wasn’t as aggressive as his predecessor. In fact, in the first big battle of his command, Chickamauga, Humphreys played … Continue reading

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Colors of the 79th New York

Battle banner of the 79th New York Cameron Highlanders, principal defenders of the Northwest Bastion of Fort Sanders.

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Reprise: Federal troops originally fought only for the Union

In the novel, Sergeant Timothy Chase uses his eyewitness experience of the Monitor and Merrimack battle of 1862 as an entertaining dramatic narrative to deflect the anger some other federal troops occasionally turned on him and his comrades of the … Continue reading

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Embalming the dead

The novel’s fictional Sergeant Timothy Chase of the 29th Massachusettes Infantry Regiment was detailed to see to the embalming and transportation of the regiment’s dead after the battle of Fort Sanders. Chase’s “scientific curiosity” led him to closely inspect the … Continue reading

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Reprise: William Tatum Wofford

Wofford’s Brigade cooperated with the Mississippi Brigade in the attack on Fort Sanders, as it had on the second day at Gettysburg five months earlier. But brigade commander William Tatum Wofford was absent, home in Georgia attending the unexpected funeral of a … Continue reading

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One in ten deaths in the Civil War?

Newly revised statistical measure of the Civil War has the numbers of male deaths and consequent widows and orphans much higher than previously believed. “Even as Civil War history has gone through several cycles of revision, one thing has remained … Continue reading

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Blaz’d the helmet of Navarre

In the novel, 13th Mississippi private Romy Lowe adds to his mess’s reminesence of the death of General Barksdale at Gettysburg by declaiming from Thomas Babington MacCauley’s poem “Ivry”: “A thousand spurs are striking deep; a thousand spears in rest, … Continue reading

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Kershaw’s Brigade

Kerhsaw’s Brigade of South Carolinians didn’t actually fight in the Fort Sanders attack. They were held in reserve. But they provided plenty of sharpshooting (i.e. snipers) during the weeks-long runup to the battle. And there’s a dandy bio about them … Continue reading

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WordPress 2011 summary

“A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.” Heh. Well, that’s one way of … Continue reading

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Reprise: Signal flags at Knoxville

There’s no direct evidence that I know of that Longstreet’s artillery chief, Colonel Edward Porter Alexander, used signal flags at Knoxville to, for instance, alert the Boy Battery on Cherokee Heights when to cease fire. And also the other batteries … Continue reading

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