One of the themes of Knoxville 1863 is the bitter division of the town and surrounding area between Unionists and Confederates. Leila Ellis, Confederate Major Clayton Ellis’s widow, is herself a Union sympathizer. Not to mention Knoxville Unionist Elisa Brownlow’s Rebel brother in the Thirteenth Mississippi Infantry Regiment.
If they seem far-fetched (and Elisa and her brother, Lt. Col. Alfred George Washington O’Brien, were historical figures), consider the case of Stonewall Jackson himself.
Who would ever have thought that this icon of the Army of Northern Virginia would have been part of a family divided by the war? Guess they never heard of Laura Jackson Arnold, the old commander’s blood sister, according to this interpretative marker near her old home in Beverly, West Virginia.
KNOXVILLE 1863, the novel 