Author Archives: Dick Stanley

About Dick Stanley

Retired Texas daily newspaperman

Fort Sanders to be spared removal

The monument destructors, beginning with the destroying of a Rebel rifleman’s statue in Durham, North Carolina, are hard at work in Knoxville, splashing (appropriately) blue paint on one Confederate monument. Which they have petitioned the city to remove. Fortunately Fort … Continue reading

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Civil War Trust’s “battlefield”

The corner of W. Summit Hill Drive and South Gay Street is the Civil War Trust’s designated field for the Battle of Fort Sanders. All 69 acres of it. It doesn’t seem likely (it should be farther west in the … Continue reading

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Orlando Poe’s map

Topographical map of the approaches and defenses of Knoxville, surveyed under the direction of Union Capt. O.M. Poe, dated November 14, 1863, provided his commanding general Burnside with unequaled decision-making information. “In his official report Poe stated, ‘And here I … Continue reading

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Christmas wishes from Old Cahawba

The novel’s Union-sympathizing Parthenia Leila Ellis hailed from Alabama where her family’s plantation, The Cedars, was near the former-state capital of Cahawba. In 1864, Cahawba still had a Female Academy for the young daughters of plantation owners in the vicinity, … Continue reading

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Secession Again?

“Secession is in the air again, ironically for the same reason the South seceded in 1860—dissatisfaction with the results of the presidential election. In 1860 it was Abe Lincoln; in 2016 it’s Donald Trump. And it’s not the South this … Continue reading

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Signal flags at Knoxville

Gen. Edward Porter Alexander was a colonel at Knoxville, in charge of Longstreet’s artillery, where he put to good use the signal flags he’d learned to use as a U.S. Army officer under Albert J. Myer, an army surgeon, before … Continue reading

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Nashville’s Confederate Cleansing

In the novel, Knoxville’s Union-sympathizing Confederate widow Parthenia Leila Ellis’s slain husband Clayton bought his fancy Confederate uniform—with the gold braid “chicken guts” of a major on its coat sleeves—from a tailor in Nasvhville. In the latest attempt to appease … Continue reading

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Rough Rider Joe Wheeler

Confederate cavalry attacking the city was the first thought of the novel’s fictional Parthenia Leila Ellis when the sounds of battle awakened her the night the Rebels drove in the pickets at Fort Sanders. That cavalry was commanded by Gen. … Continue reading

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