Category Archives: Disputes and errors of fact

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

Posted in Disputes and errors of fact, Fort Sanders, Knoxville | Tagged | Leave a comment

Colonel Kennon McElroy’s grave

Here’s a possible correction in the Afterword—not in the novel itself. In the Afterword, I asserted that the grave of Colonel Kennon McElroy was unknown. It was as far as I knew at the time I wrote the novel. Apparently … Continue reading

Posted in Disputes and errors of fact, Fort Sanders, Thirteenth Mississippi | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Correction: “new gray shell jackets”

I’m now convinced I made a mistake in attributing the Mississippi Brigade’s new shell jackets to a gift from the state of North Carolina in the late summer of ’63 when their motley collection of railroad cars stopped en route from Petersburg, VA, … Continue reading

Posted in Civil War clothing, Disputes and errors of fact, Gen. James Longstreet | Leave a comment

New history: an error and an argument

There’s a new history on the Battle of Fort Sanders, one of the few ever written. It’s Lincoln Memorial University historian Earl J. Hess’s 2012 The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee. I bought a copy to see if … Continue reading

Posted in "Knoxville 1863", Disputes and errors of fact, Fort Sanders, Gen. Lafayette McLaws, Orlando Poe, Samuel Nicoll Benjamin, Seventeenth Mississippi, The Phillips Georgia Legion, Thirteenth Mississippi | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The war’s relevance today

The war’s relevance (or lack of it) in the 2011s is likely to be the subject of considerable pontification over the next three-and-a-half years as the Civil War Sesquicentennial is observed in different ways. Undoubtedly with a few solemn ceremonies, … Continue reading

Posted in Disputes and errors of fact, The Sesquicentennial | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The USCT did march, afterall

It’s long been said that the U.S. Colored Troops were denied the right to march in the Union victory parades in Washington City in May, 1865. Apparently a few did. The rest were busy working: Hari Jones, curator of the … Continue reading

Posted in Disputes and errors of fact, United States Colored Troops | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

In which I make two corrections

I said in the Afterword that any errors of historical fact in the book would not be attributable to any of my source materials but would be all mine. Recently I found two and wish to acknowledge and correct them. … Continue reading

Posted in Disputes and errors of fact, Gen. Benjamin Grubb Humphreys, Thirteenth Mississippi | Tagged , , | 2 Comments