Recent Comments
lelliott19 on The last Rebel unit to leave… thefrozenwoman on Christmas Wishes from Old… Dick Stanley on Of that en barbette gun that g… Louis LaMarche, Farr… on Of that en barbette gun that g… rosewood987 on Reenactor anachronisms -
Recent Posts
Archives
Meta
Categories
- "Knoxville 1863" (196)
- Battery E Second U.S. Artillery (4)
- Bleak House (15)
- Boy Battery (21)
- Civil War accoutrements (25)
- Civil War armament (27)
- Civil War clothing (13)
- Civil War Medicine (2)
- Civil War training (1)
- Col. Alfred G.W. O'Brien (13)
- Confederate Veteran Magazine (14)
- Crozier House (4)
- Disputes and errors of fact (7)
- Edward Porter Alexander (8)
- Eighteenth Georgia (9)
- Eighteenth Mississippi (6)
- Eighth Georgia (4)
- Elisa Brownlow (8)
- Families Divided By The War (9)
- First Rhode Island Light Artillery (11)
- Fort Sanders (139)
- Gen. Ambrose Burnside (19)
- Gen. Benjamin Grubb Humphreys (7)
- Gen. Braxton Bragg (6)
- Gen. Danville Leadbetter (6)
- Gen. James Longstreet (40)
- Gen. Joseph Wheeler (3)
- Gen. Lafayette McLaws (19)
- Gen. Micah Jenkins (2)
- Gen. William P. Sanders (13)
- Gen. William T. Wofford (3)
- Hundredth Pennsylvania (6)
- Instapundit Plug (6)
- Knoxville (100)
- Laura Jackson Arnold (3)
- Longstreet (1)
- New York Cameron Highlanders (18)
- Nineteenth Ohio Battery (3)
- Orlando Poe (9)
- Owen Meredith's "Lucile" (3)
- Parson William Brownlow (17)
- Parthenia Leila Ellis (38)
- President Abraham Lincoln (5)
- Prisoners of War (4)
- Reenactors (12)
- Regimental bands (3)
- Regimental Histories (3)
- Robert E. Lee (5)
- Samuel Nicoll Benjamin (19)
- Second Michigan (3)
- Seventeenth Mississippi (12)
- Sixteenth Georgia (3)
- Slavery (15)
- Soldier data bases (2)
- Stonewall Jackson (2)
- Susan Brownlow (4)
- Tennessee (10)
- The National Tribune (3)
- The Northwest Bastion (32)
- The Official Records (5)
- The Phillips Georgia Legion (14)
- The Sesquicentennial (10)
- Thirteenth Mississippi (40)
- Thirty-Fourth Battery New York Artillery (4)
- Twenty-First Mississippi (4)
- Twenty-Ninth Massachusetts (23)
- United States Colored Troops (7)
- USS Monitor (12)
Blogroll
- 100th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment
- 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment
- 16th Georgia
- 17th Mississippian Infantry Regiment
- 29th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
- 2nd Michigan Infantry Regiment
- 79th New York Cameron Highlanders
- African American Civil War Memorial & Museum
- Battery E, 2nd U.S. Artillery
- Battle of Fort Sanders
- Blue And Gray Marching
- Bully for Bragg
- Civil War Monitor
- Confederate Digest
- Daughters of the Confederacy – Knoxville
- Daughters of Union Veterans – Knoxville
- Historic Bleak House
- In Their Hour
- Interpreting Slave Life
- Irish in The American Civil War
- Knoxville Civil War Roundtable
- Longstreet's Command Living History Association
- National Archives: Discovering The Civil War
- Old Virginia Blog
- Phillips Georgia Legion
- Poore Boys In Gray
- Restoring The Monitor
- Sons & Daughters of the United States Colored Troops
- Sons of Confederate Veterans – Knoxville
- Sons of Union Veterans
- Tennessee Civil War Sourcebook
- Tennessee In The Civil War
- The Crooked Spoon
- The Longstreet Society
- The National Tribune
- The USCT Chronicle
- The War
- Union-Rebel Division in North Carolina
- Written In Glory
Tags
- "Lucile
- "The Knoxville Whig & Rebel Ventilator"
- "The Original Gorilla"
- 2nd U.S. Artillery
- 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment
- 18th Mississippi Infantry Regiment
- 29th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
- 79th New York Cameron Highlanders
- American Civil War
- Antietam
- Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade
- Battle of Fort Sanders
- Bleak House
- Boy Battery
- Buckley's Rhode Island Battery
- Camp Chase
- Cherokee Heights
- Civil War
- Civil War Sesquicentennial
- Confederate shell jackets
- Confederate Veteran Magazine
- Dr. S.H. Stout
- Edward Porter Alexander
- Eighteenth Georgia
- Elisa Brownlow
- embalming
- First Rhode Island Light Artillery
- Fort Sanders
- Gen. Ambrose Burnside
- Gen. Benjamin Grubb Humphreys
- Gen. Braxton Bragg
- Gen. Danville Leadbetter
- Gen. James Longstreet
- Gen. Lafayette McLaws
- Gen. William P. Sanders
- Glenn Reynold
- Hundredth Pennsylvania Regiment
- Instapundit
- Kennon McElroy
- Knoxville
- Knoxville 1863
- Laura Jackson Arnold
- LeMat revovler
- Lt. Col. Alfred George Washington O'Brien
- New York Cameron Highlanders
- Orlando Poe
- Owen Meredith
- Parker's Boy Battery
- Parson Brownlow
- Parson William Brownlow
- Parthenia Leila Ellis
- percussion caps
- Phillips Georgia Legion
- Red Adept Reviews
- reenactors
- Robert K. Krick
- Samuel Nicoll Benjamin
- Seventy-Ninth New York Cameron Highlanders
- Sharpsburg
- sharpshooter
- Sons of Union Veterans
- Tennessee
- The Battle of Fort Sanders
- The Boy Battery
- the bridge burners
- The National Tribune
- Thirteenth Mississippi
- Thirteenth Mississippi Infantry Regiment
- TOCWOC
- Twenty-Ninth Massachusetts
- U.S. Colored Troops
- United States Colored Troops
- USS Monitor
- Whitworth rifle
- Wofford's Brigade
-
StatCounter
Category Archives: Slavery
The personal approach to Civil War history
The personal approach to Civil War history is getting a boost in this sesquicentennial year. Not only in our historical narrative The Bloody Thirteenth (told via diaries, letters and memoirs) but in such as the following account of a young slave who escaped to the Union … Continue reading
Contraband of War
To get around the problem of having to return self-emancipated (i.e. escaped) slaves to their Confederate owners, Union Gen. Benjamin Butler dubbed them “contraband of war,” i.e. captured property that didn’t have to be returned. Later, Congress made the term … Continue reading
Cooking with one pot on an open fire
The novel’s fictional widow Parthenia Leila Ellis presumably had more than one pot to cook with, but soldiers on both sides at Knoxville probably didn’t unless their unit’s cooks were rustling up grub for all. For those, particularly among the … Continue reading
Reprise: French seams
Some slaves/servants were highly-skilled domestic craftsmen. The novel’s widow Parthenia Leila Ellis’s housekeeper/slave Natalie, for instance. Natalie was skilled at sewing French seams even in silk, while her mistress was afraid of sewing silk at all. The French seam remains in use … Continue reading
Posted in Civil War clothing, Parthenia Leila Ellis, Slavery
Tagged French seams, Knoxville 1863, slave craftsmen
Leave a comment
Reprise: The U.S. Colored Troops
Soldiering Freedmen are a small part of the novel because they didn’t fight in the Battle of Fort Sanders, but were only on garrison guard duty. Particularly around the Knoxville jail, Castle Fox, which held some Confederate prisoners. But whereas … Continue reading
Posted in Slavery, United States Colored Troops
Tagged Knoxville 1863, U.S. Colored Troops
Leave a comment
A Visit From the Old Mistress
This poignant 1876 painting by Winslow Homer is rarely seen except in art gallery presentations. The Smithsonian’s collection interprets it this way: “…the living conditions of these former slaves would appear not to have improved since before the time of … Continue reading
Posted in Parthenia Leila Ellis, Slavery
Tagged A Visit From the Old Mistress, Knoxville 1863, Winslow Homer
Leave a comment
Former Tennessee slave writes his former master
Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865 To My Old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdan, and that you wanted me to come back and … Continue reading
Reprise: That Yankee-lovin’ parson
Dissent from Confederate political-correctness was not unusual in the Civil War, as professional historian Victoria Bynum’s book relates. Parson Bill Brownlow probably was unique, however, in his willingness to risk all by publicizing his dissent in the pages of his … Continue reading
KNOXVILLE 1863, the novel 