Category Archives: Tennessee

A Yankee Opinion of East Tennessee

More from the Charleston Mercury newspaper of Charleston, South Carolina, this item from its Dec. 21, 1863 edition: “A Yankee Opinion of Their Friends in East Tennessee–Among the letters captured by our forces around Knoxville was one from D. G. … Continue reading

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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

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Reprise: The Bridge Burners

In 1861, a group of forty Unionists of East Tennessee, some of them from Knoxville, set out to put their actions where their politics were. They plotted to burn regional railroad bridges to stop or at least slow Confederate soldiers … Continue reading

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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

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The Bridge Burners

In 1861, a group of forty Unionists of East Tennessee, some of them from Knoxville, set out to put their actions where their politics were. They plotted to burn regional railroad bridges to stop or at least slow Confederate soldiers … Continue reading

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Sharpshooter

Literary critic and writing professor David Madden’s 1996 novel Sharpshooter is the only other fiction I’m aware of about the Siege of Knoxville and, very briefly, the Battle of Fort Sanders. It’s a good story, worth your money (as little … Continue reading

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Gay Street 1910

Knoxville’s Gay Street, fifty-one years after it was the scene of Rebel and Union recruiting, as recalled by the novel’s Parthenia Leila Ellis. Via Instapundit.

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East Tennessee Unionism

The military significance of east Tennessee Unionism was evident in the way Longstreet’s Confederate forces were treated before the gates of Knoxville. They received little help from the people of the mountain region. In 1864, Lincoln remembered. “The political significance … Continue reading

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