Tag Archives: Battle of Fort Sanders

Colonel Solon Z. Ruff

SOLON Z. RUFF, colonel of the 18th Georgia which followed the Phillips Georgia Legion in the attack on Fort Sanders, was a graduate of the Georgia Military Institute and a professor there until the war began, according to the web … Continue reading

Posted in "Knoxville 1863", Confederate Veteran Magazine, Eighteenth Georgia, The Phillips Georgia Legion | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

19th Century Weapon: The steam train

“In today’s world of tanks, bombers and submarines, it’s perhaps hard to believe that the train was once an amazingly mobile weapons platform. They might be locked to their rails, but for over a century trains were the fastest means … Continue reading

Posted in Boy Battery, Eighteenth Georgia, Eighteenth Mississippi, Eighth Georgia, Gen. Benjamin Grubb Humphreys, Gen. James Longstreet, Seventeenth Mississippi, Sixteenth Georgia, The Phillips Georgia Legion, Thirteenth Mississippi, Twenty-First Mississippi | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The very ancient design of Fort Sanders

Fort Sanders was the combined work of (first) Confederate engineer  Danville Leadbetter and (second) Union engineer Orlando Poe, with impromptu assistance from Union artilleryman Samuel Nicoll Benjamin. But the overall design, from the fort’s earthen ramparts to the dry ditch surrounding … Continue reading

Posted in Fort Sanders, Gen. Danville Leadbetter, Orlando Poe, Samuel Nicoll Benjamin, The Northwest Bastion | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Reprise: Civil War Flapdoodle

The Sesquicentennial ought to be producing new works of fact on the war, instead of merely recycling and regurgitating the same old malarky. But greedy publishers and lazy editors will have their way. Abbeville Press’s 2011 Great Civil War Heroes & … Continue reading

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“…the only real night charge we ever made.”

Two of the Mississippi Brigade’s regiments, the 18th and the 21st, were charged with driving in the Union pickets the night before the dawn assault on Fort Sanders by the 17th and 13th regiments. After the war, 18th regiment Captain … Continue reading

Posted in "Knoxville 1863", Confederate Veteran Magazine, Eighteenth Mississippi, Fort Sanders, Twenty-First Mississippi | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Second Michigan at Fort Sanders

“The hardships and privations of the siege were very great, the men suffering especially from want of sufficient food and clothing… “Four companies of the Second Michigan, A, H, G and F, in command of Captain Emil Moores, occupied a … Continue reading

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Reenactor anachronisms

The rifled parrott gun in this mock Northwest Bastion of a pretend Fort Sanders (miles away from where the original sat) is just one of the anachronisms the reenactor community puts up with. The only big guns in the bastion … Continue reading

Posted in "Knoxville 1863", First Rhode Island Light Artillery, Fort Sanders, Reenactors, Samuel Nicoll Benjamin | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

“Every day of delay…”

One key officer in Longstreet’s command at Knoxville was Col. Edward Porter Alexander, his chief of artillery. It’s interesting that Alexander’s pre-attack artillery barrage at Knoxville was no more successful than the more famous and larger one which he orchestrated … Continue reading

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