Unless you live in Knoxville and are a part of the Civil War community there, the Knoxville Campaign and the Battle of Knoxville or Battle of Fort Sanders are probably not well recognized or understood. The fact that the City of Knoxville, and the University of Tennessee, have grown out over the ground where the principal fighting occurred is a major factor. Fort Sanders disappeared long ago. But, in an effort to try to prevent this historic event from slipping away entirely, the University of Tennessee’s Frank H. McClung Museum has re-worked its Civil War permanent exhibit and the new “The Civil War in Knoxville,” with a major piece on Fort Sanders, opened in August. Those who have seen it have been very impressed. Former Round Table speaker and frequent Knoxville Civil War Round Table officer Dot Kelly was an historical consultant on the project. The center piece of the Siege of Knoxville and Fort Sanders part is a video presentation that includes scenes filmed at a full-scale reconstruction of one of Fort Sanders’ bastions that was constructed on a nearby farm just for this purpose. Recognizing the quality of the film, the Knoxville PBS station has arranged to broadcast the program this Sunday the 18th at 7 PM. This is quite an honor and will do much for the exhibit and the cause of Civil War history in Knoxville. Unfortunately, PBS in Chattanooga is not going air the program. As a result, I arranged to obtain a copy and in this anniversary month of the Knoxville Campaign, we’ll watch “Its Memory Alone Remains” too.

There are four items this month for the Speaker’s Fund. The first is a copy of the revised edition of Divided Loyalties: Fort Sanders and the Civil War in East Tennessee by Digby Seymour, the long-time standard treatment of East Tennessee in the war. It is offered as part of the theme of our program this month. The second item is a copy of Winston Groom’s Shrouds of Glory: From Atlanta to Nashville: The Last Great Campaign of the Civil War since this month is the anniversary of much of that campaign. The third item is a copy of Images of the Civil War: The Paintings of Mort Kunstler, which includes images of his Chickamauga and Chattanooga prints. The fourth item is a copy of the Spring, 1997, issue of the Civil War publication Columbiad. It contains some interesting articles—one on Henry Halleck, another on the Iron Brigade, and one about Stonewall Jackson’s and Jubal Early’s respective Valley Campaigns. All four of the items this month were donated to the Round Table to support the Speaker’s Fund. To those donors go our thanks. Proceeds from the Speaker’s Fund go toward bringing speakers in from outside the area. Your support of the Speaker’s Fund is appreciated.

Again this past month, there have been quite a few things going on that one could have participated in. I know some folks did because I saw you at the events. If you did make it to any War Between the States related activities in the last month and you are at the meeting, give us a brief report. Ed Bearss spoke for the Friends of Moccasin Bend on the 5th. Steve Bartlett, Richard McMurry, Steve Cox, and the Jacquemins were amongst those who attended at least parts of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Department of Communications’ 14th Annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression. A number of the papers were quite interesting.

Journalist and author Jack Hurst, the author of one of the better recent biographies of Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography, and author of the just released Men of Fire: Grant, Forrest, and the Campaign That Decided the Civil War, the Fort Donelson Campaign, will speak in Chattanooga on Friday, November 16, 2007, at 7 PM at Rock Point Books, 401 Broad Street, in downtown Chattanooga. For more information, call 423-756-2855.

For those of you all who were at our October meeting, you’ll recall seeing the “Order Out of Chaos” print that Bob Epperson had on the table in the back of the room. The print depicts Col. Nathan B. Forrest in Nashville in February, 1862, after the fall of Fort Donelson, when the rising cavalry commander restored a degree of order to the capitol and thereby allowed the evacuation of more of the vital war material from the Rock City before the arrival of the Federals. The artist who produced the print is Mort Kunstler. Part of the proceeds from the sale of the print will go toward the programs of the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association. As a part of that, the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association is hosting “An Evening with Mort Kunstler” on Friday, November 30, 2007, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM Central Time in Wilson Hall at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in Nashville. This event is in conjunction with the opening of the Nashville Civil War Show. For more information, see the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association website, www.tcwpa.org or email tcwpacontact@aol.com.

In June, 2007, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a special Tennessee license plate to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States. Proceeds from the sale of the plate will go to support Civil War preservation activities in Tennessee through the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association. Actually implementing the plate’s use requires 1,000 pre-orders by June, 2008. For more information, see the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association website, www.tcwpa.org or email tcwpacontact@aol.com.

December 18, 2007 - “Telling Moccasin Bend’s Civil War Story; We Want to Hear Your Ideas,” Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park & you

NEW ENTRIES:
April 24-27, 2008—PNJW Collections Civil War Era Civilian Clothing Exhibition, a FIRST RATE display of original Civil War era civilian clothing items that is interpreted by two extremely knowledgeable material culture experts, Rippavilla Plantation, 5700 Main Street, Spring Hill, Tennessee, 931-486-9037.
July 3-5, 2008-- PNJW Collections Civil War Era Civilian Clothing Exhibition, a FIRST RATE display of original Civil War era civilian clothing items that is interpreted by two extremely knowledgeable material culture experts, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, Kennesaw, Georgia, 770-427-4686.
November 13-15, 2008—16th Annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression, sponsored by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Department of Communications; more details later.

PREVIOUS ENTRIES:
November 16, 2007 to January 13, 2008—the special exhibit from the Tennessee State Museum, “Hoofbeats in the Heartland: Civil War Cavalry in Tennessee,” will be at the Sam Davis Home in Smyrna, Tennessee.
November 18, 2007—Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association’s “Two Flags” recognition of the Battle of Missionary Ridge, 3 PM, Bragg Reservation, Missionary Ridge; includes walking tour of portion of the Missionary Ridge Battlefield; for more information email tcwpacontact@aol.com or see www.tcwpa.org
November 30, 2007—Nathan Bedford Forrest Seminar, Rippavilla Mansion, Spring Hill, Tennessee, sponsored by the Tennessee Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, featuring Greg Biggs on “Nathan Bedford Forrest and Napoleonic Cavalry Tactics,” Dr. Michael Bradley on “Forrest’s Escort,” and Lonnie Maness on “Forrest: An Untutored Genius,” $30, make checks payable to Tennessee Division, SCV with “Forrest Seminar” on memo line, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Division Adjutant, P. O. Box 782, Lebanon, Tennessee 37088, jraym@bellsouth.net, 615-331-3954
December 1-2, 2007—Nashville Civil War Show, Tennessee State Fairgrounds, Nashville; for details see www.mikekentshows.net
through December 30, 2007—“Portraits In Gray: A Civil War Photography Exhibition,” the Confederate, mostly Georgia, photographic collection of David Vaughn of Atlanta, including eight of the twelve known images of uniformed Georgia Military Institute cadets, also some other GMI artifacts, at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, 2829 Cherokee Street, Kennesaw, Georgia 30144, 770-427-2117, www.southernmuseum.com, free with paid admission to the museum
February 2-3, 2008—Chickamauga Civil War Show, Northwest Georgia Trade Center, Dalton; for more information see www.mikekentshows.net
March 14-16, 2008—Chickamauga Study Group 2008 “Seminar in the Woods;” two days of half day walking tours of individual phases of the Battle of Chickamauga with a possible optional half day tour on the final morning; specific phases to be studied in the 2008 Seminar are under consideration presently and will be announced soon; for more information in a couple of months, contact David Powell, Dpowell334@aol.com. [See Study Group 2007 for this year's event.]
September 17-18, 2008—Andrew Johnson Bicentennial Symposium, Tusculum College, Tusculum, Tennessee, featured historians include Dr. Paul Bergeron, University of Tennessee (ret.), long time editor of The Papers of Andrew Johnson, and Dr. Eric Foner, Columbia University; more details later at www.tusculum.edu

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