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TheThirteenth Regiment was seriously whittled
Within four months of the attack on Fort Sanders, one of the attacking regiments, whose roster had totaled more than 1,000 men at the start of the war, had been seriously whittled. Captain Hugh D....
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Reprise: Bird Clark’s quest for an envelope
Remains to be seen whether Pvt. Clark of the Thirteenth Mississippi (Chapter Two, The Mississippi Brigade) would have found writing paper with an envelope like one of these, had his unit been...
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Reprise: Honors for Gen. Sanders
In addition to having the earthwork the Rebels dubbed Fort Loudon named for him, Union Gen. William P. Sanders has had other honors since—including a curious juxtaposition of his historical marker with...
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Reprise: Corporal Watkins at Fort Sanders
John Watkins, of the Nineteenth Ohio Battery, which was held in reserve during the fight, survived the war and attended a Knoxville reunion in 1895. He saw the beginning of the end of the red-clay fort...
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An honor guard
An honor guard for the dead of Fort Sanders as this sesquicentennial period nears its end.
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“Our own good Colonel Cameron”
Long before they defended Fort Sanders’s Northwest Bastion, the Seventy-Ninth New York Cameron Highlanders was decimated on the slope of Henry Hill at First Manassas, where their first regimental...
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Fort Sanders Photographs
The few extant photographs of Fort Sanders, including the cropping atop this page, apparently were taken after the Nov. 29, 1863, battle by George Barnard, the official photographer for Union Gen....
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Zouaves at Knoxville
It’s doubtful whether the Lauderdale Zouaves company of the 13th Mississippi Regiment still had uniforms as presentable as this when the regiment attacked Fort Sanders on Nov. 29, 1863. But such...
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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...
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Those sharpshooters
Sharpshooters, like the unknown Rebel one who felled Fort Sanders’ namesake, General William P. Sanders, from more than a mile away, were special troops with their own drill and esprit. It helped that...
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