 everybody here has found a place to respond. I hope there aren't others to give up, give a lecture, find a better researcher or information that you can be more confident of than to detect in all the important places. What I didn't know until I got a brief bio today, about all of the many books that Dr. Kessler wrote, The Civil War in the West, Victory in the Peace in the Appalachian in the Pacific, Into the Crater, Mine Attack at Peterborough, In the Trench of the Peterborough, The Afford of the States of the Confederate Deceiver, The Right to Unmatch the Civil War Conduct, The Alligant Mist, Warfare under Command and Leave, The Afford of Decations and Overland Campaigns, Wilkins Street, T. Ridge and Curry Grove, a battlefield guide with a best sense of telling us it was his wife to meet in the rain and making it an American mess. A wonderful variety of reds of topics, but our expert is Dr. Kessler. He has his team actually into the group of activist people here doing that, doing stuff in Knoxville with the building of the amazing replica of Fort Sanders for our 2007. Thank you, Joan, very much. I appreciate that warm welcome, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with everyone today too. I appreciate that you showed up today, despite the cold weather and despite all the other unexpected things that's going on outside today. Well, the talk today is drawn from a book that I've written on the Knoxville Campaign in the Civil War. That is scheduled to be published by the University of Tennessee Press in September of 2012. And part of that book is an appendix that talks about Knoxville's Civil War legacy. I think it's a fascinating story, especially in terms of all the wonderful things taking place in terms of battlefield preservation, historic site preservation recently, as well as long-term around this interesting city in the heart of East Tennessee. You notice the subtitle of my talk, Losing, Preserving, Recovering, and Recreating Battle Landscapes, kind of long and cumbersome, but it's the only way that I could figure to try to tell anybody roughly what I plan and hope to do today. So let's talk about losing battlefields to start with. A somewhat sad story, of course. A little background, however, about the Knoxville Campaign from November 13 to December 14, 1863, where the Confederates tried to recapture the city two or three months after the Federals had occupied it back in September of 63. The biggest and most important and most visible battle of the campaign, the Confederate attack on Fort Sanders, November 29, 1863. But before that, the Battle of Campbell Station on November 16, I think the pivotal engagement that decided the Knoxville Campaign in its early stage. And I go all the way to Bean Station, a battle that maybe not a lot of people in Knoxville are terribly familiar with, took place about 30 miles to the northeast of Knoxville in December 14, 1863. Part of Longstreet's attempt to bounce back soon after he failed to capture Knoxville. Let's talk about Fort Sanders as a lost battlefield. Here's a map taken from my upcoming book, which hopefully will make a little sense about the landscape around Fort Sanders. A little bit about the battle, the attack on November 29. The Confederates targeted the northwest bastion of Fort Sanders at dawn on November 29, 1863 as one of the best places they thought about the only place where they might find a weakness in a heavy ring of earthen fortifications around the city. 2,400 Confederate troops arrayed in two columns. Heavy fog filled the valley below as they assembled for the attack in the darkness. And when the Confederates emerged from that heavy fog at the crack of dawn, Union Major Byron Cutchin of the 20th Michigan wrote in his memoirs, They seemed to rise up out of the fog, he said, and came on a dirty gray mass of brute courage. A wonderful quote coming from this campaign. The Confederates got hung up in the deep ditch around the northwest bastion. They couldn't climb out of it. It was slippery hard packed red clay. The attack basically stopped there. It all was over in about 45 minutes. 813 Confederates were lost in that short attack. About 50 Union casualties. A wonderful photograph by a civilian photographer named George Barnard taken in March of 1864, a famous photograph of the northwest bastion of Fort Sanders with their lone sentry standing on the parapet right at the capital, the northwest corner. You can see the ditch. This is the famous ditch that hung up the attack, that excavation that the Federals had done. This is the north facing part of the northwest bastion. This is the westward facing part of the bastion. And this is part of the ditch that was such a key factor in the attack. The Federals right after the attack hauled 250 prisoners out of that ditch and three flags. Later in the day on November 29th, a burial truce took place and the Federals took 90 bodies out of that ditch and arranged for the burial. This also is the ditch into which Union artillery officer Samuel Benjamin tossed lighted artillery shells over the parapet at the height of the attack to help break it apart. So it's in that ditch where those artillery shells rolled down into and did such damage. Here's a photograph of the approximate modern location of Fort Sanders. February 2012. Intersection of Laurel Avenue. Here's 17th Street. Here's looking west along Laurel Avenue. This high ground over here, which is 505 17th Street, is the location of the west end of the top of the ridge. That's the location of the northwest bastion. So this roughly duplicates, as far as one can, this photographic view. In other words, the ditch is going to be somewhere around in here, roughly speaking. The high ground where the Fort is located is right there where that building is. Well, battlefield lost, of course. Sometimes it happens in many, many different locations. Let's go to the next little case study. The Battle of Campbell Station. Let me preface this by saying that in my research, I organize my conception of the Battle of Campbell Station on November 16th as taking place in five different engagements. One, two, three, four, five. This shows the location of the first position, the place where the Lenora Road crosses Little Turkey Creek. The Battle of Campbell Station, a little background here. Confederates under James Longstreet crossed the Tennessee River on November 13th, 1863 to start the Knoxville Campaign. Burnside and the Federals met him initially at Lenora Station just north of where they crossed near Loudoun. Then the Federals retired toward Knoxville. Longstreet's best hope of winning the campaign and capturing Knoxville lay in his ability, perhaps, to cut off Burnside from Knoxville before the Federals got there. And he came close to doing that on November 16th at Campbell Station. Five positions of the battle. The first one, the Union Rear Guard fights a little fight with the Confederate advance guard, Bratton, South Carolina Brigade. The 17th Michigan is primarily involved in this fight. The 2nd Michigan and 20th Michigan supporting them. They have a sharp little skirmish and then are pushed aside. This is the location of the battlefield in March of 2007 when Steve Dean and Linda Billman and I were running around scouting locations. I like that term, the Hollywood term, scouting locations for this DVD that Steve was going to put together. Even though my wife and I have lived within four or five miles of the Campbell Station battlefield for many years, March of 2007 was the first time I ever saw this site. I don't know how well you can see it, what do you see there? Earth moving equipment, piles of dirt. Little Turkey Creek runs right along here where those darkened cedars are located in the low ground. This flat area, a small remnant of the original Lenore Road that the Federals retreated along and the Confederates pursued along. I'm standing here two or three hundred yards away from the Lenore Road crossing of Little Turkey Creek, which is the epicenter of the battle. In March of 2007, the first stages of developing a new subdivision in this area were evident. None of us knew about it, we just saw it for the first time when we saw this earth moving equipment. A few weeks later when I came back to look at the site again, there were so many houses built all over the place and so much disturbance of the ground, I couldn't even locate where I was standing when I took this photograph. It was very disturbing and poignant. How many years does this site remain pretty much undisturbed and then all of a sudden in 2007 without warning it goes? Well, another lost battlefield, of course. Let's go to the fourth position of the Campbell Station battlefield. This is the position that everybody knows about. This is the biggest position which was held from noon until about four in the afternoon of November 16th. The Confederates are on the west side of the main branch of Turkey Creek. Here is Concord Road. Here was what was then Kingston Road, but today it's called Kingston Pike. The Federals were on the east side of this wide flat valley of Turkey Creek, both sides straddling Kingston Road. Two houses there in 1863, Avery Russell and Matthew Russell are still there. They're good markers for understanding the battlefield. This is the house that's at the corner of Kingston Road and Campbell Station Road going out to the interstate. This is the house, the preserved house that's near the Taco Bell. That's how I kind of orient myself about it. What does the site look like today? You all know what it looks like today. This is taken in March of 2007. I'm standing where the federal line was on the east side of Turkey Creek. The Confederate line is about a quarter of a mile to the west on the other rim of the valley of Turkey Creek. What is in between? Lots of commercial development, lots of traffic. Kingston Road, a five-lane commercial route today. All communities lose battlefields, of course. Let's go to the last example of a lost battlefield. Being stationed, I don't know how many of you have done much reading about this battle. I have a tendency to think that people who like the Knoxville campaign kind of lose interest as soon as Longstreet leaves. But what happened was that Longstreet broke away from the siege of Knoxville. December 3rd, 1863, because of the approach of a 30,000-man relief column under William Sherman from the Chattanooga area, he retreated northeast to Rogersville about 30 or 40 miles to the northeast of Knoxville. He was followed up by Union Cavalry, and General James Shackleford and 5,000 Union troopers took position at Beam Station to serve as a forward observation post. Longstreet decided to attack this position with 12,000 men on December 14th, 1863. In the end, he was able to bring only about 4,200 of his troops to actual battle on the battlefield. So it's a smallish battle, but sharply fought. About 300 Confederate casualties, about 115 federal casualties. The Confederates won the battle. They pushed the Federals out of Beam Station, but could not deal a decisive blow to them or seriously harm them. So it wound up not being a decisive battle, but nevertheless a memorable battle for the people who survived it. The location right there at a crossroads. This road goes down to Knoxville via Blains Crossroads and Rutledge, and then goes this way to Rogersville. The crossroad climbs over the rugged Clinch Mountain and then goes northward to Cumberland Gap. Beam Station is located at a strategic crossroad right at the foot, the southern foot of Clinch Mountain, in the valley of German Creek. That's what it looks like today. A photograph taken from the top of Clinch Mountain looking down. This is the battlefield right there under water. The 1863 road went from the top of Clinch Mountain down roughly through this ravine you see here, and then the crossroads is right about there, and the road continues southward down that way. The road to Knoxville is down this way in the valley. So what happened here? Tennessee Valley Authority constructed Cherokee Dam on Holston River just south of this area. You can see the location of Holston River right here. They did that in 1941. That inundated a long section of the Holston River and its tributaries including German Creek Valley. Beam Station Hotel, which was there in 1863 and used as a blockhouse by defending Union cavalrymen. It was the epicenter of the battle, and Kentucky cavalry troops holed up in Beam Station Hotel, held the Confederates back a long time. Fifty-three rooms and two wings in 1863. A very large hostelry that hosted Andrew Jackson and other luminaries of the American past. The larger wing had burned in 1886, but the smaller wing was still there in 1941 with eight rooms. It was dismantled by workers to clear the way for the inundation. The timbers were stored in a building a couple of years. The handle set fire to the building and destroyed it, so everything is gone from Beam Station Hotel. Well, this is something you can't do much about. 1941 is all long since gone. Let's talk about preserving battle landscapes. A little more positive story here. And of course, Knoxville has good stories in this regard. Unfortunately, little had been done since 1863 to preserve battle landscapes on the north side of the Tennessee River. Pretty much all of Orlando and Pose magnificent earthwork defense system north of the Tennessee River was taken away and gone. However, a lot has been done fairly recently, especially on the south side of the river. I mentioned the Aslan Foundation, the Legacy Parks Foundation, the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable, the East Tennessee Civil War Alliance in grateful acknowledgement for all the hard work, all those groups and everybody associated with them have done over the years to preserve Knoxville Civil War Legacy. Rather than talk about the preservation efforts, I'd rather just talk a little bit about the significance of what is being preserved. Now, it is true that what happened south of the river is of secondary military importance in one way because most of the troops north and south operate at north of the river rather than south of the river. But on the other hand, the ground south of the river is highly significant and worth preserving. The Confederates sent a couple of brigades to the south side of the river under Evander law. They fought a couple of small battles at Armstrong's Hill with Union troops. The map will show us a little bit better what we're talking about. This is the area north of the river. You can see the Poe outline, the outline of Poe's defensive system, the forts and the connecting infantry treacherous, pretty elaborate fortification system. There's the location of Sanders, of course, Fort Sanders. Note the location of Morgan Hill. We'll talk about that later in the talk. The area south of the river, you can see the topographic outlines here indicating pretty high and rugged ground. That's the key to the south side. There are several about five or six big hills south of the river that are important because they are much higher than the ground north of the river. If the Confederates could put artillery on this high ground, they could bombard Union defenses on the north and make them untenable. So the south side positions are important. Nevertheless, Burnside only could allot one brigade, Daniel Cameron's brigade of the 23rd Corps to hold the south side. And not long after coming here, Longstreet had the idea of sending two brigades down to contest the high ground. They crossed this raft crossing right about there. The Confederates took position on what is today called Cherokee Heights. The Federals held primarily the hill where Fort Stanley is located. Also the hill where Fort Dickerson is located. And they had a skirmish position and advanced position on Armstrong's hill separated only by a narrow valley from the Confederate position at Cherokee Heights. The Confederates actually outnumbered the Federal south of the river. So it's a dicey situation in some ways. And Longstreet had some significant hopes that something would happen in his favor south of the river. This will illustrate the overlook advantage. This is a photograph taken by my wife actually. I give her credit from Fort Dickerson hill overlooking the University of course over here. Downtown Knoxville is over in this direction. But it's a nice way to illustrate how you can have a good advantage. Fort Sanders is going to be located over in just on the other side of these buildings somewhere around in there. Another good illustration. This is taken from the Bluff on Armstrong's hill looking toward downtown Knoxville. This is taken from Steve Dean's video holding the high ground produced a couple of years ago to get interest involved in preserving Armstrong's hill and other areas. A magnificent view showing what kind of an advantage you have if you put artillery on top of Armstrong's hill overlooking downtown Knoxville and other areas on the north side of the river. So it's important ground on the south side. And there are some significant little fights taking place. November 25th 1863 Confederate Commander Evander Law sent a heavy skirmish line across the narrow valley from Cherokee Heights against Armstrong's hill. A very heavy skirmish battle took place. The Confederates won some initial success but a Union counterattack drove them back. November 29th 1863 when Longstreet attacked Fort Sanders law again sent a heavy skirmish line across that narrow valley against Armstrong's hill and was pushed back. Evander Law's troops were some of the best veterans of Lee's army and a Texas soldier in those commands later wrote that he never saw such good fighting by the Yankees who were opposed to them at Armstrong's hill. He didn't know Yankees could fight as well as they did on those two days of action. A photograph that I took recently from the riverbank, the north side, the south side of the riverbank looking at Cherokee Heights that building you see there is part of the Cherokee condominiums. This indentation is the narrow valley between Armstrong's hill and Cherokee Heights. I'm sorry I forgot to take this in March when the Lee's were still gone by the time I realized that everything had leafed out. Otherwise it would have been a nice little view of the shape of the ground that is now hidden by the tree leaves. Battle of Armstrong's hill on November 25th to give you a little bit better orientation. Union skirmish line on top of Armstrong's hill right here. Confederate position, artillery and infantry on Cherokee Heights. The narrow valley drained by a stream between them. A Steve Dean video grab as he calls it from his video holding the high ground from the top of Armstrong's hill looking southward. Much of the ground of course is overgrown with trees today. A view of the valley between Cherokee Heights to the left and Armstrong's hill to the right inundated by a post-war pond. Beautiful tree cover also. It's magnificent ground to be preserved just for nature if not for history. Draw your attention to this map of some of the Union fortifications on the south side. Fort Stanley here, a massive fort on the top of that high hill with connecting infantry trenches extending a long distance. Fort Dickerson which is today well preserved. Largely through city efforts and also the Civil War, the Knoxville Civil War round table maintaining it. A very large, pretty well preserved Union redoubt. We see how many artillery positions there are in it covering pretty much the top of this big hill. Fort Higley, a recent preservation triumph because of the Aslan Foundation. Very well preserved, a small kind of peanut shaped configuration on top of a small hill with an artillery emplacement there. Photographs. Fort Higley, a good view from Steve Dean's video showing the remnants of Union parapet right there taking at the right time of year to see everything looking basically to the southwest. Fort Dickerson, a recent photograph showing how well preserved and well maintained the fort is now. This is one of the parapets. I remember correctly what is left of the inner magazine inside the Fort Stanley taken from Fort Dickerson. There's not much left of Fort Stanley as I understand it. A few bits and pieces of it. At least this photograph will show you the topography a little bit. Look how deep is the depression between the Fort Dickerson hill and the Fort Stanley hill. You can get a sense of how high you are on top of Fort Dickerson if you look down there. The hills are roughly of equal height. It gives you something of an indication of the significance of the high ground on the south side. Let's go to the third topic, recovering battle landscapes. Maybe this is a word that I make up here. I don't know. What if you have a battlefield that is lost? Do you just give up? Well, I would say no. You can look for battlefields that have gone. Especially in what I like to call suburbanized landscapes. In other words, if a battlefield is no longer ... If the original aspects of the battlefield, whether it's earthwork, construction, or something else are gone, and the ground has been developed by housing, you don't need to just give up. The Battle of July 22nd in the Atlanta campaign, often called the Battle of Atlanta, fought on the east side of Atlanta. One of the biggest battles of the Atlanta campaign and most interesting battles you'll ever see. Not too many decades after 1864. It, of course, was just built over by the city of Atlanta. A key hill there, bold hill, leveled almost to make room for interstate 20. Many historians that I talked to just kind of throw up their hands and say, you can't learn anything from it, but I think you can. Because the general topography remains, even if above ground features of the Civil War are destroyed. Of course, you may knock down earthworks. You may level a little bit, but in general the topography is still there, so you go out and look for it. You have to imagine the landscape devoid of houses, if that's possible. See between the houses, look across the yards, think of the land and the creeks and the ravines instead of the houses. And I think you can have some success there. Also, the use of maps, old and modern, are very important. Joan, in your February presentation here, did a magnificent job of demonstrating how she took Orlando Poe's magnificent map of the Knoxville fortifications and overlaid a modern map over it and proved that Poe was really extremely accurate in placing everything. So that's an extremely helpful way of solving this problem, of looking for a battlefield that is lost. In terms of Fort Sanders, well, I can just make some observations here. This is a famous photograph of the blue and gray reunion at Fort Sanders in 1890, showing the remnants of the fort as it existed then, taken from the south. Looking up on top of the ridge where it was located, you can see the remnants of the earth works along here. Two or three things to point out to you. One thing is that the landscape around is pretty much devoid of trees. That gives you an opportunity to see the lay of the ground, to see the shape of this ridge that Fort Sanders was located on. Another thing is you can see how big the earthen parapets or the remnants, they're almost 30 years later, or still are of the fort. Look at all the people standing on it also on top of that. One thing that I think this photograph tells us is that the top of this ridge is fairly level. It's not perfectly level, of course, but it generally is level. And to my way of seeing it, the western end of the top of that ridge is right here where the fort is. And from that point on, it's pretty significantly, at least from a military standpoint. And I don't know how well you can see that or if you can see it, but to me it looks like also there's a slight rise as you go along here until you reach a little bit of a peak there, and then it goes down slightly to the end of the fort, and then a whole lot more that way. It's what I like to call the hump that is located today between 16th and 17th Street. The photograph I took in just a few months ago, standing at 505 17th Street, looking eastward along Laurel. This is 17th itself. You can see there is a bit of a rise in the ground here, what I call the hump, between 17th and 16th, and then it goes down a little bit again. You know, that doesn't mean, of course, that militarily, Fort Sanders is insignificant over here. This is where I'm standing, is the true western end of that ridge, where Fort needs to be located for military purposes. A photograph taken about in 1880 by the New England Press Association, which was making a tour of the southern states and stopped at Knoxville, and some photographers took three or four, or at least three photographs of the remnants of Fort Sanders in 1880. Standing about close to the northwest bastion, at least, looking east, and also I think whether you can see it terribly well from your perspective I don't know, but it looks to me like the lay of the ground is coming up as it approaches the photographer, and if I'm correct, this is roughly where, quote, the hump is located, close to where he's standing. All right then, go to the last of my four topics, recreating battle landscapes. I think this is part of Knoxville's Civil War legacy also. Steve Dean and Smiley Clap, the latter being the farm owner to the northeast of Knoxville, reconstructed the northwest bastion of Fort Sanders in February and March of 2007. As Joan mentioned, it's the setting for Its Memory Alone Remains, a video to accompany a permanent exhibit on the Knoxville Campaign at the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee. I took a bunch of photographs when the Fort was being constructed and when the film was being filmed, and I want to share them with you. These pictures have never been shown in public before. They've never been seen even by the people who appear in them. So we start however with a historic photograph, and I start with this because there's a purpose for it. Again, it's a Barnard photograph in March of 64. This is Orlando Poe who designed and built the fortification system of Knoxville. This is Orville Babcock, a ninth-core staff officer who also helped Poe with engineering duties. They are standing in the pathway of the Confederate attack on November 29th. This is the northwest corner of the northwest bastion, roughly where that Union soldier is standing. So the Confederate columns were literally coming along this path. This was their line of attack. You can see the stumps here, and you can see the lay of the land and etc. This is a rough duplication of that view that I took looking at the northwest corner of the northwest bastion as recreated in 2007 with a reenactor trying to duplicate, nicely duplicate, that lone Union soldier in 1864. A baddest obstructions that the Federals put in front of the northwest bastion to trip up Confederate attackers. They also strung telegraph wire among the stumps to trip them up to, and Steve Dean and his crew duplicated all that. The famous ditch at Fort Sanders, they duplicated that also as well as they possibly could, making it as much as they could, as deep and wide as possible, did a magnificent job of recreating all this. I point out, however, of course, that the original ditch at Fort Sanders was dug out by hand labor. If you have thousands of soldiers at your disposal and enough shovels, you can make them do anything you want to. Steve couldn't have gotten people to come out with shovels and dig into this hard clay in the middle of winter to make this ditch. So, of course, he got the services of the Blalock Construction Company, I believe, to donate some equipment. So the ditch is dug out, of course, with modern equipment, and you can see evidence of that, too, how very straight and narrow it is, I'm sorry, how straight it is, and also how well packed it is. It looks like it's all been done by machinery. That, of course, is something you can obviously forgive a recreator, but you can take a shovel and go out there for two or three days trying to dig out a ditch in that kind of ground. Another photograph of the ditch from a different perspective, from a corner, you can also see here how well packed it's been by the construction equipment. You have to have artillery positions, and Steve and his crew did a good job of doing that. This is the beginning, this is an embrasure, a cut in the parapet to allow an artillery tube to stick through. This is unfinished. It's in the process of construction. This is the beginning of a wooden platform for the artillery piece to stand on so that the wheels won't get mired in the mud, and et cetera, using post and board as a revetment to hold up the inside of the parapet. The outside of an unfinished embrasure, again showing the well packed steep slope, a finished sandbag in embrasure, Poe did have sandbags to hold up the size of the embrasure in Fort Sanders, so that's being done accurately. Another thing that the crew did was to recreate the cotton bales that the Federals had put on top of the parapet of Fort Sanders to give additional protection for the federal troops. I forget exactly how they made this, but I think it's a wooden frame with wire mesh and then real cotton and burlap around it. That of course is a good way to recreate a cotton bale that in reality in the 1860 would have weighed 200 or 300 pounds possibly, something like that. This is part of the recreation process. A more finished revetment, artillery pieces by the reenactors just about ready to be filmed. Another view of the parapet and the cotton bales and the crew over here. You can see something of the abaddis and the wire entanglement out here just outside the fort. That's the direction which the reenactors will recreate the attack from the right. And the flagpole that is in that photograph that Barnard took of the Northwest Bastion. A tactic come from the right of the image over here. You can see the obstructions inside of the artillery emplacement ready for action. Barnard's photograph using these kind of boards seems to be pretty accurate. You can see the inside revetment of the west face of the Northwest Bastion and it's probably pretty close to this. A nice view of not only the crew getting ready to film an important section of the reconstructed earthwork but a nice view of the beautiful landscape of East Tennessee in the background. On a very, very windy mostly clear but also extremely cold day as I remember. Filming the Union side of the attack. Union reenactors inside using the cotton bales as added protection an artillery crew here. Behind the scenes filming two photographers up on top of the parapet getting a close in from up top view. Microphone. One of my favorite photos with the intrepid director over here. The two photographers here are Doug Mills I believe and I don't remember the name of the other photographer but the boom man here. Another thing I like about this photograph look at it there are four guys here and if you have the camera tightly focused on all of them and showing nothing else and you look at the video it looks like they're the whole world and they represent only a small group of what you assume is a big group of guys who are doing art from behind the scenes and get a lot out of a small resource. Interesting photograph by Wendell Decker who's a reenactor, a Civil War reenactor who specializes in reenacting Civil War photographers. If I remember correctly Steve I think this is the first reenactment held at your fort in October of 2007 I believe and Wendell Decker was so taken by all this he wanted to recreate Confederate dead in the ditch of Fort Sanders so he got the reenactors to pose for him and he did this and he did it very well it looks a lot like a real photograph about a hundred photographs were taken during the Civil War of dead on the battlefield before they were buried most of them of eastern battlefields was only one or two of a western battlefield and Decker did a really nice job of kind of duplicating the atmosphere of that image. Now two or three things I want to do here which maybe don't relate to landscapes and preserving landscapes but Knoxville Civil War legacy does include wonderful historic photographs of Fort Sanders and to my mind that is part of Knoxville Civil War legacy mostly it's George Barnard who we've already seen a civilian contractor for the U.S. Army working for a poll in March of 64 to document the earthworks of Knoxville and also 2015 years later in 1880 as I mentioned the New England Press Association conducted a tour of the south and stopped at Knoxville and took three interesting photographs of the remnants of Fort Sanders that I think Joan Markle might have discovered several years ago I think she's the one who told me she's waving her hand up there to say oh I'm sorry Dot Kelly deserves the credit for exposing for everybody those wonderful photographs and letting us know about them and then of course the famous reunion photograph of 1890 let's just briefly go through them and say a word or two we've seen this photograph again of course again I point out to you the ditch I also want to point out to you all these stumps over here they were an important part of the attack those stumps actually were not created by the Union troops the Confederates had a fortification here before Burnside came in September of 63 the Confederates occupied Knoxville in 61 and 62 in the first half of 63 they constructed a small work called Fort Loudon or Fort Buckner or Fort Gracie whatever you want to call it there are many different names for it much smaller less impressive than the Fort Poe built but on the same location they're the ones who clear cut the trees along the ridge slope and when Poe had to put together his defense plan he used those stumps a civilian a worker for the railroad company told him that there was telegraph wire in the depot at Knoxville and suggested that he use it so Poe strung it around from stump to stump to create an obstruction one of the very first uses of wire entanglements in military history in the world and also he created in the baddest too a photograph that I haven't shown you yet apparently done by Barnard at the same time although misidentified for many many years it shows the western side of Fort Sanders is looking to the north the photographer is standing basically on the southwest bastion and this is the northwest bastion a nice view to show how clear cut the land is along the side of the slope you can see the tree stumps here you can see the slope coming up toward the fort you can see the hand dug ditch in front of the bastion there's a hill dirt that's kind of fallen back in over the months I don't know if you can see it very well but you see that dark line right there that's the natural that's the natural land the natural top soil the land went up like that and like that and then the diggers dug that ditch in there and they piled the dirt on top to make the parapet above that dark line everything below that dark line is underground you can see how they've excavated the ditch around here New England Press Association photograph in 18 I've shown this to you before, that's right I wanted to point out one of the nicest things I like about this photograph look at all the cattle roaming freely all over the place a couple of them are in the ditch of the earthwork grazing just doing what they want to they own the place I think some weeds growing on it another thing I don't know how well you can see it but the top of the parapet is smooth I've been walking along it all for years as tourists want to do the tendency when visiting an earthwork is to want to get on top of it and walk along I have that tendency also but I have to remind myself it's of course not good for preservation of earthworks it kind of deteriorates them you can clearly see that a path has been beaten up here where no grass or weeds are growing the second in these three important photographs by the New England Press Association in 1880 looking southward it looks like the photographer probably is standing on the northwest bastion this is the southwest bastion that you see projecting a little bit forward and out like that there's some remnants of embrasures you can also see some houses if I'm not mistaken this is Melrose a well-known big mansion that was a focal point of the fortification system Poe planned a fort around it it was owned by a loyalist in 1863 who freely let the federal they loophole the house and use it as a block house as well as building a fortification around it that's currently where the Hess Hall no relation to me the Hess Hall dormitory is on UT campus the Cowan House over here a little bit to the left the third of those New England Press Association photographs looking toward the southwest the Cowan House and its magnificent grounds right there the earthwork locations Melrose over here Sophonia Strong house I think is still standing there as I understand it and if I'm not mistaken the carriage house which is still there at 16th Street and of course the famous reunion photograph of 1890 which we have seen I just want to point out it's not so easy to see but a large tent over here just to the west of the fort was the main venue for the meetings of the blue and gray veterans in 1890 they helped many ceremonies there under that tent the climax of the reunion was a magnificent fireworks display which was held in this area too now then another set of images this is also part of Knoxville Civil War Legacy about a dozen artworks depicting the attack on Fort Sanders not all of them are here but let's just quickly go through them if we have a few minutes to do so a painting by William Russell Briscoe 1958 depicting the attack on Fort Sanders very colorful fairly accurate I think in terms of historical accuracy Briscoe did make an attempt to portray the Confederates attacking in columns as opposed to other formations he depicts the trauma of combat over here he shows East Tennessee University building in the background over there Briscoe was a bank executive who managed the branch of the Valley Fidelity Bank that was located at 505 17th Street the location of the Northwest Bastion for many years he was also an amateur painter who painted 30 or 40 scenes of Knoxville history and culture this is one of two paintings he did of the Civil War the other one was the death of General Sanders on November 18th 18th, 1863 that painting that he did of the death of Sanders is very inaccurate but this one I think he paid a lot more attention to trying to get it right a painting done by someone named N. Jordan and I apologize for not knowing more about him I tried to find out information I don't know 1891 depicting the attack on Sanders in an interesting way he does show the cotton bales he does show the wire in his painting for some reason everything is green even though it's November 29th but nevertheless it's a pleasing color he does portray Fort Sanders almost looking like some medieval fortress perhaps rather than a Civil War earthwork but nevertheless it's an effective painting that's rather interesting and draws the attention an image designed by a veteran of the Knoxville campaign a Union soldier named Bookteller 104th Ohio Infantry I don't know when it was executed but some interesting things to point out here he also portrays Fort Sanders as a massive big medieval fort almost with soldiers kind of like ants crawling up it he also portrays the the turmoil caused by the wire and tankmen and soldiers tripping over the wire he shows the railroad accurately being over here he doesn't however have the cotton bales on top interesting image by an illustrator named Frank Beard in 1881 done for a book called the Pictorial War Record showing a close in view of the climax of the fight the Federals are over here inside the Fort the Confederates trying to get in note there were no cotton bales note also that he shows the Confederate officer on a horse which is inaccurate there were no Confederates mounted in the attack note that he has a heavy piece of artillery here mounted on a sea coast carriage which didn't exist in Fort Sanders and Fort Sanders no more than 20 pounder parrot field guns which would have been mounted on field carriages of wheels so why he did all this I don't know he does show I don't know a whole lot about flags on Sanders cross I just point that out to you because there's something else to point out to you in the next image but he does show emotion of course on individual faces so it's interesting very dramatic Thomas Nast a well known illustrator also did an image of the attack on Sanders either he copied from from Beard or Beard copied from him I don't know because I don't know when either when this one was done before or after the Beard illustration but there's a lot of similarities there's also a sea coast carriage on this piece of heavy artillery too there's also this kind of St. Andrew's cross flag if that's what it should be called also no cotton bales but lots of good emotion lots of accurate portrayal and convincing portrayals of individuals another thing to point out you in artillery Samuel Benjamin did toss some lighted artillery shells over the parapet into the ditch Thomas Nast depicted that only he had several guys doing it and tossing a kind of artillery shell that shaped differently than the one that Benjamin did nevertheless there is emotion there is drama here a four volume publication Battles and Leaders of the Civil War originally in the 1880's with the Century Magazine they did an interesting portrayal of the attack on Sanders showing the effort to get out of the ditch a pretty good and accurate illustration of what the ditch is like and what the tactical situation was like too except of course there are no cotton bales there either even though you don't see any faces you still get a sense of drama and human drama from this illustration and finally the latest depiction was asked to paint a painting to commemorate the opening of the attack on Fort Sanders this location is called Morgan Hill a post war designation today is located just west of where Alcoa Highway crosses Kingston Pike where all those new sorority buildings are being constructed by UT this is the location of a big confederate artillery position of eight guns on the north side and the south side of Kingston Road occupied by two batteries of Austin Layton's 9th Georgia artillery battalion it was these guns that fired the first shot to signal the start of the confederate attack on Fort Sanders Smith has depicted the fort in the distance right there he has done a nice job of portraying human figures at work in these fortifications firing off their Napoleons in the first light as he calls it well titled unfortunately that whole site is lost to us but fortunately the good people at UT's archaeology Unit, Mike Ongst and others especially did a magnificent job of excavating that site just before it was plowed up and found some magnificent remnants under the ground that I've never seen before in my life and doing a good job of thoroughly documenting in the report. A little section of the confederate works that were dug up was allowed to be preserved with a marker and as I understand it this painting is going to be put on display there to help illustrate what happened on that spot finally and this won't take long Knoxville Civil War Legacy in terms of historic houses let me point out to you structures are easier to preserve than landscapes for various reasons they're easier to interpret and easier to understand as well you all probably know this already but let me just go through it the Avery Russell House and the Campbell Station Battlefield looking very different as I understand it today than it did in 1863 but at least it's still there the Matthew Russell House near the Taco Bell interesting structure snuggled between development and commercial activity the famous Robert Armstrong House Bleak House near the site of the famous battle of November 18 where General Sanders was killed the famous tower where confederate sharpshooters took pot shots at the federals and I end with this poignant view a confederate soldier drew this and many of you probably have seen this already graffiti on the inside wall of the tower at Bleak House and wrote a legend men that were shot appear it brings home the human dimension of what happened at Knoxville and it's rare I can think of only two or three other cases in the whole United States where you can see graffiti drawn by Civil War soldiers still intact so it's incredibly rare and I know that a lot of people around here know about it but I hope that they realize how unique it is in addition to it being kind of a local heritage it is a national heritage some soldier sorry to see the loss of his comrades took the time to draw all this alright thank you very much for your patience and I'll be more than happy to respond to any questions or comments anyone has yes Erin a very good question and a question that's not at all easy to answer why was Knoxville, why was Longstreet sent to try to recapture Knoxville it doesn't make that much sense as you're suggesting because after the great Confederate victory of Braxton Bragg's army of Tennessee at Chickamauga on September 19th and 20th the defeated Union army retreated back to Chattanooga and was at a disadvantage Longstreet Bragg's chief subordinate urged that the whole army just bypassed Chattanooga and attack Rosecrans' supply line between Chattanooga and Knoxville as a way to take the offensive victory over the Union army at Chickamauga Bragg for many different reasons said no he cited logistical problems transportation difficulties etc etc etc and so much argument between the two individuals eventually by early November it was decided with Jefferson Davis his support that Bragg would send Longstreet and his command northward away from his army partly to get him out of his hair partly as a legitimate alternative to taking the offensive with his entire army in other words he could argue that look we don't have the ability to take the whole army of Tennessee on this massive flanking movement around Chattanooga we have to stay here but we can maybe send part of it up there to grab Knoxville because Burnside is outnumbered we hope and vulnerable and basically Bragg's instructions Longstreet you have to do it quickly and get back here as fast as possible so when Longstreet crossed the Tennessee river he did try to move fast and if he had been able to cut off Burnside at Lenora station or Campbell station and compel him to surrender or scatter his command he could have come back to Bragg before the battle of Chattanooga took place in which case we wouldn't complain about Bragg being a strategist we say he was brilliant as it turned out Burnside was clever enough to keep from being trapped and after Campbell station what is Longstreet going to do to retreat now and go back to Bragg is to admit defeat so he decided just to stay there and try to figure out some way to break into the city as fast as possible and still get back if he could but you bring up an issue that historians have wrestled with ever since 1863 and what I've given to you is basically my take on it and other people can have different opinions thank you the railroad situation is of course East Tennessee is unique in the Appalachian region for having a real railroad through it at the time of the Civil War that railroad links Virginia with Knoxville and Knoxville with Georgia so it's a significant advantage to the Confederates if they can maintain it that's true and that's the reason why the Confederates invested a fair amount of effort in 61-62 in holding East Tennessee and keeping it safe as much as possible well this that's an interesting question the reason why Knoxville and East Tennessee was abandoned in late August early September was because William Rosecrans army of the Cumberland was bearing down on Chattanooga and so the Confederates had to make a hard decision is Knoxville more important than Chattanooga and the answer of course is no Chattanooga is a lynchpin of railroads east west north and south and it was the target of a large and powerful Union army so Bragg needed help and he got help from Buckner who was the commander in East Tennessee so when Burnside entered East Tennessee he had no opposition essentially yes I think you talked you're referring to Charles Faulkner a retired archeologist from UT yes I am familiar with his argument he's expressed them to me and I've evaluated the evidence and thought about it and everything and I disagree with him I think there's plenty of evidence to believe that the northwest bastion the west end of Fort Sanders was located where we always have thought it to be immediately to the west of 17th Street without getting onto all the details of it the lay of the land is important to keep in mind here and it's important to keep in mind everybody's going to put fortification on the highest ground possible in addition to having it located you might be put it a little bit lower perhaps in the natural crest because you have to find a decent military crest also but that ridge is very much the top of that ridge very much ends at 505 17th Street two or three occasions over the course of two or three years I walked around that ground and examined it and looked at it and did that eyeballing between the houses and tried to figure this out and looking at the historic photos also and I'm convinced that's where it was located there's a lot of other evidence also that makes me think that I'm sorry 17th Street it's basically the intersection of Laurel Avenue and 17th Street anything else alright thank you very much I appreciate it