Les Jones: Knoxville Civil War Documentary

December 01, 2003

East Tennessee > Knoxville Civil War Documentary

WUOT broadcast a great radio documenary on Saturday: Two Flags, One City: Knoxville's Civil War. The show covers the Battle of Knoxville and the larger issue of Knoxville's role in the Civil War.

East Tennessee had few slaves and voted against secession. The Confederacy more or less occupied this part of the state to keep it from going Union.

The president of the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable is interviewed on the show, and gives a telling vignette. As a child she knew one of her ancestors fought in the war, and thought of herself as a young Scarlett O'Hara. When she finally found her relative's papers, she discovered that he had fought for the USA rather than the CSA as she had assumed.

That's a pretty common story. I have a friend from Carter County who had four ancestors who fought in the war. He tends to naturally identify with the Southern states, but three of those four relatives fought for the North. Another friend knows he had one ancestor who died in the war. The ancestor never served in the military; he was a farmer in Cades Cove who was killed by Confederate soldiers who were stealing one of his cows.

Posted by lesjones

Comments

Most folks have a tendency to gloss over the complexity of the Civil War. And it's somewhat forgiveable. I couldn't tell you much about the English civil war or War of the Roses. We are now twice as removed in time from our civil war as the contemporaries who shared in it were removed from the American Revolution. Most of America now is either decended from newer immigrants or are new immigrants themselves. The idea of provencial allegiances leading to a civil war in America must seem bizarre. What course is left but to simplify it? You have to have a shorthand.

I've come to feel more of the nuances as I grow older. Some of it is having seen microfiche of pension papers for ancestors who died fighting for the Union.

As a parent I think now; What if the whole country were torn apart? And what if at the end of it all, the whole countryside was a wreck, the local economy destroyed, nearly a tenth of the population killed? And for what? So former slaves could be abandoned, and their descendants abandoned to 120 years of prejudice and pain?

What would it feel like at the end of all that, to receive a check in exchange for your child?

Posted by: Chris Range at December 03, 2003