Tennessee was the last state to secede from the Union, holding off until June 8th 1861, or nearly two months after the war’s first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. Eastern Tennessee had a large population of Union loyalists but it was not enough to outvote the secessionists once fighting broke out. And the state [...]
Continue reading about Tennessee’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration
Ethel Lynn Beers (1827-1879) was a poet most famous for “All Quiet Along the Potomac,” which was originally published under the title “The Picket Guard” in “Harper’s Weekly” in November of 1861, bearing the initials E.B. Nobody seemed to know who E.B. was nor care, for that matter. People from both the North and the South claimed authorship [...]
From the very beginning of the Civil War, both sides understood the importance of control of the Mississippi River. To that end, the United States government built gunboats specifically designed for military operations in the Mississippi and its tributaries. Among those river vessels was a series of seven ironclad gunboats designed by naval architect Samuel [...]
Continue reading about The Sinking and Raising of the U.S.S. Cairo
