"What begins here as a scholarly investigation into a Civil War-era fort opens onto a new view of present-day Knoxville, the historic Fort Sanders community adjacent to the University of Tennessee campus, and the city's commemoration and memory of the fort. Using historical-archaeological methods, Terry Faulkner and Charles H. Faulkner uncover remnants of the fort, exposing a small error in the historic location and present-day commemoration. More importantly, this book is the first scholarly treatment of Fort Sanders and its history since Digby Seymour's 1963 publication Divided Loyalties, and brings the story of Fort Sanders into the twenty-first century"--

Unique among Union army corps, the Ninth fought in both the Eastern and Western theaters of the Civil War. The corps’ veterans called their service a “geography class,” and others have called the Ninth “a wandering corps” because it covered more ground than any corps in the Union armies. With the same attention to detail that he gave to the First Corps in First for the Union, Darin Wipperman vividly reconstructs life—and death—in the Ninth Corps. The roots of the Ninth Corps lay in the early 1862 coastal expeditions in the Carolinas under Ambrose Burnside. After this successful campaign—a master class in Civil War amphibious warfare that turned Burnside into a star—Burnside’s units coalesced into a corps, part of which reinforced Pope’s Army of Virginia at Second Bull Run during the summer of 1862. The Ninth fought with the Army of the Potomac in the Maryland campaign in September 1862, first at the Battle of South Mountain and then, in its most famous action, at Antietam, where it suffered 25 percent casualties attempting to seize what became known as Burnside’s Bridge. Three months later, the corps was lightly engaged at the Battle of Fredericksburg, during which Burnside commanded the entire Army of the Potomac. After the disaster of Fredericksburg, the Ninth—again under Burnside—spent much of 1863 in the West with the Army of the Ohio, performing occupation duty in Kentucky and then in Grant’s campaign to take Vicksburg, Mississippi. It fought in Tennessee and helped take Knoxville before returning East, a shell of itself thanks largely to disease. Reorganized, the Ninth joined Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia, fighting—with horrifying losses—at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. It joined the siege of Petersburg, including the infamous Battle of the Crater in July 1864, and remained at Petersburg through the end of the war, where it participated in the assault that broke the siege in April 1865, forcing Lee’s army into retreat, and final defeat, at Appomattox. From the Carolinas to Maryland, from Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee to Virginia, the Ninth Corps sacrificed for the Union—and burnished its place in the annals of the American Civil War.

This is the only book on the historic art to be found in Mud Glyph Cave.

In the late 1700s, as white settlers spilled across the Appalachian Mountains, claiming Cherokee and Creek lands for their own, tensions between Native Americans and pioneers reached a boiling point. Land disputes stemming from the 1791 Treaty of Holston went unresolved, and Knoxville settlers attacked a Cherokee negotiating party led by Chief Hanging Maw resulting in the wounding of the chief and his wife and the death of several Indians. In retaliation, on September 25, 1793, nearly one thousand Cherokee and Creek warriors descended undetected on Knoxville to destroy this frontier town. However, feeling they had been discovered, the Indians focused their rage on Cavett’s Station, a fortified farmstead of Alexander Cavett and his family located in what is now west Knox County. Violating a truce, the war party murdered thirteen men, women, and children, ensuring the story’s status in Tennessee lore. In Massacre at Cavett’s Station, noted archaeologist and Tennessee historian Charles Faulkner reveals the true story of the massacre and its aftermath, separating historical fact from pervasive legend. In doing so, Faulkner focuses on the interplay of such early Tennessee stalwarts as John Sevier, James White, and William Blount, and the role each played in the white settlement of east Tennessee while drawing the ire of the Cherokee who continued to lose their homeland in questionable treaties. That enmity produced some of history’s notable Cherokee war chiefs including Doublehead, Dragging Canoe, and the notorious Bob Benge, born to a European trader and Cherokee mother, whose red hair and command of English gave him a distinct double identity. But this conflict between the Cherokee and the settlers also produced peace-seeking chiefs such as Hanging Maw and Corn Tassel who helped broker peace on the Tennessee frontier by the end of the 18th century. After only three decades of peaceful co-existence with their white neighbors, the now democratic Cherokee Nation was betrayed and lost the remainder of their homeland in the Trail of Tears. Faulkner combines careful historical research with meticulous archaeological excavations conducted in developed areas of the west Knoxville suburbs to illuminate what happened on that fateful day in 1793. As a result, he answers significant questions about the massacre and seeks to discover the genealogy of the Cavetts and if any family members survived the attack. This book is an important contribution to the study of frontier history and a long-overdue analysis of one of East Tennessee’s well-known legends.

A brilliant and surprising account of the coming of the American Civil War, showing the crucial role of slaves who escaped to Mexico. The Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American slaves before the Civil War. But thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico, where slavery was abolished in 1837. In South to Freedom, historianAlice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery's future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War.

Franklin Henry Little (1878–1917), an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), fought in some of the early twentieth century’s most contentious labor and free-speech struggles. Following his lynching in Butte, Montana, his life and legacy became shrouded in tragedy and family secrets. In Frank Little and the IWW, author Jane Little Botkin chronicles her great-granduncle’s fascinating life and reveals its connections to the history of American labor and the first Red Scare. Beginning with Little’s childhood in Missouri and territorial Oklahoma, Botkin recounts his evolution as a renowned organizer and agitator on behalf of workers in corporate agriculture, oil, logging, and mining. Frank Little traveled the West and Midwest to gather workers beneath the banner of the Wobblies (as IWW members were known), making soapbox speeches on city street corners, organizing strikes, and writing polemics against unfair labor practices. His brother and sister-in-law also joined the fight for labor, but it was Frank who led the charge—and who was regularly threatened, incarcerated, and assaulted for his efforts. In his final battles in Arizona and Montana, Botkin shows, Little and the IWW leadership faced their strongest opponent yet as powerful copper magnates countered union efforts with deep-laid networks of spies and gunmen, an antilabor press, and local vigilantes. For a time, Frank Little’s murder became a rallying cry for the IWW. But after the United States entered the Great War and Congress passed the Sedition Act (1918) to ensure support for the war effort, many politicians and corporations used the act to target labor “radicals,” squelch dissent, and inspire vigilantism. Like other wage-working families smeared with the traitor label, the Little family endured raids, arrests, and indictments in IWW trials. Having scoured the West for firsthand sources in family, library, and museum collections, Botkin melds the personal narrative of an American family with the story of the labor movements that once shook the nation to its core. In doing so, she throws into sharp relief the lingering consequences of political repression.

When his life comes apart, will the center hold? Chris Walker has everything. A career, a beautiful fiancée, a promising ministry opportunity, and a faith instilled in him from a young age. But when a revelation about his family comes to light at his grandmother’s funeral, Chris finds himself facing questions he didn’t even know he had about…well, everything. Fighting a battle within and without from those that don’t understand his sudden doubts, Chris seeks refuge in a weekend with his grandfather to ask the tough questions and sort through the issues where faith meets life and disillusionment collides with truth. For those searching for the historic Christian faith that is relevant to life today, or for those who believe that a completely new faith is called for, Clear Winter Nights is a stirring story about faith, forgiveness, and the distinctiveness of Christianity. Through a powerful narrative and engaging dialogue, Trevin Wax shows the relevance of unchanging truth in an ever-changing world.