Clik here to view.
Private Romy Lowe
In some cases of fictitious people in the novel, I used altered names of real, historical people. Thus my Private Romy Lowe of the Thirteenth Mississippi’s Minutemen of Attala was taken from the real...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Thirteenth and the birth of the battle flag
The Thirteenth Mississippi’s supporting role in the battle of Fort Sanders was preceded by its supporting role in the birth of the Confederate battle flag. The Seventh Louisiana Regiment led Colonel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Those reappearing battle flags
It’s curious to our modern sensibilities the importance American Civil War soldiers attached to their battle flags. Congressional Medals of Honor were given to soldiers of the Twenty-Ninth...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reprise: Confederate shell jackets
Some of Longstreet’s First Corps received new shell jackets from the state of North Carolina when their train stopped en route from Petersburg, VA, to Ringgold, GA, in the late summer of ’63. “Wasn’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reprise: Thirteenth Mississippi
The character of Private Bird Clark is a fictional composite of several real people in the Thirteenth Mississippi Infantry Regiment, for which I have recently begun a Web site/blog. Bird’s I (Eye)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Declining fortunes
In the novel, Private Bird Clark of the 13th Mississippi Regiment declares that their brigade is “one of the fightin’est…in the army, and therefore one of the smallest.” Indeed, casualties had, within...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reprise: Camp Chase, the fiddle tune
Camp Chase was a Union prisoner-of-war camp in Ohio which took several of the captured Rebels from the Battle of Fort Sanders, including the 13th Mississippi’s Lieutenant Colonel Alfred George...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View Article