This is the story of a bitterly divided Southern community during the American Civil War. Knoxville was the commercial center of East Tennessee, a prosperous mixed-farming area little reliant on slavery. Although the region as a whole was predominantly Unionist in sympathy, Knoxville split right down the middle on the question of secession. After Tennessee seceded, most Knoxville Unionists pursued a low profile, yet the town soon came to be perceived as a stronghold of stalwart Unionism, thanks to a handful who openly denounced the Confederacy. Chief among these was William G. Brownlow, editor ... More

This is the story of a bitterly divided Southern community during the American Civil War. Knoxville was the commercial center of East Tennessee, a prosperous mixed-farming area little reliant on slavery. Although the region as a whole was predominantly Unionist in sympathy, Knoxville split right down the middle on the question of secession. After Tennessee seceded, most Knoxville Unionists pursued a low profile, yet the town soon came to be perceived as a stronghold of stalwart Unionism, thanks to a handful who openly denounced the Confederacy. Chief among these was William G. Brownlow, editor of the most widely circulated Unionist newspaper in the South and a popular speaker across the North later in the war. Knoxville also attracted attention because of its strategic significance as a vital commercial and transportation center. Consequently, the townspeople endured military occupation for the entire war, hosting Confederate troops during the first half of the conflict and Union forces throughout the remainder, the transition punctuated by the bloody battle of Fort Sanders in November 1863. Mining a treasure-trove of manuscript collections and civil and military records, the book complicates our understanding of Southern Unionism and documents the complex ways in which patterns of allegiance informed the daily routine of a town gripped in a civil war within the Civil War. The narrative testifies to the capacity of war both to reveal and to re-shape the values of those swept up in it.