Showing posts with label Ft Sanders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ft Sanders. Show all posts

Thursday, February 16, 2012

At First Light: A Painting of the Battle of Knoxville by Ken Smith


It was a cold Sunday November morning in 1863 when the Gwinnett Artillery lead by Captain Tyler Peeples fired the first shot at Fort Sanders. Cannons sounded and the men from Georgia signaled the beginning of the disastrous attack on Union-held Fort Sanders. Now on that same spot, later called Morgan Hill, the University of Tennessee is busy building a new sorority complex. Much has changed since the bloody 1863 battle. Where there were just hills of mud, now interstate highways and modern structures sprout from the landscape. And yet, with the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, those first shots on Fort Sanders are remembered and are depicted in At First Light by historical artist Ken Smith.

“It’s still hard to picture the Battle of Knoxville taking place in that denuded 1863 landscape with all the hustle and bustle of modern Knoxville covering every salient feature of the original ground,” said the artist.

During the excavation of what is believed to be the only known archaeologically confirmed Confederate battle site in Knoxville, Smith was commissioned by the University of Tennessee’s McClung Museum to paint what transpired on Morgan Hill on that infamous morning. This particular event was part of the Siege of Knoxville and ended with over 800 casualties for the Confederate Army, leading to the Confederate retreat from East Tennessee. A reproduction of the painting is currently on display at the museum’s Civil War exhibit and plans also include using the image on a historical marker at the battle site, where 60 feet of the original trench will be preserved once the complex is completed.

Using research from UT’s archeological team, Smith began recreating the moment using period maps and contemporary descriptions to recreate the landscape and conditions that Tyler Peeples and the  Gwinnett Artillery faced on that morning in 1863. The artist traveled to Petersburg National Battlefield (Petersburg, VA) to view and photograph one of only two functional Napoleon cannons in the Eastern US. And he recruited accurately garbed reenactors to pose as the Georgia artillerymen.

Smith currently resides in Pulaski, Virginia and is an assistant professor of graphic design at Radford University. Before this, he lived in the Knoxville area for over thirty years and is an alumni of the University of Tennessee. He also holds a MA from Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York), and an MFA from the University of Hartford (Hartford, Connecticut).

At First Light can be seen at the McClung Museum (Knoxville, Tennessee) or on the artist’s website at http://www.kensmithhistoricalart.com/. Limited edition prints are available for purchase. For more information, please contact Ken Smith at ksmith@kensmithhistoricalart.com

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Review: Knoxville 1863

Knoxville 1863: A Novel
By Dick Stanley

By late November 1863 the fate of East Tennessee was held in the balance. A detachment from the Army of Northern Virginia under Lieutenant General James Longstreet was sent to Knoxville to prevent the Union Army of the Ohio under Ambrose Burnside from moving to support the Union forces at Chattanooga who were besieged by Braxton Bragg’s Confederate Army of Tennessee.

Union Engineers constructed several bastioned earthwork fortifications around Knoxville. One of these was Fort Sanders. Directly west of town, it was a salient in the line of earthworks which surrounded Knoxville on three sides. The fort was protected by a ditch that was twelve feet wide and eight feet deep with a vertical wall of red clay that rose nearly fifteen feet above the ditch.

It is during this time and at this place that Dick Stanley has set his second book, the appropriately named novel, “Knoxville 1863.” Mr. Stanley has taken a unique approach to telling the story of Longstreet’s failed attack on Fort Sanders. His narrative follows the linear chronology of the attack on and defense of the fort, but the story is told from several different view points: inside and outside the fort, civilian and soldier, from both the Union and Confederate points of view. This method of storytelling is both the novel’s greatest asset, as well as its greatest weakness, as it gives Mr. Stanley’s readers a multilayered understanding of what is happening at all points, but there is no one central character to follow through the narrative, which can overwhelm and loose its reader.

In his afterward, Mr. Stanley, takes the time to point out the real historical characters and summarizes what became of them. He also includes a brief discussion of the sources he used in researching the novel. Mr. Stanley has certainly done his homework; his novel rests on a solid foundation of historical facts. It is well written & a joy to read.

ISBN 978-1451580310, CreateSpace, © 2010, Paperback, 230 pages, $7.98