Knoxville: A Civil War within the Civil War

On October 24, 1863, the front page of Harper's Weekly featured a front-page illustration entitled "The War in East Tennessee—Reception of General Burnside by the Unionists of Knoxville." This illustration depicts General Burnside surrounded by a throng of men, women, and children welcoming him and the Union troops as they enter the city behind him. Following the illustration is a letter written by a Union soldier to his father that describes the Union army's advance through eastern Tennessee into Knoxville:

we were greeted everywhere with shouts for the Union, cheers for the old flag, and the most unmistakable evidences of loyalty. At every house the entire family would appear, often with buckets of fresh water and fruit for the welcome Yankees, and some of the people would scarcely ask for pay for the forage which we had seized to feed our animals, although the corn we had taken was all they had to look to for their winter's food. . . . [A]s we entered Knoxville it was past all description. The people seemed frantic with joy . . . after two years of servitude under the most tyrannical despotism, they now hold up their heads and thank God they are free.¹

The perception impressed by the illustration and accompanying letter is that all of Knoxville turned out for a hero's welcome for the Union army. A more accurate portrayal of civil war Knoxville, that which inspired Robert McKenzie's Lincolnites and Rebels, is a drawing sketched by a contemporary Knoxville resident. The sketch depicts a large gathering of Unionists near a U.S. flag on one end of the street and another throng of men at the other end of the street gathered around a Confederate flag. One town, one street, two simultaneous rallies; manifest of the divided loyalties that tore more than just the nation apart. This confliction is the heart of Lincolnites and Rebels. McKenzie's description of Knoxville as a civil war within the Civil War is appropriate. Knoxville, its prewar population at just over 4,000, was surrounded by a countryside predominant with Unionists acting as a fifth column within the heart of the Confederacy.

McKenzie examines the divided loyalties manifested in East Tennessee, specifically Knoxville, throughout the Civil War. The primary focus of Lincolnites and Rebels is what impact the war had on the lives of the citizenry of Knoxville. Lincolnites and Rebels does not tell the story of the Civil War from Washington or Richmond. It is not a story of generals pitting their strategies against one another on the battlefield. Neither is this the tale of soldiers in blue or gray. McKenzie tells the human side of a people and a nation at war. McKenzie vividly portrays Knoxville as a microcosm of the Civil War as a brothers' war, dividing families, friends, and neighbors. Some of the issues addressed by McKenzie are the nature of loyalty in the presence of the enemy, the effect the conflict had on the lives of the citizenry, and the nature of the town's division between Unionist and Confederate.

As McKenzie notes in his Introduction, it is an unthinking decision of most contemporary Tennesseans that they are "Southern" and as such should wear gray not blue uniforms when reenacting the Civil War or dressing up as soldiers. Suppressed within the memory of gallant southern soldiers in gray defending against the hordes of Yankee oppressors is the reality that Tennessee was a border state, and within that border state, loyalties were divided. McKenzie adeptly describes Knoxville as a community caught in the middle between North and South, slave and free, Union and Confederate. And as the tide of the war turned during the four-year struggle, the citizenry were wrenched to and fro. At one point or another during the bloody national struggle, residents of Knoxville found their allegiance, whether it be to Union or Confederate, sorely tested.

McKenzie pursues...