Battles set for Jan. 21-22
Mill Springs begins 2012 schedule
with Sesquicentennial re-enactment

For the fourth time, Mill Springs will re-create what was the first significant Union victory of the Civil War.

The Mill Springs Battlefield Association will host a re-enactment of the Battle of Mill Springs Jan. 21-22 on the original battlefield where the action took place at Zollicoffer Park. Re-enactments will be staged at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the 21st and at 1 p.m. the following day. The Federal contingent will be commanded by Chuck Warnick and David Neill will serve as the Confederate commander.
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BORA President-elect named
to Nunn Teacher Hall of Fame

Battle of Richmond Association (BORA) President-elect Sharon Graves has been named to the Louie B. Nunn Kentucky Teacher Hall of Fame for her outstanding contributions to the teaching profession. Read more

CSA’s 6th Kentucky gaining favor
as outstanding re-enactment group

Shannon Jeffferies is one of those re-enactors who’s genetically linked to the Civil War. And, it’s a heritage reflected by both the South and the North.

However, Jefferies noticed that in mid-Kentucky there was a need for a Confederate infantry group that would reflect excellent standards and would allow extensive family participation.
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‘Stonewall of West’ long remembered
for courage, military battle expertise

By BREANNA L. MINK

Patrick Cleburne was a major general in the Confederate army during the Civil War who rose quickly through the ranks and was recognized as a great military commander.

Highly respected and with great courage, Cleburne was extremely loyal to the Confederate cause and had many triumphs during his career – but that also came with many defeats. Read more

Display of hoods grim reminder
of Lincoln assassination plot

One of the most chilling reminders of the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and two other top U.S. government officials is a current display at the Smithsonian Institution’s American History Museum.

Eight cotton hoods designed to be worn by the convicted plot collaborators who were incarcerated in the assassination conspiracy can be seen in a display designed for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Read more

Civil War’s first air force confrontation
featured Intrepid, Washington, Gazelle

At Mechanicsville, Va., it’s know as the Civil War’s “Kitty Hawk Moment.”

It was there, on June 27, 1862, that balloons manned by Confederate and Union aeronauts floated above a field of battle - the first time warring armies sent their air ships aloft simultaneously over U.S. soil. Read more

Shortage of ammunition, equipment
cost Confederates at Ivy Mountain

Floyd County’s first Civil War battle perhaps was best summed up by a Union soldier.

“Those Confederate shotguns and squirrel rifles were no match for our Enfield rifles.” Read more

Kentucky’s Civil War leaders…
At Richmond, Munday defended Bereans
whom he’d opposed three years earlier

In a Civil War filled with ironies, none was more amazing that the situation that faced Union Col. Reuben J. Munday during the Battle of Richmond. Read more

An ancient loupin’-on-stane discovered
at Richmond Battlefield Park cemetery

In ancient Scotland, it was called loupin’-on-stane. The American version is mounting block, horse block or mounting stile.

At Richmond’s Battlefield Park, while working on restoration of an old family cemetery (Kincaid family), volunteers unearthed two large stones near the area’s entrance. Obviously not head nor footstones, it finally was determined that the blocks were stones from a pre-Civil War mounting stile. Read more

Book review...
Second book about Joseph Holt provides
another positive look at great Kentuckian

Elizabeth Leonard states in her book’s introduction that no Civil War-era political figure “has been more unjustly neglected by historians, more misrepresented by Americans’ collective historical ‘memory,’ and, in the end, more completely forgotten than Joseph Holt.”
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News in Brief
Kirby Smith descendants visit Richmond

Lynwood Brown, great-great grandson of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, recently visited the Richmond museum that highlights one of his ancestor’s greatest triumphs.

Brown, a municipal planner in Blowing Rock, N.C., told his children, Jimmy, 9, and Rowena, 6, about their illustrious relative who was co-commander of the 1862 Confederate invasion of Kentucky and who led the South to an overwhelming victory in the Battle of Richmond. Read more

Civil War telegraph
Young Willie Kettles was in right place
at right time when southern capital fell

Telegraph operator Willie Kettles, at age 15, was at the right place at the right time.

In the spring of 1865, President Abraham Lincoln stopped by the telegraph room in the Washington, D.C.,War Department sometimes more than once a day. He was awaiting good news from Richmond, Va. Read more

Horsfall was among many youngsters
who answered Civil War’s call to arms

With hopes of adventure and glory, tens of thousands of boys under the age of 18 answered the call of the Civil War, many of them rushing to join Union and Confederate troops in the earliest days of battle.

Fourteen-year-old William Horsfall was one of those youngsters and lived to be recognized as one of the youngest recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Read more

Chesnut was true to his heritage,
gave the 6th Texas what it needed

Virginia Sen. Jim Webb characterizes the heritage of Southern Appalachia’s Scots-Irish natives as individuals who are independent, distrustful of governments in general and those with a readiness to fight for that which is right and just.

In short, Webb, in his book “Born Fighting,” explains that if you want to go to war, recruit fighting men from Southern Appalachia. They’ll give the opposition hell and will fight to the death.

And that’s the legend of Robert Chesnut. Read more

Dead-end in Kentucky
Sherman’s career nearly ended,
years before fabled ‘March to Sea’

Gen. William T. Sherman was one of the most important and celebrated Union commanders of the Civil War and the most reviled leader in the Confederacy. Read more

New state program links Civil War sites,
aids understanding of war in Kentucky

As the nation observes the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, a new state program to link Civil War sites throughout Kentucky is designed to help visitors and residents understand how the conflict shaped a state torn by the war. Read more