In between strokes and 15 years of research, Col. Tom McKenney stayed on course and pulled together an untold story of the Civil War.

His 2009 book about Civil War sharpshooter Jack Hinson – “Jack Hinson’s One-Man War” - is amazing in that it’s about McKenney’s dogged determination as much as it concerns the Kentucky-Tennessee farmer who terrorized the Union Army for more than three years.
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Civil War cruise scheduled Sept. 11
aboard historic Belle of Louisville

Miss Belle of Louisville is doing it again.

Eight years ago, Paula White organized a Civil War cruise on the historic Louisville paddle wheeler while she was serving as the vessel’s poster girl. It was so successful that the Civil War living history specialist has been persuaded to stage another get-together.
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25 members of sesquicentennial group
named, will begin coordinating plans

The 25 members of the Kentucky Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission have been named and will be meeting soon to begin plans for recognizing and celebrating the pivotal role Kentucky played in the Civil War.

The membership includes legislators, Kentucky college and university Civil War specialists, battle historians and members of the Kentucky Heritage Commission and the Kentucky Arts Council.
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Or, did it?
Legend of bloody William Quantrill
apparently ends in Louisville hospital

The individual described as the “Bloodiest man in the annals of America” is reported to have died near Taylorsville in 1865.

That was when guerilla raider William Clarke Quantrill, age 27, was killed in a Union ambush on May 10. He supposedly was shot in the back and paralyzed while trying to flee Federal forces led by another guerilla fighter, Edwin Terrell. Quantrill was said to have died a month later in a Louisville hospital.

But, did he? Read more

Civil War language
‘Dogrobber’ considered something good

If a Civil War re-enactor refers to “a beat” or a “dogrobber”, or even mentions the opportunity to “grab a root,” do you know what he means?

Military terms are encased in a language of their own. Modern military terminology is no exception, nor is the distinctive and often confusing catalog of terms used during the Civil War.

Union and Confederate soldiers had a variety of names for things used in daily routines and developed a wide range of terms for equipment, fellow soldiers or locations where they were based. Some still can be found in everyday language. Read more

Book reviews
Union wrong unleashed Hinson’s one-man war

“Jack Hinson’s One-Man War,” by Tom C. McKenney, 400 pages, Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, La.,  2009, $25.95.

Reviewed by
ED FORD
Bugle Editor/Publisher

Just when you think everything has been written about the Civil War, along comes an author who hits one out of the park.

The book is “Jack Hinson’s One-Man War,” a lost-in-history account of a wronged Kentucky-Tennessee farmer who avenges the Union murder of two sons. Lt. Col. Tom McKenney, a retired Marine Corps veteran of Korea and Vietnam, effectively weaves the story of a land-between-the-rivers landowner whose Scots-Irish heritage leads him to fight back against the irresponsibility of war. Read more

Kentucky’s Civil War Leaders
T.T. Garrard personally recruited
eight Union infantry companies

(EDITOR’S NOTE:  This is the 11^th in a series about Kentucky officers and battle leaders during the Civil War.)

Union Brig. Gen. Theophilus Toulmin Garrard, a native of Clay County, was authorized, as a colonel of the Seventh Kentucky Infantry, to raise a regiment of infantry at the outbreak of the Civil War.

He personally recruited eight companies – two each from Clay, Laurel, Knox and Whitley Counties. Garrard commanded the Seventh Kentucky at the Battle of Camp Wildcat and a detachment of men at Perryville who had not participated in the Battle of Richmond.
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Unconquerable in spirit and soul
Why was Ike questioned about portrait
of Robert E. Lee on wall of his office?

In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower received a letter from a New Rochelle, N.Y., dentist who questioned why a portrait of Robert E. Lee was on the President’s office wall.

President Eisenhower responded several days later, pointing out some of the Confederate General’s attributes and explaining why he held him in such high esteem. Read more

Hamming it up
More proof that crime doesn’t pay

Crime doesn’t pay, especially when you brag about it.

An Indiana lawyer found that out the hard way some 30 years after the fact. Read more

News Briefs
CWPT rescues 2,777 Civil War acreage in 2009

The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) recently announced it helped to permanently protect 2,777 acres of hallowed ground at 20 different Civil War battlefields in five states during the last calendar year.

Overall, CWPT has protected more than 29,000 acres of battlefield land at 109 sites in 20 states.
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