This weekend, the East Tennessee Historical Society will host a two-day Civil War Symposium that will explore the East Tennessee Knoxville Campaign in the fall and winter of 1863 as well as political, social, and constitutional events that unfolded within the region both during and after this pivotal period in the American Civil War. A number of local and Civil War historians will discuss a variety of topics such as the Battle of Fort Sanders in Knoxville and the subsequent movements of both Confederate and Union troops as they moved through the Great Valley of East Tennessee toward Virginia, the experiences of both black and women in the region, and the fallout among East Tennessee Unionists following the revelation of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
The symposium is being held at the East Tennessee History Center, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN, 37901. For more information on the symposium, click here.
Dr. William E. Hardy, the Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Center for Leadership and Public Policy will present on Day 2 of the symposium, Saturday, Nov. 16, with a talk entitled, “We Have no Union to Hope For, no Constitution to Struggle For”: East Tennessee Unionists’ House Dividing.
Dr. Hardy's talk will address President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was the entering wedge of dissension into the bedrock of Tennessee Unionism. Alarmed that Lincoln had broken his solemn promise not to interfere with slavery, a number of East Tennesseans rallied like-minded Unionists across the state to challenge those Unionists “radicalized” by the experience of persecution and hardship during the Civil War to adopt emancipation and other radical policies designed to punish the Rebels, thus foreshadowing the bitter postwar struggle for control over Reconstruction.