Learn about 38 Tennessee battles online

The Tennessee State Library and Archives will develop an online database of the state’s Civil War battlefields. • Article

The one and only 'Kill-Cavalry' Kilpatrick

I ran across this column on Union Gen. Judson Kilpatrick, the cavalry commander. An excerpt: "Reckless bravado soon earned him the name "Kill-Cavalry" Kilpatrick, a nickname that was not bestowed with fondness. He certainly had his flaws: he was arrogant, ambitious, blustery and egocentric, loved to use political influence to further his career, risked his men needlessly, maintained his camps poorly, got involved in sexual indiscretions, was bedeviled by rumors of bribery and corruption, and drank a lot (well, so did Grant, eh?). For all that, he was also regarded as fearless, and that counted for a whole lot." • Column

Piano that survived Civil War gets attention

New York students are studying a piano hidden in a Kentucky barn where it was not burned as troops crisscrossed the area. The family legend was that someone played “Dixie” when Confederates were within earshot. • Article

Remembering Atlanta's formidable defenses

Engineer Lemuel P. Grant had quite a chore ahead of him beginning in the summer of 1863. The possibility of Union forces one day besieging Atlanta was becoming a reality.

With seed money of $5,000 to buy property and equipment, Grant, a native of Maine, and Col. Moses Wright began erecting the South’s fiercest defenses.

“They told him put to a fort on somebody’s pasture,” said living historian Robert Mitchell of Loganville, Ga. “It doesn’t matter whose.”

Grant (photo below) began buying private property and placating homeowners who had to move out of the way.

The 12-mile circle around the city had 25 forts/redoubts when it was completed using civilian and slave labor by the summer of 1864. The photo by George Barnard above was taken near the current Georgia Tech campus.

Using old maps and photos, Mitchell (bottom photo) gave visitors at the recent B*ATL an overview of just how dug in the city had become.

The defenses roughly track the boundaries of modern downtown Atlanta. You have to remember this was a pretty small city, although it had become the industrial and transportation center of the Deep South.

Union Gen. William T. Sherman knew a frontal assault on Fort Peachtree and Fort Hood, for example, would be costly.

His chief engineer found the fortifications “too strong to assault and too extensive to invest.”

"They completely encircled the city," Capt. O.M. Poe reported, "at a distance of about one and a half miles from the center and consisted of a system of batteries, open to the rear and connected by infantry parapets, with complete abatis, in some places in three or four rows, with rows of pointed stakes, and long lines of chevaux-de-frise.

"In many places rows of palisading were planted along the foot of the exterior slope of the infantry parapet with sufficient openings be¬tween the timbers to permit the infantry fire, if carefully delivered, to pass freely through it, but not sufficient to permit a person to pass through, and having a height of twelve to fourteen feet. The ground in front of these palisades was always completely swept by fire from the adjacent batteries, which enabled a very small force to hold them."

In the end, attacking the defenses wasn’t necessary. After three key battles outside the defenses, Sherman won the vital railroads he wanted. Gen. John Bell Hood and his forces had to evacuate Atlanta on Sept. 1, 1864.

Today, practically nothing from the fortifications survives.

Shell causes lockdown at Army center

A Civil War-era shell which a man tried to donate to the Army Heritage and Education Center in Pennsylvania caused a lockdown of the facility for about an hour when employees thought the shell might be live. • Article