The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Monday, September 19th, 2011, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum and Greer Stadium. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. There is no charge to attend.
OUR SPEAKER AND TOPIC
“The Vortex of Secession: Tennessee 1861”
Like her fellow upper South states of Arkansas, Virginia and North Carolina, Tennessee did not make a definitive move towards secession until after the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Governor Isham Harris tried to secure the state’s secession in February 1861 when the pot of disunion was boiling over and other states were leaving or had already left the Union. The plebiscite was voted down by the people. Fort Sumter changed things. In May, the legislature secured a secession document that was ratified by the voters in June. Not long afterward, Tennessee became the final state to leave the Union. As a result of Tennessee’s three votes during the secession crisis, many historians have searched for clues in their results to explain the basis of Tennesseans’ allegiances during the conflict. Often, the analysis has perhaps, not surprisingly, suggested that slaveholding and antebellum party preferences cast a significant influence upon the choice to render loyalties to either the Confederacy or the Union. However, the recent increase in studies dealing with Tennessee’s home front, occupation, and southern Unionism have begun to question these traditional interpretations, especially in areas where the war was omnipresent, the occupied areas of the Upper South, like West Tennessee. Dr. Frisby will present a new perspective of the state on the eve of disunion.
Derek W. Frisby is an Associate Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University teaching Tennessee, US, and military history. He is Middle Tennessee native and US Marine Corps veteran whose research interests deal with military occupation and reconstruction strategies. Frisby received his doctoral degree from the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa and has authored numerous articles and essays dealing with Tennessee’s Civil War occupation and Reconstruction experiences. He is completing his first book dealing with southerners who remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War and their role in the region’s occupation and restoration. Dr. Frisby was a 2003 military history fellow at the US Military Academy at West Point, served six years as editor of the West Tennessee Historical Society Papers (one of three academic state historical journals), and was coordinating director of the Society for Military History’s 2009 annual conference in Murfreesboro, TN. He serves a historical consultant to the staffs of regional ROTC programs (including MTSU), Fort Campbell, and Fort Knox, frequently leading battlefield tours, conducting “staff rides,” and teaching military history courses.
We look forward to this fine program for our September meeting.