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Confederates 'Occupy' Greeneville

Sun Photo by Bill Jones. Civil War reenactors from the 19th Tennessee Infantry (CSA) march past the Andrew Johnson Homestead on South Main Street on Saturday morning.

Source: The Greeneville Sun
by Bill Jones
Date: 2008-04-21

Some motorists driving along Main Street in downtown Greeneville on Saturday may have been surprised to see uniformed men carrying rifles tipped with bayonets posted in front of several buildings.

But there was no cause for alarm, because the armed men were actually Civil War reenactors portraying Confederate soldiers who occupied Greeneville on many occasions between 1861 and 1865.

The Saturday event was one of two "Confederate Days" scheduled to be held in downtown Greeneville this spring and summer as part of the year-long Andrew Johnson Bicentennial celebration. Two "Union Days" events also will be held, organizers said.

All the events are being coordinated by the Andrew Johnson Bicentennial Celebration Steering Committee.

The Saturday event went ahead on the grounds of the Andrew Johnson Homestead and inside the Nathanael Greene Museum, both located along South Main Street, despite a day-long threat of rain and sometimes heavy showers.

Early Saturday, some 30 Civil War re-enactors from the 19th Tennessee Infantry Regiment, the headquarters organization of the Battle of Blue Springs and Cobb's Battery (artillery) set up camp on the lawn behind the Andrew Johnson Homestead before the public portion of the event began.

During a 10 a.m. opening ceremony, Lizzie Watts, superintendent of Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, welcomed re-enactors and visitors. She also introduced dignitaries, including Greeneville Mayor Darrell Bryan, and the co-chairs of the Andrew Johnson Bicentennial Steering Committee, Carlos Whaley and Jim Small, operations director, of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.

Mayor Bryan welcomed the re-enactors.

Whaley later introduced leaders of the re-enactors, including Col. Bill Ringel and Lt. Col. Jim Allen.

Whaley said the reenactors were depicting Confederate occupations of Greeneville that took place in 1863 during the Battle of Blue Springs and in 1864 at the time of the death of Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan here.

However, Whaley pointed out that Confederate troops first arrived in Greeneville in the summer of 1861 as an occupation force. He said most of the first Confederates here were "raw troops" from Alabama.

Throughout the course of the Civl War, Whaley said during an audiovisual presentation at the Nathanael Greene Museum on Saturday afternoon, Greeneville changed hands between Union and Confederate forces more than 30 times.

Each time, he noted, the two armies occupied downtown buildings, including Andrew Johnson's home.

On Saturday, visitors to the Johnson Homestead could see some of the messages left written on the interior walls of the house by Confederate troops. The pencil-written messages had been uncovered several years ago when wallpaper inside the Johnson home was removed during a renovation.

Some of the messages were left uncovered when new wallpaper was installed so that visitors would be able to see them, according to the National Park Service.

Guards Posted

Following the opening ceremony, 19th Tennessee Infantry (CSA) reenactors marched from the Andrew Johnson Homestead along the sidewalk north on South Main Street and posted two sentries in front of Asbury United Methodist Church before crossing Main Street and marching back south.

Sentries had been posted earlier in front of the Andrew Johnson Homestead and other buildings, including the Greene County Courthouse.

Between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. visitors were able to tour the reenactors' camp behind the Andrew Johnson Homestead.

Reenactors also conducted drill demonstrations before their leaders, who were portraying historical figures, spoke to a small audience of visitors and reenactors at 11 a.m.

Confederate Leaders Speak

During the "Meet the Confederate Leaders" portion of the event, Carlos Whaley portrayed Maj. William Norris, the chief signal officer of the Confederate Army.

Whaley said Norris, a Baltimore native, had a naval background and offered his services to the Confederate government at the outset of the Civil War. He implemented a system of battlefield communications that featured signal flags like those used on ships.

In addition, Whaley said, the Confederate Signal Corp head was in charge of spying for the Confederate Army.

Whaley noted that Confederate spies often communicated information by placing coded messages in newspaper ads in northern newspapers that they knew would be read by southern leaders.

At the end of the Civil War, Norris was captured and imprisoned for a time by Union forces, who considered putting him on trial for his spying activities.

'Stonewall' Jackson

Danny Buckner, a Newport resident who bears a striking resemblance to Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, portrayed Jackson on Saturday.

While speaking to the audience on Saturday morning as if he were Jackson, Buckner recounted how Jackson rose from humble beginnings to become Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's "strong right arm."

Buckner recounted a story about Jackson's character. As a boy, Buckner told the audience, Jackson had an arrangement with a storekeeper near his home under which Jackson was to be paid 50-cents for each pike, a type of fish, over a foot long, that he caught and brought to the store.

One day, Buckner recalled, Jackson caught a particularly large fish and was offered first, one dollar, and then $1.50 for the fish while walking to the store. But Jackson refused the higher offers took the fish to the store because that was what he had agreed to do.

Jackson died, apparently of pneumonia, after losing his left arm when accidentally shot by his own men while riding at night during the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Col. Bill Ringel, on Saturday, portrayed Col. William Moore Owen, a New Orleans native, who served with the Washington Artillery Battery, a confederate artillery unit.Col. Owen, who was by then an officer on Confederate Gen. James Longstreet's staff actually was in Greeneville at least once in 1864, Ringel said.

Ringel explained that an officer's rain coat he was wearing on Saturday was a replica of one captured by Confederate forces at the Harper's Ferry Arsenal early in the war. He said the coats and other military items were distributed to Confederate troops.

Lt. Col. Jim Allen portrayed Lt. Col. William Bradford, a Confederate cavalry commander, whose unit had been guarding Parks Gap outside Greeneville in 1864 when a Union cavalry unit sneaked past it, entered Greeneville and surprised and killed Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan.

Allen, who usually is the cavalry commander during the annual Battle of Blue Springs re-enactment in Mosheim. explained the uniform and equipment cavalry officers wore in the field.

Also on Saturday, Ben Miller, operator of Miller's Wagon and Cannon Co., of Parrottsville, and members of Cobb's Battery, a Confederate Civil War re-enacting unit, displayed functioning replicas of Civil War artillery.

Miller said he has been building the wooden carriages of Civil War cannons and their ammunition-carrying "limbers" at his shop in Parrottsville for the past several years and assembling and selling cannons.

He said the carriages of two of the guns on display had been built using white oak, while two others had been built with walnut. Miller said he has sold cannons to re-enactors as far away as California and Iowa.

On Saturday afternoon, Miller and his fellow reenactors conducted a dry fire exercise to show visitors how cannon crews fired their weapons in battle.

Museum Tours

Tours of the Nathaniel Greene Museum's Civil War exhibits also began at 10 a.m. according to its director, Earl Fletcher. By mid-afternoon, Fletcher said, 66 people had toured the museum's Civil War exhibit.

A number, he said, also watched an audio-visual presentation by Carlos Whaley about the Battle of Blue Springs at the Museum.

Fashion Show

In late afternoon, a ladies fashion show was held in the gymnasium next to the museum that was directed by Donna Pruitt, of Johnson City.

During the fashion show, models wore examples of the types of dresses women in the Civil War era would have worn.

The types of dresses on display, Pruitt said, included "wash dresses," the type of simple dresses women would have worn while doing household chores; "day dresses," which were dresses women would have worn while shopping, visiting or attending church; and "dinner dresses."

She noted that at the time of the Civil War, the skirts of most women's dresses featured "hoops" at the bottom of the skirt.

The only exception, she said, were the so-called "wash dresses" that women wore while cooking,

Of the hoops, Pruitt said women liked the appearance the hoops created.

Hoops, which had become fashionable in the 1850s, did not vanish until about 20 years after the Civil War, Pruitt said.

At a time when formal rules of etiquette ruled supreme, everything about women's fashions, including appropriate colors, was strictly prescribed.

For example, pastel colors were to be worn only by younger, unmarried, women at the time of the Civil War. Older, and married, women were expected to wear darker colors, she said.