yesterday's tennessee

New Tool Available to Learn About the Civil War in Tennessee

Dresden Enterprise, January 2006

The Tennessee Historical Commissioned has announced a new tool for historians, students, or anyone interested in the Civil War. The newly created Tennessee Civil War Sourcebook is available on the Web at www.tennessee.civilwarsourcebook.com.

The sourcebook chronicles the military, economic, social and political history associated with the Civil War in Tennessee:

Information in the sourcebook comes from diaries, period newspapers, official Civil War records, ship deck logs, letters, and historical articles. The sourcebook compiles more than 7,000 entries into an easy-toaccess documentary collection and provides narration.

Work on the Tennessee Civil War Sourcebook began in 1995, when Tennessee Historical Commission Public Historian, James B. Jones, Jr., noticed the discrepancies in different publications regarding the number of battles that took place in Tennessee during the Civil War and the authors' failure to provide documentation as to the numbers presented. Since that time, Jones has conducted a historical audit to collect and more thoroughly document information about combat and other aspects of the Civil War in Tennessee from a variety of sources.

The sourcebook makes available information that would ordinarily be difficult for many people to access. In addition to the Web site, a limited number of CD's containing a chronologically arranged version of the sourcebook were created and sent to every public and private secondary school library in Tennessee, as well as public and collegiate libraries. The CD's and Web site were funded by a grant from the National Park Service American Battlefields Protection Program. The Tennessee Historical Commission and Tennessee Wars Commission provided matching funds.

To access the Tennessee Civil War Sourcebook, log on to www.tennessee.civilwarsourcebook.com.

For more information about the Tennessee Historical Commission, visit the Web site at www.state.tn.us/environment/hist/.