Customer Reviews

War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860-1869

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In one of the best books written to date on the subject of partisansip and guerilla warfare in Eastern Tennessee during the Civil War, Noel Fisher gives the reader a distinct feeling of what it must have been like to live in a mountainous region that suffered not only from the Civil War as a whole, but from its own civil war as well.

From my perspective, as a descendant of a Unionist veteran of the East Tennessee region, I could empathize for my ancestors as well as for other who espoused the Unionist cause. Descendants of the Confederacy will likewise feel for the deprivations their ancestors faced.

The book is remarkably balanced and makes good use of many primary resources. Perhaps its one fault lies with the fact that I was hoping for more personal experiences of the outrages that both Unionists and successionists suffered and inflicted upon one another. For this, I still have to be content with "The Thrilling Adventures of Daniel Ellis" by Daniel Ellis and with "History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry" by Samuel W. Scott and Samuel P. Angel. Perhaps at a later date someone will write the definitive history of the Civil War in the rugged reaches of East Tennessee, but until the, this will suffice.

In one of the best books written to date on the subject of partisanship and guerilla warfare in Eastern Tennessee during the Civil War, Noel Fisher gives the reader a distinct feeling of what it must have been like to live in a mountainous region that not only suffered from the Civil War as a whole, but from its own civil war as well.

From my perspective, as a descendant of a Unionist veteran of the East Tennessee region, I could emphasize for my ancestors as well as for others who espoused the Unionist cause. Descendants of the Confederacy will likewise feel for the deprivations their ancestors faced.

The book is remarkably well balanced and makes good use of many primary resources. Perhaps its one fault lies with fact that I was hoping for more personal experiences of the outrages that both Unionists and seccessionists suffered and inflicted upon one another. For this, I still have to be content with "The Thrilling Adventures of Daniel Ellis" by Daniel Ellis and with "History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry" by Samuel W. Scott and Samuel P. Angel. Perhaps at a later date someone will write the definitive history of the Civil War in the rugged reaches of East Tennessee, but until then, this will suffice.

As an East Tennessee native with a unionist ancestor killed by secessionists in Jones Cove near Newport, TN, in 1862, I found this book fascinating. With lots of detail and 49 pages of footnotes, War at Every Door is a book I will want to keep. I did a blog posting about it and the perspective it brings to our partisan political environment of 2010. [...]

Fisher does a good job of recounting the violence that inhabited east Tennessee during the Civil War. Partisans from Tennessee and North Carolina spent a great deal of time going across state lines to attack one another in an effort to bring about their ends. These ends did not always include winning the war, but gaining food and oppressing one's enemies. Where the book suffers is in its effort to shed some light upon the politics of the region that worked to shape the manner in which the combatants approached their hate of one another. It does not shed a great deal of information upon the leaders of these groups either, which means we are left to wonder whether these partisans within this region were a mob which was lead, or were recruited by very smart, and maybe, opportunistic leaders. Other than that, this is a good, but not great book on a long overlooked aspect of the war.

The traditional picture of the Civil War, all the men of the North doing battle against all the people of the South, is a wildly inaccurate one. There was considerable Confederate sympathy here and there in the North. And bands of Unionists all over the South continued armed resistance to the Confederate government from secession until the end of the war. These battles were particularly brutal in Missouri, western Virginia, and in East Tennessee.

This book examines Tennessee's civil war. It looks at East Tennessee's difference from the rest of the state, starting from the colonial period and extending to the present day. It chronicles East Tennessee's unsuccessful attempt to follow West Virginia's lead and become a separate state. It documents the Confederate government's inept and occasionally brutal handling of the situation. And it looks at the postwar period, when Unionists in Tennessee took their revenge.

Vital.

There is a factual error in this book. W. B. Carter was the brother of Samuel P. Carter, not the cousin.