Huntsville City Map, 1819

This is a map depicting Huntsville city around the time of the statehood convention in 1819.

Trip to Fort Sumter, Charleston

Incredible artifacts at Ft. Sumter, including the flag that flew during the opening dawn of the War, and the rebel Palmetto Guards flag that flew during the Yankee Siege of Charleston. There was one of the 8" guns that had actually fired on Sumter on April 12, 1861. Also, there was an 8” shot lodged into the wall of the fort as amazing to me as if I had seen and touched the Black Stone of Mecca’s Kaaba.

The Walls of Jericho, Jackson County, Alabama

The Walls of Jericho, Jackson County, where Bill Marmaduke, future Sheriff of Limestone County, fell in and out of love amidst the tides of war. They are accessible by a brisk hike down from Hytop north of Scottsboro on the Cumberland Mountain. One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the Nickajack. After a good rain, the Walls would burst from multiple springs. (Chapter XLIII)

Sterling "Old Pap" Price, Missouri Sesech Leader

The Missouri sesech leader Sterling “Old Pap” Price led an invasion of almost 12,000 mounted raiders through Missouri in the Autumn of ‘64 that ate the land up like locusts. Evander Pruitt and the Jayhawks hounded the rebel column into Kansas where farms burned across the prairie and soldiers and civilians alike were killed without quarter. (Chapter XLII)

Cotaco, the Nickajack's Southern Coast

The curious region of the Nickajack known as "Cotaco," a word which may be a portmanteau of the French name "Cote de Coeur," or Coast of the Heart.  The Nickajack was fought over by the Chicasaw, Shawnee and the Cherokee when mixed race traders brought firearms to the natives.  These mixed race traders were known as the Metis by the French, and Mestee by the English.  

The Battle of Brice's Crossroads, June 1864

 

The Battle of Brice's Crossroads, June 1864, where the Wizard of the Saddle, Nathan Bedford Forrest, defeated a Yankee army more than twice his size. Guster Ledbetter and the 55th Colored Infantry were ambushed as they crossed the Tishomingo Creek and were for a period overrun by Johnny Reb. When they had driven off the rebel cavalry, it was too late. The entire Yankee army had disintegrated and fell back in a stampede across the Tishomingo Creek. General Forrest had rounded up prisoners in excess of half his army's size! It was a spectacular victory, and a spectacular defeat. General Sherman was disgusted by the news. (Chapter XL)

Capt. Frank Gurley, CSA - Wanted Man, Guerilla Leader of the Nickajack

Frank Gurley led a guerilla war from the mountains of Madison and Jackson Counties against the Yankee occupation. It led to him becoming a wanted man by the Union authorities for his alleged murder of General Robert McCook on the Winchester Road near New Market, Alabama. Future Limestone County Sheriff Bill Marmaduke rode with his friend Frank Gurley for two years in this guerilla war which helped protect the western approaches to Confederate Chattanooga. Frank Gurley himself became Sheriff of Madison County in 1865 while still under indictment for General McCook's murder, for the murdered general was of the powerful Ohioan War Democrat clan known as the "Fighting McCooks." The modern town of Gurley, Alabama is named after Captain Gurley. (Chapter XXVIII)

Lt. Gen. Braxton Bragg, Commander of the Army of Tennessee

General Braxton Bragg, who commanded the Army of Tennessee when the Yankees lifted their occupation of the Nickajack in the Winter of ‘62. His soldiers rounded up the conscription “Class of ‘63” in Limestone County, at least those who hadn’t skedaddled into the woods or bought substitutes. Those drafted included a group of old music-loving friends who brought cheer to old veterans with the 4th Alabama Infantry under General Lee’s command in Virginia. (Chapter XXXVII)

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. Sam Houston, Founder of Texas, called him as ambitious as lucifer, and as a cold as a lizard. It was said he was more likely to quarrel with friends than assail his enemies. By war's end, he had become a worse tyrant than he could ever claim upon Mr. Lincoln. For his charge was an empire of bondage, and a republic of suffering.

The Massacre at Fort Pillow

The Battle of Fort Pillow saw Confederate troops under command of Nathan Bedford Forrest engage in the wanton massacre of colored soldiers who were attempting to surrender. Even as some begged surrender, they were shot on their knees. Word gets around. When Guster Ledbetter got word, he snapped.

Gravesite of Ferdinand Paleologos, Grandee of Barbados and Titular Heir to the Eastern Roman Empire

The actual grave of Ferdinand Paleologos, grandee of Barbados and root of the Carolina branch of the Havelock bloodline. He was also a titular heir of the old Eastern Roman Empire and had settled on Barbados to grow indigo and sugar. He also sought to escape Parliament’s vengeance, for he had been a cavalier that supported Unhappy King Charles I. Nowhere was slavery more cruel than in overcrowded Barbados in the mid 1600’s where death rates were nearly genocidal.

A Portrait depicting how Anthony Paleologos may have appeared

A portrait of how Anthony Paleologos may have looked when he affixed his signature to a petition for settlement in the Carolinas. He Englishized his name to "Havelock." Reportedly a mulatto of Portuguese origins, he was the illegitimate son of Ferdinand Paleologos of Barbados, and the heir of a terrible and ancient legacy.

Williams Lowndes Yancey, Senator from Alabama and King of the Alabama Fire-Eaters

Alabama Senator William Lowndes Yancey, Fire-Eater and architect of Alabama’s secession from the Union where slavery could be practiced freely and forever. He was a professional Democratic politician who had warned his seat since the 40’s. He believed he was ushering in a Second American Revolution, but it was merely a reactionary coup by the slaveholding elite. Perhaps even a bluff. But it triggered the greatest conflagration the Western Hemisphere has ever seen.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the "Wizard of the Saddle"

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the “Wizard of the Saddle.” He was the scourge of the Yankees and a gifted tactician. He was also a racist brute who assumed leadership of the Pulaski KKK. He is part of the Nickajack’s lore, for better or worse as far as a story goes, and more shall be said of him.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

The night they drove Old Dixie down. It took several nights, actually, as Lyman Resnick accompanied Jefferson Davis on his flight from Richmond and the clutches of General Grant's army. General Lee may have surrendered at Appomattox, but President Davis remained defiant, if delusional, that the struggle could yet be maintained against the Yankee horde. Meanwhile, President Lincoln rode a nag into the Capital of the Confederacy after its capture and was hailed as a Messiah by the liberated slaves.

XXIX

It bears worth observing a question asked often - what is the Nickajack? For a dweller of this region must be prepared to properly relate his or her origins to the newcomer from distant lands. Waves of Americans are yet to settle into its economic ferment looking for that Square Deal. And they will themselves become the dweller, adapting the mysteries of this region into their concentric identity. And such has it been since the region was first settled by the Clovis chasing the Mastodon into its glades.

The name itself is derived from Cherokee, a derivative of 'Koasati.' There is no demonym for the dweller of the Nickajack. There is no "Nickajacker" or "Nickjackee." The dweller simply says they are from the Nickajack, and leaves it thus.

Yet when the dweller themselves are asked what constitutes its boundaries, the observer will find variations to its geographic periphery. It is, however, generally accepted that the region known as the Nickajack is bounded to the east by the Great Tennessee River Gorge, and to the west by the white waters known as the Mussel Shoals, once as mighty as any cataract of the Nile, but now submerged by the TVA. Both are ancient hazards to navigation penetrating into the interior of the Nickajack. Here is where the Tennessee River, older than the mountains themselves, makes its great curve south into North Alabama before turning north past the Mussel Shoals.

The northern and southern boundaries of the Nickajack are more nebulous. No dweller might deny that the confines of the Elk River Valley, which cuts across and into the Highland Rim, lies definitively within the Nickajack. Some, however, have liberalized their definition of the northern periphery to embrace such places as the Sequatchie Valley, or even the upper Duck River Valley. To the south it is generally accepted that the barrier of the Warrior Mountains lie within the Nickajack. Again, the dweller may also broaden their scope to include the upper Wills Valley on the other side of Sand Mountain, or the Mississippi Foothills south of the Mussel Shoals.

For the modern dweller, the importance of cultural, social and political heuristics can ease their sense of regional identity. For example, a politician may define the Nickajack as simply the 5th Congressional District of Alabama. Or the languorous dweller reclining on his couch might consider the viewing area of their local television station as the Nickajack. The dweller may observe it under other terms of convenience, such as the Tennessee Valley (rather nebulous), or North Alabama (rather narrow). Or they put men on the Moon in the Nickajack. Even the automobile has deeply influenced the dweller's sense of this region's identity. Nonetheless, it remains the prerogative of the dweller of the Nickajack to observe these boundaries according to their own concentric identity.

And so the Nickajack today has become a new congruent center of economic prosperity, wrested from the grist of post-modernity by entrepreneurial spirits not unlike The Major. It serves no better time than now to understand your definition of this place. It is your home. And before the coming days when places like Hurricane Valley, and Jones Valley and Paint Rock Valley are paved over and settled by the new dweller looking for that Square Deal, you will remember what the Nickajack used to look like. Or when they have slashed a highway across the brakes and fields of Limestone County, and will have built the Las Vegas of gas stations, you might tremble about what it will become. But it will always be the same identity - your identity as the dweller. It is yours to shape the Nickajack to your own.

I am from the Nickajack.  

Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, Massachusetts Congressman and Major General

Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, Union general and Massachusetts Republican, was so named because of his habit of purloining silverware from the Southern homes he occupied. He stood at the wellspring of a vast Republican patronage system that radiated out from the District of Columbia down into Alabama like so much rotten fistulae. He was also known in Dixie as "Beast" Butler for the deportment of his indignities while the military governor of occupied New Orleans. We will be seeing more of this colorful gentleman in future installments. I look forward to fleshing out "The Beast."

Scrapbook: The Muscle Shoals Canal

 

This image showing the course of the Muscle Shoals Canal is significant because it shows the significant barriers to navigation that the Muscle Shoals presented in the days before the TVA dams were built.  The Muscle Shoals is generally accepted as the western 'boundary' of the Nickajack. Over a distance of around 37 miles between Florence and Brown's Ferry in Limestone County, the river fell 137 feet, creating rapids, waterfalls, sandbars, whirlpools, sinks and sucks that were extremely hazardous to navigation.  The first Muscle Shoals Canal was completed in 1836 and was 14.5 miles long, 60 feet deep and 6 feet deep with a total of 17 locks with five foot lifts.  This first canal was abandoned in 1938 due to lack of funding.  An alternative was found - the Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad was chartered in 1832.  Steamboats would unload their cargo at Tuscumbia for the overland trip to Decatur where cargo was loaded again on steamboats to continue their journey through the Nickajack to the Upper Tennessee.  Surveying for a new canal system was begun in 1871 during Reconstruction, and construction began in 1875.  The Shoals were finally submerged and opened to navigation with the construction of the Wilson Dam in 1918.  

The Route of Hernando de Soto through Alabama

There are two proposed locations in which Hernando de Soto entered into Alabama. One is through the Nickajack via the Tennessee River Gorge ("western route"), departing from the Tennessee River in today's Marshall County (Guntersville), and then probably down Browns Valley into the Coosa River basin.  The relative impassability of this terrain seems to make it less likely than an "eastern" entry point at the head of the Coosa River in NW Georgia.  

Topographic of the Great Tennessee River Gorge

 

A topographic map of the Nickajack where the Tennessee River winds itself through a gorge cut through Walden's Ridge, a spur of the great Cumberland Plateau, and Racoon Mountain.  The Sequatchie Valley, though not really part of the Nickajack, is part of the same long rift valley which the Tennessee flows through before cutting west and away from Brown's Valley near Guntersville. Browns Valley is the name of this same valley as it stretches southwest from Guntersville, dividing Sand Mountain from Brindlee Mountain.