On February 12, 2019 the U.S. Senate passed conservation legislation that if signed by the President will protect millions of acres of land and establish four new National Parks. Among them is the new Mill Springs National Monument, site of the first Union victory in the Civil War. We asked historian Jack Hurst, author of a respected trilogy of books on the Western theater of the Civil War, to tell us why this forgotten battle deserves more attention. Portions of this essay were excerpted from one book of his series, Men of Fire: Grant, Forrest, and the Campaign that Decided the Civil War (Basic Books). –The Editors
Pres. Abraham Lincoln, photographed a few months before the Battle of Mill Springs, was obsessed with pushing south through areas of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee that were sympathetic to the Union. Library of Congress.
Pres. Lincoln, photographed by Alexander Gardner a few months before the Battle of Mill Springs, ordered his generals to push south through areas of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee that were sympathetic to the Union. Library of Congress.
Since the start of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had been obsessed with eastern Tennessee and Kentucky. He was familiar with the area, having been born in a one-room log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky, in 1809. Both his parents, and later his step-mother, were from the state.
Lincoln knew that the foothills of the western Appalachians were like a long knife of Union-loving territory lodged in the Confederacy's vitals all the way down to north Georgia.
