Black Confederates: Coming to a Gap near you

Most people think of Cumberland Gap National Historical Park as a pioneer site, but it was also a strategically important point during the Civil War, changing hands four times.

Just recently I stopped by the visitor center on my way back from lunch.  Imagine my surprise when I found Entangled in Freedom on sale in the gift shop.  This novel aimed at young readers is about a slave who accompanies Confederate troops into the field, and has generated some degree of controversy online because of its depiction of race relations in the nineteenth-century South and the nature of slaves’ participation in the Confederate war effort.  Kevin Levin and Andy Hall have addressed some of the book’s interpretive issues at length, so there is little need for me to go into them here.

Part of the book is set in and around the Gap, which is presumably why CGNHP is selling it.  What’s weird is that for a book that misreads some of the big issues involved in the Civil War, it includes a surprising amount of relatively little-known, arcane detail about local history and geography.

For example, there really is a cave in the mountain face, just above the old Wilderness Road, and incidentally this isn’t the first time a cave near the Gap has appeared in a work of fiction.  Cudjo’s Cave was a nineteenth-century novel set in the Cumberland Gap region which also featured an underground sanctuary, and coincidentally enough, it also featured a slave character.  After the war the real cave became a tourist attraction, and the proprietors re-christened it “Cudjo’s Cave” as a nod to the book.  Now it’s in NPS hands and has reverted to “Gap Cave,” its original name.

And there really was a massive cannon named “Long Tom” that soldiers pitched over the side of the mountain, at least according to local Civil War lore.  My hometown of Tazewell is correctly identified as the site of an engagement, and while we’ve got an interesting history of our own, we’re not exactly Sharpsburg or Chancellorsville.  Historical figures who were present at Cumberland Gap during the war appear in the book, too.

There are a few bits of trivia that are off.  The troops encamped at the Gap couldn’t have gotten water from Fern Lake, because it’s an artificial reservoir created in 1893, three decades after Union and Confederate forces were contending for control of the pass.  (The park is incorporating the lake into its boundaries as part of a 2001 piece of legislation, by the way.)  Still, it’s surprising to see Fern Lake mentioned at all.

All this credible detail within a context that misinterprets some of the fundamental issues of the war makes for an interesting case of the forest vs. the trees.

Check out this Civil War crater

…although it’s probably not the one you’re thinking of.   

This crater isn’t at Petersburg.  It’s tucked away on the side of a mountain at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, at the junction of Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky.  I had to hike over and snap a photo of it for a slide presentation last week, and I thought you folks might be interested in seeing it and hearing the back story.  

Most of us associate Cumberland Gap with the frontier era, but the Gap was an important location in the Civil War, too.  It stood at the junction of two Confederate states and a border state, a potential avenue of advance either from Tennessee into Kentucky or vice-versa.  It also offered access to railroads that connected Virginia with the western part of the Confederacy.  

Confederates seized it early in the war to secure East Tennessee and a route northward into Kentucky, where Unionist refugees were assembling in camps, waiting for an opportunity to return through the Gap and drive the Confederates out of their homeland.  One of those Unionists was Samuel P. Carter, member of a prominent early Tennessee family and now commander of a Union brigade.   

In 1862 Carter’s brigade was placed under the command of George W. Morgan as part of the Army of the Ohio’s Seventh Division, and that summer these men marched southward for the long-awaited Union attack on the Gap.  Rather than assaulting the Confederates head-on from the north, Morgan divided his force in two and crossed the mountains at two gaps to the west, approaching Cumberland Gap from the south.  The Confederates evacuated before Morgan arrived, and his troops occupied the Gap on June 18 without the loss of a single man.  

They weren’t there for long.  When the Confederates advanced northward into Kentucky under Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith, Morgan found himself cut off.  With dwindling supplies and a Rebel force hovering outside his position, Morgan mined the mountain and then evacuated the Gap almost exactly three months after taking it, leading his men on a harrowing retreat north to the Ohio River through the only avenue of escape open to him.  (One of the Union officers present described the capture, occupation, and retreat from the Gap in this letter sent to the New York Times.) 

Morgan left a small group of men behind to set fire to the buildings and light fuses to the mines and powder stores.  They did so in the wee hours of the morning of September 18.  When the powder in the commissary near the base of Tri-State Peak went off, it shook the mountain and sent debris hurtling into the air, an event depicted in this wartime engraving of Morgan’s troops marching northward as explosions tear through the night sky behind them:  

From the New York Public Library (Image ID 812927)

The Confederates had to wait a full eighteen hours for the detonations to subside before they could occupy the Union positions.  The Rebels maintained control of the Gap for a year after Morgan’s retreat, until Union troops under Ambrose Burnside re-captured it in September 1863.  It remained in Union hands for the remainder of the war. 

The commissary explosion left a gaping hole in the side of Tri-State Peak.  You can access it via a path that joins the Wilderness Road trail near the “Saddle of the Gap,” the point where the road actually passes through the opening in the mountain.  Here’s what it looks like:  

  

There’s a wayside marker at the site with a description of the Union evacuation.  Have a look the next time you’re in the park, but wear good walking shoes.  The trail is a little rough and steep in places.

Civil War at the Gap

When you hear “Cumberland Gap,” you probably think of Daniel Boone and the role the pass played in westward expansion.  But the Gap has quite a Civil War history, too.  It was the right anchor of the Confederacy’s defensive line in the West and changed hands four times. 

This weekend Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is hosting a Civil War event, so let me take this opportunity to direct your attention to this summary of the war in the Gap by my good friend and former boss Steven Wilson.

Cumberland Gap on MSN Travel

Hey, speaking of Cumberland Gap National Historical Park—check out this list of “America’s Undiscovered National Parks and Monuments” that popped up on MSN’s front page today.  Cumberland Gap is the fourth one featured.

I’m not sure the Gap is as obscure as they’re making it out to be.  The crowds aren’t anything like what you’ll run into in the Smokies or the Grand Canyon, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the view at the Pinnacle to myself, and the Visitor Center is always full enough.  If they really wanted to feature some “undiscovered” parks, I can think of a lot of neglected battlefields that would’ve benefited from the attention.

As you browse through the list, note the emphasis on nature and scenery, rather than history.  The Gap is one of the few “historical” parks that made the cut, and it’s just about the only item in the list where the description focuses as much on what happened there as on the ambience. 

All this raises some interesting questions about the place of heritage tourism in travel writing.

Happy 50th birthday to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

This past Independence Day wasn’t just America’s birthday celebration.  It was also the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

When I was a kid my family lived just a few miles from the park.  Years later, I lived in an apartment on the park’s edge, at the foot of Cumberland Mountain and just below the pathway followed by the Wilderness Road, with a fantastic view of the opening in the mountain wall that made this spot one of the most important in the history of American expansion.  At work, my desk sat before a huge window that looked toward the Pinnacle.  I still drive past the Gap several times a week, and I can’t begin to count how many hours I’ve spent wandering the trails and enjoying the interpretive exhibits and programs. 

So on behalf of everybody else who either lives in the neighborhood or has paid a visit, here’s a big thank you to the park’s staff, and congratulations on five decades of preservation and education.