Today marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. On April 12th, 1861, Confederate forces in Charleston, South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter thereby marking the commencement of hostile engagement with the US government. In this edition of Links of Interest, I’ll be linking to Civil War resources which pertain to my local area in Knoxville and East Tennessee.

• Selected Civil War Sites near Knoxville – Courtesy of the Knoxville News Sentinel, this Google Map has markers which detail selected Civil War happenings around Knoxville, Tennessee.
• Knox County Civil War Sesquicentennial – Knox County’s official site for information on the Civil War in Knoxville.
• Civil War and East Tennessee | Knoxnews.com – Knoxville News Sentinel’s archive of full coverage of the Civil War in East Tennessee.
• Requiem for Parson Brownlow | Metro Pulse - Fascinating read about one of Knoxville’s and Tennessee’s most colorful and infamous characters. (HT: Knoxify)

Finally, although its content doesn’t cover my local area, I’d like to recommend a book on the Civil War. Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy is a riveting book of history. One reviewer has commented that if all history were written as well as this book, there would be no need for fiction.

I’ve been working my way through A Stillness at Appomattox during the past month, and Catton makes the final months of the Civil War come alive with his vivid description of the events and the men and women who took part in them. All of Catton’s accounts are taken from documents and interviews; therefore, although it reads like good fiction, the book is completely factual. I highly recommend it.