Lookout Mountain Research Articles

The Civil War Letters of Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton, Surgeon in Charge at the US Army General Hospital in Quincy

The Civil War Letters of Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton, Surgeon in Charge at the US Army General Hospital in Quincy

Two new Nesticus Thorell, 1869 (Araneae: Nesticidae) from caves in northwest Georgia, USA

We describe two new Nesticus Thorell, 1869 from Walker County, Georgia, USA. Nesticus lula sp. nov. is known from two caves on the eastern edge of Lookout Mountain and N. cressleri sp. nov. is known from three caves on Pigeon Mountain. Morphological and molecular evidence indicates the distinctiveness of both species when compared to other Nesticus from the southern Appalachians. Nesticus lula has reduced eyes and N. cressleri is eyeless. Both species are of conservation concern, as they are known from only a handful of sites spanning extremely limited ranges. This work contributes to our understanding of cave biodiversity in Georgia and of the Nesticus radiation in the southern Appalachians.

Geologic Map of the Woodrock Quadrangle, Sheridan and Big Horn Counties, Wyoming

Here we present the results of detailed (1:24,000 scale) mapping of the Woodrock 7.5 Minute Quadrangle Wyoming, which mainly consists of Archean basement rocks of the Laramide Bighorn uplift. Our focus was on the Archean geology of the Laramide age Bighorn uplift. Isotopic age determinations (U-Pb on zircon) were conducted at the University of Arizona LaserChron Center. Our work revealed the presence of four different components of the batholith. The oldest unit is a ~2880 Ma foliated Lookout Mountain Granodiorite that occurs in the southern part of the quadrangle in the vicinity of Bruce and Lookout Mountains. The ~2775 Black Mountain Tonalite occurs in the northeastern part of the quadrangle. The age of the Black Mountain Tonalite and Lookout Mountain Granodiorite overlap but the units are distinct in terms of structure and lithology so they were mapped separately. The central part of the quadrangle is underlain by the massive, ~2860 Ma Taylor Mine Granite. This unit is poorly exposed and variable in texture. The youngest unit is the ~2850 Ma Owen Creek Alkali Feldspar Granite, which occurs in the western part of the quadrangle. Mafic dikes of variable geometry, texture and age cross-cut the quartzofeldspathic rocks. Less than 25 m of poorly exposed Cambrian Flathead Sandstone occurs along the extreme western margin of the quadrangle. We discovered as much as 30 m of Oligocene White River Formation strata occur as terrace deposits along the western side of the Tongue River in the central part of the quadrangle. The White River strata are poorly exposed and consist of thin bedded tuffaceous sandstone and massive conglomerate that are light colors and include as clasts Paleozoic carbonate and Archean basement rocks. Less than 50 m of Pinedale-age glacial tills occur along the upper Tongue River in the southern part of the Quadrangle, forming hummocky, poorly-drained topography. Quaternary alluvium occurs along some of the larger streams.

Film and the British Atomic Project

This essay explores the process through which the moving image became part of the promotion of Britain as a new nuclear nation in the mid-1950s. Made by, for, or with the authority of the newly created United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, a number of films were produced by different companies, all presenting the UKAEA as a modern, national asset, justifying its development of both military and civil uses of atomic energy together. There was no sophisticated studio for this purpose to match Lookout Mountain and the role it played in the US military development of atomic weapons. Instead the Central Office of Information Films Division and the documentary production companies it employed used the skills and resources still in existence after the heyday of the British documentary movement to document and represent a new important reality.

Observed Near-Storm Environment Variations across the Southern Cumberland Plateau System in Northeastern Alabama

Abstract The Sand Mountain and Lookout Mountain Plateaus in northeastern Alabama have been established as a regional relative maximum in tornadogenesis reports within the southeastern United States. Investigation of long-term surface datasets has revealed (i) stronger and more backed winds atop Sand Mountain than over the Tennessee Valley, and (ii) measured cloud-base heights are lower to the surface atop Sand Mountain than over the Tennessee Valley. These observations suggest that low-level wind shear and lifting condensation level (LCL) height changes may lead to conditions more favorable for tornadogenesis atop the plateaus than over the Tennessee Valley. However, prior to fall 2016, no intensive observations had been made to further investigate low-level flow or thermodynamic changes in the topography of northeastern Alabama. This paper provides detailed analysis of observations gathered during VORTEX-SE field campaign cases from fall 2016 through spring 2019. These observations indicate that downslope winds form along the northwest edge of Sand Mountain in at least some severe storm environments in northeastern Alabama. Wind profiles gathered across northeastern Alabama indicate that low-level helicity changes can be substantial over small distances across different areas of the topographic system. LCL height changes often scale to changes in land elevation, which can be on the order of 200–300 m across northeastern Alabama.

A Background Investigation of Tornado Activity across the Southern Cumberland Plateau Terrain System of Northeastern Alabama

Abstract The effects of terrain on tornadoes are poorly understood. Efforts to understand terrain effects on tornadoes have been limited in scope, typically examining a small number of cases with limited observations or idealized numerical simulations. This study evaluates an apparent tornado activity maximum across the Sand Mountain and Lookout Mountain plateaus of northeastern Alabama. These plateaus, separated by the narrow Wills Valley, span ~5000 km2 and were impacted by 79 tornadoes from 1992 to 2016. This area represents a relative regional statistical maximum in tornadogenesis, with a particular tendency for tornadogenesis on the northwestern side of Sand Mountain. This exploratory paper investigates storm behavior and possible physical explanations for this density of tornadogenesis events and tornadoes. Long-term surface observation datasets indicate that surface winds tend to be stronger and more backed atop Sand Mountain than over the adjacent Tennessee Valley, potentially indicative of changes in the low-level wind profile supportive to storm rotation. The surface data additionally indicate potentially lower lifting condensation levels over the plateaus versus the adjacent valleys, an attribute previously shown to be favorable for tornadogenesis. Rapid Update Cycle and Rapid Refresh model output indicate that Froude numbers for the plateaus in tornadic environments are likely supportive of enhanced low-level flow over the plateaus, which further indicates the potential for favorable wind profile changes for tornado production. Examples of tornadic storms rapidly acquiring increased low-level rotation while reaching the plateaus of northeast Alabama are presented. The use of this background to inform the VORTEX-SE 2017 field campaign is discussed.

Discovering the South: One Man's Travels Through a Changing America in the 1930s by Jennifer Ritterhouse

Reviewed by: Discovering the South: One Man's Travels Through a Changing America in the 1930s by Jennifer Ritterhouse Monica Maria Tetzlaff Discovering the South: One Man's Travels Through a Changing America in the 1930s. By Jennifer Ritterhouse. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xviii, 363. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-3094-6.) In Jonathan Daniels's best-selling book A Southerner Discovers the South (1938), Jennifer Ritterhouse finds a vehicle to take the reader on a journey through some of the hot spots in southern race relations during the New Deal years. In doing so, Discovering the South: One Man's Travels Through a Changing America in the 1930s joins a growing body of scholarship on the long civil rights movement. By examining the writing of this influential white, southern, liberal newspaper editor in 1937, Ritterhouse asks readers to imagine themselves as passengers in Daniels's "big, comfortable Plymouth" along [End Page 498] with a historian in the backseat offering commentary based on "hindsight and a huge amount of historical scholarship" (pp. 15, 16). Ritterhouse's goal is to write history rather than biography, using Daniels's stops in Raleigh, North Carolina; Lookout Mountain, Nashville, and Memphis, Tennessee; Scottsboro, Tuskegee, and Birmingham, Alabama; Marked Tree and Hot Springs, Arkansas; and Atlanta, Georgia, to tell a story about the nation and the South. The national story may be a bit of a reach, but the southern story is strong. Ritterhouse argues that the civil rights movement could not have "taken off and gained as much ground" in the 1950s and 1960s "if the United States had not already entered the long civil rights era—if it had not emerged into new political and human rights territory through New Deal–inspired journeys like that of Jonathan Daniels" (p. 15). She is careful to say that her book examines the long civil rights era rather than the long civil rights movement because Daniels was not an activist but rather "a mostly sympathetic observer" (p. 297n24). Ritterhouse acknowledges her debt to Charles W. Eagles's Jonathan Daniels and Race Relations: The Evolution of a Southern Liberal (Knoxville, 1982), but Eagles devoted only a few pages to A Southerner Discovers the South. Ritterhouse focuses on Daniels's 1937 journey, crystallizing a moment in American history when the New Deal was at the height of its power and yet limited in its ability to make racial and class changes in the South. Ritterhouse deftly weaves in jottings from Daniels's journal and the latest historical scholarship on the Scottsboro Boys to describe increasing efforts to fight back against an unjust criminal justice system maintained by white southerners. She examines the interplay among communists, socialists, and liberals, those further to the left who pushed liberals like Daniels to take a stand against segregation and to call for federal intervention against lynching. Ritterhouse notes that Daniels supported a fairer system of segregation but contrasts Daniels's views with those of more committed radicals, including members of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, whom he interviewed for A Southerner Discovers the South, and the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, which he declined to join. Sometimes the quotations of other historians seem a bit long, but overall, they add depth to the story. Carefully chosen Farm Security Administration photographs by Dorothea Lange and others are interspersed throughout the book, helping readers visualize many of the people and scenes that Daniels encountered. Ritterhouse links Daniels's book with a widely seen book of photographs on southern poverty, Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell's You Have Seen Their Faces (New York, 1937). Daniels had hoped that Life magazine would print an abbreviated version of his journey with photographs, and he took time to take the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt on a southern tour, but their collaboration was never published. Ritterhouse's use of photographs thus makes Daniels's journey more vivid for the present-day reader. The sections on Lowndes County and Birmingham, Alabama, places that became prominent in the 1960s civil rights struggle, are especially compelling. Ritterhouse describes the Dickson family's murderous and coercive efforts to exploit black convict laborers in Lowndes County...

Evidence of a Late Jurassic Ridge Subduction Event: Geochemistry and Age of the Quartz Mountain Stock, Manastash Inlier, Central Cascades, Washington

AbstractPrevious studies of rocks in California and Oregon suggest that a Late Jurassic ridge subduction event occurred. The geology of the Manastash inlier in Washington State supports this Late Jurassic ridge subduction. The biotite hornblende granodiorite and biotite hornblende tonalite of the Quartz Mountain stock and its cupolas are located in the Manastash inlier, central Cascades, Washington. This stock and its cupolas intrude the low-PT metamorphosed Lookout Mountain Formation turbidites—which are interpreted to have formed in a forearc depositional setting—and the suprasubduction zone Hereford Meadow amphibolite. A new single-crystal sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe–reverse geometry U-Pb age from stock zircons has an age of 157.4 ± 1.2 Ma (2σ). This new age corroborates the published age from the stock and is interpreted to be the crystallization age of the stock. New whole-rock major- and trace-element geochemistry suggests that the granitoids from this stock were generated by shallow ma...

Intrusive and depositional constraints on the Cretaceous tectonic history of the southern Blue Mountains, eastern Oregon

We present an integrated study of the postcollisional (post–Late Jurassic) history of the Blue Mountains province (Oregon and Idaho, USA) using constraints from Cretaceous igneous and sedimentary rocks. The Blue Mountains province consists of the Wallowa and Olds Ferry arcs, separated by forearc accretionary material of the Baker terrane. Four plutons (Lookout Mountain, Pedro Mountain, Amelia, Tureman Ranch) intrude along or near the Connor Creek fault, which separates the Izee and Baker terranes. High-precision U-Pb zircon ages indicate 129.4–123.8 Ma crystallization ages and exhibit a north-northeast–younging trend of the magmatism. The 40Ar/39Ar analyses on biotite and hornblende indicate very rapid (<1 m.y.) cooling below biotite closure temperature (∼350 °C) for the plutons. The (U-Th)/He zircon analyses were done on a series of regional plutons, including the Lookout Mountain and Tureman Ranch plutons, and indicate a middle Cretaceous age of cooling through ∼200 °C. Sr, Nd, and Pb isotope geochemistry on the four studied plutons confirms that the Izee terrane is on Olds Ferry terrane basement. We also present data from detrital zircons from Late Cretaceous sedimentary rocks at Dixie Butte, Oregon. These detrital zircons record only Paleozoic–Mesozoic ages with only juvenile Hf isotopic compositions, indicating derivation from juvenile accreted terrane lithosphere. Although the Blue Mountains province is juxtaposed against cratonic North America along the western Idaho shear zone, it shows trends in magmatism, cooling, and sediment deposition that differ from the adjacent part of North America and are consistent with a more southern position for terranes of this province at the time of their accretion. We therefore propose a tectonic history involving moderate northward translation of the Blue Mountains province along the western Idaho shear zone in the middle Cretaceous.

Early postcaldera rhyolite and structural resurgence at Long Valley Caldera, California

After the 767-ka caldera-forming eruption of 650km3 of rhyolite magma as the Bishop Tuff, 90–100km3 of similar rhyolite erupted in the west-central part of Long Valley caldera in as many as 40 batches spread over the 110,000-year interval from ~750ka to ~640ka. Centrally, this Early Rhyolite (ER) is as thick as 622m, but it spread radially to cover much of the caldera floor, where half its area is now concealed by post-ER sediments and lavas. At least 75% of the ER is aphyric rhyolite tuff. Drillholes encountered ~22 (altered) ER lava flows intercalated in the pyroclastic pile, and another 11units of (largely fresh) ER lava are exposed on the caldera's resurgent dome and at Lookout Mountain. Exposed units have been distinguished, mapped, studied petrographically and chemically, and radioisotopically dated; each is described in detail. Their phenocryst contents range from 0 to 2.5wt%. All the phyric units have plagioclase, orthopyroxene, and ilmenite; most have biotite and rare tiny magnetite, and a few contain rare zircon. The compositional range of fresh obsidians is narrow—74.3–75.0% SiO2, 1.21–1.37% FeO*, and 5.12–5.26% K2O, but wider variations in Ti, Ba, Sr, and Zr permit distinction of individual units and eruptive groups. The limited chemical and petrographic variability shown by so many ER batches released episodically for ~110,000years suggests a thermally buffered and well-stirred reservoir.The ER central area, where ER eruptions had taken place, was uplifted ~400m to form a structural dome ~10km in diameter. Most of the inflation is attributable to 10 sills of ER that intrude the Bishop Tuff beneath the uplift, but other processes potentially contributing to resurgence are also considered. As shown by erratics of Mesozoic rocks ice-rafted from the Sierra Nevada and dropped on ER lavas, much of the ER had erupted early enough and at low enough elevation to be inundated by the intracaldera lake and was only later lifted by the resurgence that also raised clusters of the erratics hundreds of meters higher than any shoreline. Most of the uplift was over by ~570ka, but dome-crossing faults that exhibit normal throw of 10–30m cut lavas as young as 175–125ka.For most elements, chemical ranges of the ER lie within those of the zoned Bishop Tuff, which had erupted earlier from the same place. Only Ba, Zr, Hf, and Eu/Eu* extend to ranges outside those of the Bishop Tuff, nominally to less evolved compositions. Initial 87Sr/86Sr values of ER are likewise within the range of the Bishop Tuff, but ER ratios of 143Nd/144Nd and 206Pb/204Pb extend beyond those of the Bishop Tuff to values slightly more influenced by upper-crustal contributions. FeTi-oxide geothermometry yields 752°–844°C for ER, compared to 700°–820°C for the Bishop Tuff. ER fO2 values are 0.5–1.0 log units more reduced than those of the T–fO2 array of the Bishop Tuff. The postcaldera reduction may reflect reaction with graphite from the black lithics of Paleozoic graphitic metapelite so abundant in the Bishop Tuff. Much of the pumice emplaced during the later half of the Bishop Tuff eruption has 10–25wt% phenocrysts, dominantly quartz and sanidine, but the 100km3 of ER has only 0–2.5wt% and completely lacks quartz and sanidine. Postcaldera processes, including mixing, volatile ascent, and crystal resorption, as well as potential contaminants and magmatic inputs, are all considered.

The Sensibility of the State: Lookout Mountain Laboratory’s Operation Ivy and the Image of the Cold War “Super”

Abstract In 1953 a Hollywood-based U.S. Air Force film studio, Lookout Mountain Laboratory, produced a documentary film about America’s first detonation of a thermonuclear device, the 1952 “MIKE” device. The film, called Operation Ivy, was initially shown only to the highest-level government officials, but a later, edited version was eventually released for public distribution. We argue that the story of Operation Ivy illuminates not only the ways in which the rhetoric of the “Super” was managed but also the way in which the Cold War state was both subject to and productive of political and aesthetic sensibilities.

Finding Captain Dickson: The Archivist as a Researcher

Item-level description is a luxury few archivists can afford to indulge in as processing has adopted the MPLP model and eliminating backlogs has become a clarion call. But there are instances when only research done by the archivist will allow the significance of a document to be recognized and no longer hidden in a collection. An account of an incident before the Civil War Battle of Chickamauga written by Mississippi soldier Captain Thomas Hyde Dickson is one example of why there is still a place for item-level description and how the role of archivist as researcher is critical to making collections more accessible. Article Processing manuscript collections calls upon a number of skills of the archivist, such as organization, description, cataloging and research. In this era of “more product, less process,” archivists are not encouraged to dig too deeply into collections to understand them better, or to spend time identifying items of potential importance. But, occasionally, a document catches our attention, perhaps serendipitously, or because its content makes it shine like a gold nugget in a prospector’s pan, encouraging the archivist to find out a little more in order to bring the subject or creator to life, or simply to explain its presence in the collection. One example is an account of an incident which occurred days before the Civil War Battle of Chickamauga in early September 1863 witnessed by Captain Thomas Dickson of the 9 Mississippi Infantry Regiment, which was discovered while working in Special Collections at Mississippi State University Libraries. Written in pencil with corrections in ink on nine crumbling sheets of paper, Dickson’s account was found in the papers of Brodie S. Crump, a columnist for the Delta Democrat-Times newspaper in Greenville from 1946 to 1980. Clearly Crump thought it important enough to save but there was no information on who Dickson was or how Crump obtained it. The piece is striking because it relates what happened to the regiment as Confederate General Braxton Bragg maneuvered his Army of Tennessee in northern Georgia after its withdrawal from Chattanooga as Union General William Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland moved east. Rosecrans divided his forces and one division crossed Lookout Mountain and was nearly trapped in McLemore’s Cove on September 11 by the brigade which included Dickson’s regiment. Unfortunately, Confederate caution and miscommunication among the commanders let the opportunity slip away and the exhausted Confederate forces in the cove crossed Pigeon Mountain that night to regroup at La Fayette. A week later the two sides would meet at Chickamauga. The following is a transcription of Dickson’s account and the first page of the document can be seen in Figure 2 below. 1 MSS.654. Brodie S. Crump family papers, Box 3, Folder 9. 2 The causes of the lost opportunity at McLemore’s Cove have been extensively debated by historians. See Woodworth, Steven E. (1999), No Band of Brothers: Problems in the Rebel High Command, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, chapter 6; Woodworth, Stephen E. (ed.) (2010), The Chickamauga Campaign, Carbondale, Il.: Southern Illinois University Press, chapters 2 & 3; Robertson, William G. (Spring 2007), “The Chickamauga Campaign: McLemore’s Cove: Rosecrans’ Gamble, Bragg’s Lost Opportunity”, Blue & Gray Magazine, 23:6, 6-26, 42-50; Cozzens, Peter (1992), This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga, Urbana, Il.: University of Illinois Press, 74-75; Martin, Samuel J. (2011), General Braxton Bragg, C.S.A., Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 475. The Primary Source, Vol. 34, Issue 1 1

Visualities of strategic vision: Lookout Mountain Laboratory and the deterrent state from nuclear tests to Vietnam

This article considers two visual cultures of America’s deterrent state in the Cold War, the cinematic and cybernetic, by following the history of the 600th Photographic Squadron of the United States (US) Air Force in Vietnam and its 1950s progenitor, the 1352nd Motion Picture Squadron, or Lookout Mountain Laboratory. We argue that cinematic and cybernetic visual cultures were at the heart of a Cold War visual alliance that was also a Cold War visual contest, and cameras were situated at the centre of the contest. Specifically, the cinematic and the cybernetic represent two distinct visualities of vision, as the Cold War cameras of the Air Force assumed either transcendental or transcendent positions. The former, in keeping with a cinematic visuality, was oriented towards casting America as a sight to see in the context of its war on communism, with cameras operating as a condition of possibility for the construction of the ‘image’, whereas the latter, in keeping with a cybernetic visuality, was oriented towards the American appetite to see, to monitor and survey the world over, with cameras operating as processors of ‘information’. The history of the 600th Photographic Squadron and its progenitor, Lookout Mountain Laboratory, suggests that the transition from cinematic to cybernetic visualities of vision was part of a broader transformation in the US Cold War state from a nuclear deterrent state to a supra-nuclear deterrent state.

The Chattanooga Campaign by Ed. Steven E. Woodworth, Charles D. Grear (review)

Reviewed by: The Chattanooga Campaign by Ed. Steven E. Woodworth, Charles D. Grear Carl C. Creason The Chattanooga Campaign. Ed. Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8093-3119-2, 256pp., cloth, $29.95. In April 2009, the Southern Illinois University Press began publication of the Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland series, a collection of works focused on providing fresh interpretations and analyses of the most important battles and campaigns in the West. Two books have already been released—The Shiloh Campaign 2009 and The Chickamauga Campaign 2010—and this latest volume continues the trend by providing a quality and substantial study of a decisive campaign that occurred during the third year of the war. The Chattanooga Campaign consists of ten chapter-length essays written by several previous contributors to the series. In the opening chapter, Alex Mendoza describes a “perfect storm of ineffectiveness” that plagued the First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia’s leadership in late October 1863 (18). By directing equal responsibility to Longstreet’s brigade and division commanders, Mendoza corrects the misconception that James Longstreet alone should receive blame for the Confederate defeat in Lookout Valley. Stewart Bennett’s essay focuses on the fighting in Lookout Valley as well; however, his essay details the battle through a Union lens. Although the “small [End Page 218] yet intense fights within Lookout Valley”—Wauhatchie, Smith’s Hill, and Tyndale’s Hill—have been overshadowed by the fighting on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, Bennett’s essay establishes their significance in setting the stage for a Union victory during the campaign (48). On November 24, 1863, Ulysses S. Grant, the newly appointed commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, initiated his plan to drive the Confederates from their positions surrounding Chattanooga. The chapters authored by Steven E. Woodworth and John R. Lundberg examine William T. Sherman’s assault on Tunnel Hill, which served as the primary attack against the Confederate right on Missionary Ridge. Similar to the first two chapters, these explore the fighting from opposing perspectives—Woodworth probes Sherman’s assault and Lundberg surveys Patrick Cleburne’s defense. Both authors view Tunnel Hill as a tactical achievement by Cleburne, who remained proactive and utilized the terrain to his advantage. Correctly described in the introduction as “a tour de force of historical investigation,” Brooks D. Simpson’s essay scrutinizes the documented accounts of events that transpired on November 25, 1863 (3). Ultimately, Simpson determines two significant details regarding Union strategy that day. First, Sherman’s advance against Tunnel Hill remained the primary Union attack—not a diversion to draw Confederate troops away from the center, and second, the Union attack against the center of Missionary Ridge “was always part of the discussion, not a spur-of-the-moment decision undertaken in haste” (100). On November 24, 1863, Joseph Hooker obtained personal redemption by capturing Lookout Mountain for the Union army. As Sam Davis Elliot indicates, historians—and even Hooker himself—have viewed the capture as the commander’s greatest contribution during the campaign. Elliot’s essay argues that Hooker’s capture of Rossville Gap on the following day, which “had the potential for much greater results” than the capture of Lookout Mountain, proved equally significant (127). Justin S. Solonick’s essay examines Cleburne’s victory on November 27, 1863, at the Battle of Ringgold Gap, where once again the commander employed battlefield terrain to his advantage, this time to save Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. Solonick’s essay also serves as an important assessment of the effectiveness of Civil War rearguards, units the author justifies as having “contributed to the longevity of the American Civil War” (147). In a study of Civil War–era media, Ethan S. Rafuse analyzes the coverage of events from the Union defeat at Chickamauga to their victory on Missionary Ridge within three Cincinnati newspapers. The newspapers “fulfilled their role of providing a connection between the battlefield and the home front well” (177). Charles D. Grear’s provocative scholarship on the increase of desertions by trans-Mississippi Confederates serves as an important study of the priorities and motivations of Civil War combatants. For many...

“Tell me a Story”: The Poetry of Wilmer Mills

“Tell me a Story”:The Poetry of Wilmer Mills David Middleton Selected Poems by Wilmer Mills (University of Evansville Press, 2013. xvi + 132 pages. $20) Wilmer Hastings Mills died at home on his family’s farm in Zachary, Louisiana, on July 25, 2011, at the age of forty-one. Born in Baton Rouge in 1969, Mills spent much of his childhood in Brazil, where his parents were agricultural missionaries for the Presbyterian Church. Growing up on land cleared from the jungle, Mills lived in a house that had electricity each day for only four hours at night and that had no telephone, air-conditioning, television, or computer. [End Page xi] His Brazilian friends lived in poverty in primitive mud-and-straw huts. In such isolation Mills, along with his younger brother and two younger sisters, was homeschooled. The children learned how to play music, read the fiction of C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, wrote and illustrated their own stories like the Brontës, and even made up a language of their own. Mills never forgot the Brazil years, which had a formative influence on him. Back in America Mills attended public schools in Zachary and then finished high school at the McCallie School in Chattanooga. Thereafter Mills enrolled at the University of the South, graduating in 1992 with a b.a. in English. He earned an m.a. from Sewanee’s School of Theology in 2005. Mills served for two years as Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2008–10) and had just been appointed Nick Barker Writer-in-Residence at Covenant College on Lookout Mountain, Georgia (2011), when cancer and death suddenly intervened. By the end of his life Mills had published poetry in some of America’s leading periodicals, including the Sewanee Review, the Southern Review, the Hudson Review, and Poetry, among others. His widely admired first book, Light for the Orphans (2002), was praised by a number of important poets, including Richard Wilbur. Over the next several years Mills continued writing poems and placing them in various magazines while working on a second full-length collection of verse. Sadly Mills did not live to see such a book accepted by a press. Now Mills’s widow and literary executor, Dr. Kathryn Mills of the Department of French at Sewanee, has very ably edited Wilmer Mills’s Selected Poems. This collection is made up of some of the best poems from Light for the Orphans followed by a goodly number of later poems that Mills had gathered and arranged in three versions of a second book. These manuscript titles are now section titles in the Selected Poems: Arriving on Time, The Heart’s Arithmetic, and The World That Isn’t There. An acute introduction by the poet Dick Davis and a richly detailed afterword by Kathryn Mills accompany the poems. The reader of this volume may very well wonder about the catalyst that led to so many memorable poems written in a style both simple and deep. The decisive event in Wilmer Mills’s life as a poet took place in April of 1985 when his mother took her reluctant fifteen-year-old son to hear Robert Penn Warren read his poetry at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, as the first speaker in the Marie Fletcher Lecture Series in American Literature. As Mills himself said later, Warren opened his eyes to the possibility of writing narrative poems about people he knew or had heard about in his part of the South. To Warren’s subject matter Mills added Robert’s Frost’s traditional style. As Mills put it, “I wanted to write about characters with the uncooked energy of Warren but felt a visceral need to do so in the formal manner of Frost.” Mills was now ready to write the poems of his early maturity. Selected Poems begins with poems chosen from Light for the Orphans. Many of these are about characters [End Page xii] that the poet sees as orphans of modernity—lonely souls who have been cast aside or forgotten and who have suffered pain and loss with dignity. The variety of these characters is remarkable: a castrato...

Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence. By JeremyBentham. Edited by PhilipSchofield. (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.) Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2010. xl, 351 pp. £85.00. ISBN 9780199570737.

Parliamentary HistoryVolume 32, Issue 2 p. 422-425 Reviews Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence. By Jeremy Bentham. Edited by Philip Schofield. (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.) Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2010. xl, 351 pp. £85.00. ISBN 9780199570737. Richard R. Follett, Richard R. Follett Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GASearch for more papers by this author Richard R. Follett, Richard R. Follett Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GASearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 June 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-0206.12022_8Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume32, Issue2June 2013Pages 422-425 RelatedInformation

The changing view from Lookout Mountain

My mind was racing. My son was about to be married on Lookout Mountain, a beautiful setting on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains just west of Denver. At such a contemplative moment, the panorama was an ideal location to reflect on the passages of life. The Great Plains extends east from Denver for miles and miles. I could easily imagine a Sioux Indian sitting on a pony in my very spot scanning the horizon for buffalo. William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the famous scout, hunter, and organizer of the celebrated Wild West Show, was buried on this mountain nearly a century ago. Contemplating the pioneers made me think about a dear, elderly patient of mine. Eleanor was born in 1909 on a homestead near where Buffalo Bill rode the Pony Express in Sedgwick County in northeast Colorado. Cody was still alive when Eleanor was born at home to a family of German and Italian heritage. Eleanor's ancestors helped to build the first intercontinental railroad. Her parents had a small subsistence farm where she lived until she was married. She lived in humble circumstances and only attended school for 8 years. She was widowed at 65, outlived 3 of her 4 children, had multiple chronic conditions including myasthenia gravis, and endured a loss of independence and numerous relocations. She often regaled me with stories about Buffalo Bill, the most famous person from her area. Nicknamed for the buffalo meat he once sold to railroad workers, he participated in the Colorado gold rush, herded cattle, and was a Union scout in the Civil War. At age 40, Eleanor and her husband …

Community Analysis of Green Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia oreophila) Bogs in Alabama

Abstract Multivariate analysis of vegetation and environmental variables from green pitcher plant (Sarracenia oreophila) bogs in northeast Alabama revealed three communities with unique species compositions and soil characteristics. Discriminant analysis of environmental variables revealed that A-horizon percent N, A and B horizon pH, humus layer thickness, and B-horizon K (kg/ha) were significantly related to the communities. A Quercus rubra, Arundinaria appalachiana, Pinus echinata community was found on upland seepage bogs located exclusively on Lookout Mountain close to the rim of the Little River Canyon and scattered along perennial streams. A Quercus falcata, Diospyros virginiana, Rhododendron canescens community was found on both Lookout and Sand Mountain in flat broad swales bisected by ephemeral streams. A Rhexia virginica, Dichanthelium scoparium, Carex glaucescens community was found primarily on Sand Mountain in open flood prone areas.

Three Years in the Army of the Cumberland, The Letters and Diary of Major James A. Connolly

Preface to the New Edition Introduction List of Maps Initiation Louisville and Perryville Minor Actions To Tullahoma Chicamagua-and Stalemate Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge A Period of Preparing The Atlanta Campaign Chasing Hood The March to the Sea Through the Carolinas Index

The Life of a Literary Freedom Seeker

MARY LEE SETTLE: A BIOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW The Life of a Literary Freedom Seeker George Brosi In 1918, Joseph Edward Settle, a civil engineer, was operating a coal mine on Straight Creek in Harlan County, Kentucky. His pregnant wife, Rachel Tompkins Settle, decided to return to her mother's home in Cedar Grove, West Virginia, to deliver her baby, so Mary Lee Settle was born in nearby Charleston, West Virginia, on July 29, 1918. During the first year of her life, her parents lived near the mine in Harlan County, but for the next five years they lived in Pineville, the county seat of Bell County where Straight Creek flows into the Cumberland River. When Mary Lee was six, the mine closed, and her father accepted a job near Orlando, Florida, working on the design of the planned town of Venice, Florida. In 1928, the family moved back to West Virginia, and her father worked again as a coal operator. Her New York Times obituary noted what Mary Lee Settle called '"the brave Christmas dinner of 1930" when she and her parents were living with her grandmother 'because the bottom had dropped out of the coal business.'" Her father re-established himself as a coal operator and moved the family to Charleston where she attended junior high and high school as a member of a prosperous and prominent family. Her acting career began when she was twelve. In an autobiographical article which appeared in The Missouri Review in 1991, she emphasized how totally she recalled the director imploring her, over and over: No, Mary Lee, you are not a silly little girl in a costume' . . . Finally, I .. . spoke my lines and it was right, true pitch, and I knew it and she knew it, and I went home on the bus after dark completely happy. That night, with that voice coming out of the darkness, I learned that empathy, in writing or in acting, is what makes a fictional person ring true, and all the facts of life cannot replace it. In a phone interview in 1992, Mary Lee Settle told me that when she was a child her family maintained a hunting cabin near Chattanooga, Tennessee, and that climbing the steep slopes of Pine Mountain in Kentucky and Lookout Mountain in Tennessee formed an important 16 part ofher childhood recollections. In a 1987 interview, The Washington Post quoted Mary Lee Settle describing her childhood as giving her "a familiar sense of the mountains, of the daily life of a small town, of coal, of an atmosphere of violence that seemed taken for granted." In 1936 Mary Lee Settle graduated from Charleston High School. Her brother, Joe Ed (1913-1991) had gone to the Virginia Military Institute, and Mary Lee's parents wanted her to go to Sweet Briar College, a women's finishing school located about forty-five miles south of Charlottesville, Virginia. She preferred Barnard in New York City and was accepted there, but her parents insisted. Her experience at Sweet Briar is the focus of The Clam Shell (1971), according to her "Introduction" to the University of South Carolina edition, her "most consciously 'autobiographical' novel" centering on her eighteenth year from which came: the concern with the Spanish Civil War . . . with words . .. the poetry that grew in me instead of being an adolescent fancy . . . the opening of a clam shell of a mind in a world no longer feared, and the resolute passion to keep it open ... and more important ... the urge to find a path for myself, and not one made for me by my family, my past, and my own too narrow culture, even though I would have to bear, as we all do who make this decision, disapproval and often derision until we are redeemed by some kind of recognized success. She read Stendhal while writing this novel because she "knew his irony would not allow me to become too sentimental about my adolescence." During the summer of 1938, after her sophomore year at Sweet Briar, Mary Lee Settle worked as an apprentice actress at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, and there she was "discovered" by a talent scout for David O. Selznick and...