Published: September 17, 2009 08:37 am      

The Battle begins

Battle of Barbourville re-enactment set for this weekend

By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer

This Saturday and Sunday, for the ninth year, some 150 to 200 Civil War re-enactors will replay a skirmish that happened 148 years ago. This year, as in a few years past, it will happen at Hickory Minton Farm on KY 225 outside of Barbourville.

... It was the end of summer in 1861 and the folks in Knox County were recruiting soldiers from eastern Tennessee for the Union Army. Two recruiting sites for Tennesseeans were set up in Knox County — one in Barbourville and a smaller one in Flat Lick.

By December 1860, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had seceded from The United States.

On Feb. 9, 1861, the Confederate States of America was organized and Kentuckian Jefferson Davis was named president.

Abraham Lincoln, another Kentuckian, was inaugurated as U.S. president on March 4.

In April, Fort Sumpter in Charleston, S.C. was under fire and captured by the Confederate Army.

Two days after the fort was captured, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina joined the Confederacy.

A few months later, Barbourville’s Camp Andy Johnson, named for the Tennessee senator who had encouraged southern Union loyalists, became the target of Confederate forces moving into Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap.

Brigadier General Felix Zollicoffer had sent Rebel forces to fortify the Gap on Sept. 14, 1861. He settled in with his men at Camp Buckner in Knox County, near what was to become the community of Pineville, Bell County having yet to be organized.

Five days later, on Sept. 19, Zollicoffer sent a detachment of 800 men to Barbourville. In a skirmish near what is now the community of Cannon, the Rebels faced off against the Barbourville Home Guard, who resisted the attack and quickly dispatched its new recruits farther north in the state to Camp Dick Robinson.

Battle of Barbourville, Inc., and the 5th Kentucky Volunteer Regiment will host this weekend’s event.

The battle re-enactment will begin at 6 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. The camp will open each day at 10 a.m.

For more information on this weekend’s reenactment, visit www.battleofbarbourvilleky.com.

Interviews of members of the Battle of Barbourville re-enactment will be presented on Knox County Schools’ TV-4 on Barbourville Cable Television and are also viewable on-line at www.knoxschools.tv.