In the fall of 1865, as the nation was struggling to bind up its wounds and put the bloodiest war in its history behind it, the United States Army executed two ex-Confederates for war crimes.
One was Henry Wirz, the unfortunate former commandant of Andersonville Prison.
The other was the notorious Champ Ferguson.
In a talk based on his award-winning book, Confederate Outlaw: Champ Ferguson and the Civil War in Appalachia, Brian McKnight will discuss the actions of Confederate guerilla Champ Ferguson that led to his conviction for the “murder” of 53 citizens of Kentucky and Tennessee during the Civil War. Long remembered as the most unforgiving and inglorious warrior of the Confederacy, some historians dismiss Ferguson as simply a cold-blooded killer.
But McKnight maintains that Ferguson, with an Old Testament mentality, fought the war on his own terms.
Knoxville Civil War Roundtable 