"Shake, Buddy!" Civil War Monument

Knoxville, Tennessee

Tennessee (and Knoxville in particular) endured divided loyalties and bloodshed during the Civil War. Among the victorious Yankees were the 79th New York Highlanders, who suffered only nine casualties while inflicting over 800 on the Rebels. Yet when their victory monument was unveiled in downtown Knoxville in 1918, the triumph was barely mentioned, and the monument instead depicted a Union and Rebel soldier shaking hands, with flowery language on the need to bind the wounds of the nation.

This unexpected tone may have less to do with modesty than with pride: by 1918 Knoxville was solidly Southern again, and in no mood to stir up trouble by erecting a downtown monument celebrating a lopsided Yankee victory.