One of the driving forces for Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, from start to finish, was to reassert Federal control over east Tennessee with its vocal Unionist stalwarts. Lincoln continually pressed his generals and the War Department to push forces into the region, but the Federals would have to wait until the end of 1863 before they were finally able to reclaim control.
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I knew before that a certain Captain George Pickett, a thirty-four-year-old veteran of the Mexican War and graduate of West Point – albeit, last in his class – served on San Juan Island in the Puget Sound just before the American Civil War. What I did not know, was one of his opposites in the whole Pig War ordeal in 1859 was an Anglo-Irish peer by the name of John De Courcy. Like Pickett, De Courcy would figure in the next war, as well. Pickett’s role would be bigger and better known, but De Courcy’s role was big enough for someone involved in command. And not even as a citizen of either side.
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