Nashville Outer Lines
Library of Congress
As the Battle of Nashville raged on December 15—16, 1864, photographer Jacob Coonley was busy behind the Union lines. “As soon as the battle was well under way I had an ambulance with drivers take me as near as possible to make negatives of everything in sight, two days being given to this work,” Coonley wrote in a March 1907 memoir in Wilson’s Photographic Magazine.
At least 10 of the original glass plate stereo negatives that Coonley took on those two days are held at the Library of Congress, including two highly detailed images showing the outer of two Union defensive lines at Nashville. Shown here is the lesser known of the two images.
From a vantage point next to Fort Negley on St. Cloud Hill, Coonley’s camera faces southwest and shows the section of the outer Union line stretching to Fort Casino, visible on a hilltop about 1,000 yards away. The entrenchments are full of soldiers in reserve as well as their tents and lean-tos and campfires.
Halfway to Fort Casino, the Franklin Pike cuts through the line, with the blur of a moving wagon visible in the upper center of the image. The line continued beyond Fort Casino and went for miles around the southern side of the city, almost reaching the Cumberland River.
Coonley sold this and the other stereo negatives to E. & H.T. Anthony & Co. in New York for $5 each. The photos were included in the company’s popular “War for the Union” series of more than 1,100 stereo views issued in the spring of 1865.
Bob Zeller is president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography, which is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images.
