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COPYRIGHT 2005 Smithsonian Institution
On a saturday morning last September, the Storer House in Fort Wright, Kentucky, was cordoned off with yellow tape. Dozens of volunteers--college students in work boots, white-haired seniors slathered in sunscreen, parents and children--were on their knees, helping search the yard for clues. The brick house, built in the 1940s by a man named Sheldon Storer, sits on a hill above the Ohio River, two miles south of Cincinnati. Next door is a Presbyterian church, whose marquee read: "Moses was once a basket case too." The leafy suburban neighborhood seems thoroughly ordinary, but under one neat lawn lies evidence of a startling historical paradox: on this spot in September 1862, absolutely nothing happened.
According to James Ramage, a history professor at Northern Kentucky University (NKU), this particular nonevent helped the republic win the Civil War. "The Confederate Army invaded Kentucky, hoping to attack Cincinnati," he said. "But when they discovered the Union defenses in these hills, they marched away in the night."
Ramage, a Civil War scholar who has extensively researched the defense of Cincinnati, is in charge of documenting the restoration of Battery...
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