The Zollie Tree
Kentucky
On a foggy, rainy morning, January nineteenth, eighteen sixty two, Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer led an attack here at the Battle of Mill Springs. Riding through the murk, he mistook a company of Union soldiers for his own men and rode straight toward them. He was shot from his horse and killed, one of the first Confederate generals to die in combat.
His leaderless troops broke, and the Union won a crucial early victory in Kentucky. Zollicoffer fell beneath a great white oak that came to be known as the Zollie Tree. The original oak was later destroyed by lightning, and its stump is marked.
