was re-elected to the Senate for the full term. In March 1909 he became secretary of state in the cabinet of President Taft.
KNOXVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Knox county,
Tennessee, U.S.A., in the E. part of the state, 160 m. E. of
Nashville, and about 190 m. S.E. of Louisville, Kentucky, on the
right bank of the Tennessee river, 4 m. below the point where
it is formed by the junction of the French Broad and Holston
Rivers. Pop. (1880), 9693; (1890), 22,535; (1900), 32,637, of
whom 7359 were negroes and 895 were foreign-born; (1910 census),
36,346. It is served by the main line and by branches
of the Louisville & Nashville and the Southern railways, by the
Knoxville & Bristol railway (Morristown to Knoxville, 58 m.),
by the short Knoxville & Augusta railroad (Knoxville to
Walland, 26 m.), and by passenger and freight steamboat lines
on the Tennessee river, which is here navigable for the greater
part of the year. A steel and concrete street-car bridge crosses
the Tennessee at Knoxville. Knoxville is picturesquely situated
at an elevation of from 850 to 1000 ft. in the valley between the
Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Mountains, and is one
of the healthiest cities in the United States. There are several
beautiful parks, of which Chilhowie and Fountain City are the
largest, and among the public buildings are a city-hall, Federal
building, court-house, the Knoxville general hospital, the
Lincoln memorial hospital, the Margaret McClung industrial
home, a Young Men’s Christian Association building and the
Lawson-McGhee public library. A monument to John Sevier
stands on the site of the blockhouse first built there. Knoxville
is the seat of Knoxville College (United Presbyterian, 1875)
for negroes, East Tennessee institute, a secondary school for
girls, the Baker-Himel school for boys, Tennessee Medical
College (1889), two commercial schools and the university of
Tennessee. The last, a state co-educational institution, was
chartered as Blount College in 1794 and as East Tennessee
College in 1807, but not opened until 1820—the present name was
adopted in 1879. It had in 1907–1908 106 instructors, 755
students (536 in academic departments), and a library of 25,000
volumes. With the university is combined the state college
of agriculture and engineering; and a large summer school for
teachers is maintained. At Knoxville are the Eastern State
insane asylum, state asylums for the deaf and dumb (for both
white and negro), and a national cemetery in which more than
3200 soldiers are buried. Knoxville is an important commercial
and industrial centre and does a large jobbing business. It is
near hardwood forests and is an important market for hardwood
mantels. Coal-mines in the vicinity produce more than 2,000,000
tons annually, and neighbouring quarries furnish the famous
Tennessee marble, which is largely exported. Excellent building
and pottery clays are found near Knoxville. Among the city’s
industrial establishments are flour and grist mills, cotton and
woollen mills, furniture, desk, office supplies and sash, door, and
blind factories, meat-packing establishments, clothing factories,
iron, steel and boiler works, foundries and machine shops, stove
works and brick and cement works. The value of the factory
product increased from $6,201,840 in 1900 to $12,432,880
in 1905, or 100.5%, in 1905 the value of the flour and grist
mill products alone being $2,048,509. Just outside the city the
Southern railway maintains large car and repair shops. Knoxville
was settled in 1786 by James White (1737–1815), a North
Carolina pioneer, and was first known as “White’s Fort”; it
was laid out as a town in 1791, and named in honour of General
Henry Knox, then secretary of war in Washington’s cabinet.
In 1791 the Knoxville Gazette, the first newspaper in Tennessee
(the early issue, printed at Rogersville) began publication. From
1792 to 1796 Knoxville was the capital of the “Territory South
of the Ohio,” and until 1811 and again in 1817 it was the capital
of the state. In 1796 the convention which framed the constitution
of the new state of Tennessee met here, and here later in
the same year the first state legislature was convened. Knoxville
was chartered as a city in 1815. In its early years it was
several times attacked by the Indians, but was never captured.
During the Civil War there was considerable Union sentiment
in East Tennessee, and in the summer of 1863 the Federal
authorities determined to take possession of Knoxville as well as
Chattanooga and to interrupt railway communications between
the Confederates of the East and West through this region.
As the Confederates had erected only slight defences for the protection
of the city, Burnside, with about 12,000 men, easily
gained possession on the 2nd of September 1863. Fortifications
were immediately begun for its defence, and on the 4th of November,
Bragg, thinking his position at Chattanooga impregnable
against Grant, Sherman, Thomas and Hooker, despatched a force
of 20,000 men under Longstreet to engage Burnside. Longstreet
arrived in the vicinity on the 16th of November, and on the
following day began a siege, which was continued with numerous
assaults until the 28th, when a desperate but unsuccessful attack
was made on Fort Sanders, and upon the approach of a relief
force under Sherman, Longstreet withdrew on the night of the
4th of December. The Confederate losses during the siege were
182 killed, 768 wounded and 192 captured or missing; the Union
losses were 92 killed, 394 wounded and 207 captured or missing.
West Knoxville (incorporated in 1888) and North Knoxville
(incorporated in 1889) were annexed to Knoxville in 1898.
See the sketch by Joshua W. Caldwell in Historic Towns of the Southern States, edited by L. P. Powell (New York, 1900); and W. Rule, G. F. Mellen and J. Wooldridge, Standard History of Knoxville (Chicago, 1900).
KNUCKLE (apparently the diminutive of a word for “bone,”
found in Ger. Knochen), the joint of a finger, which, when the
hand is shut, is brought into prominence. In mechanical use
the word is applied to the round projecting part of a hinge
through which the pin is run, and in ship-building to an acute
angle on some of the timbers. A “knuckle-duster,” said to have
originally come from the criminal slang of the United States,
is a brass or metal instrument fitting on to the hand across the
knuckles, with projecting studs and used for inflicting a brutal
blow.
KNUCKLEBONES (Hucklebones, Dibs, Jackstones, Chuck-stones,
Five-stones), a game of very ancient origin, played
with five small objects, originally the knucklebones of a sheep,
which are thrown up and caught in various ways. Modern
“knucklebones” consist of six points, or knobs, proceeding
from a common base, and are usually of metal. The winner is he
who first completes successfully a prescribed series of throws,
which, while of the same general character, differ widely in detail.
The simplest consists in tossing up one stone, the jack, and
picking up one or more from the table while it is in the air;
and so on until all five stones have been picked up. Another
consists in tossing up first one stone, then two, then three and
so on, and catching them on the back of the hand. Different
throws have received distinctive names, such as “riding the
elephant,” “peas in the pod,” and “horses in the stable.”
The origin of knucklebones is closely connected with that of dice, of which it is probably a primitive form, and is doubtless Asiatic. Sophocles, in a fragment, ascribed the invention of draughts and knucklebones (astragaloi) to Palamedes, who taught them to his Greek countrymen during the Trojan War. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain allusions to games similar in character to knucklebones, and the Palamedes tradition, as flattering to the national pride, was generally accepted throughout Greece, as is indicated by numerous literary and plastic evidences. Thus Pausanias (Corinth xx.) mentions a temple of Fortune in which Palamedes made an offering of his newly invented game. According to a still more ancient tradition, Zeus, perceiving that Ganymede longed for his playmates upon Mount Ida, gave him Eros for a companion and golden dibs with which to play, and even condescended sometimes to join in the game (Apollonius). It is significant, however, that both Herodotus and Plato ascribe to the game a foreign origin. Plato (Phaedrus) names the Egyptian god Theuth as its inventor, while Herodotus relates that the Lydians, during a period of famine in the days of King Atys, originated this game and indeed almost all other games except chess. There were two methods of playing in ancient times. The first, and probably the primitive method, consisted in tossing up and catching the bones on the
