In 1994, upon the occasion of the celebration by UT of the 200th anniversary of its founding, Dr. Arthur E. Smith, of the UT English Department, composed Tennessee Suite as the institutional bicentennial ode. The composition of the ode was inspired by Smith’s learning of the discovery, during the excavation of the foundations for Barbara Blount Hall in 1900, of eight bodies of Union soldiers from the Civil War battle fought on the Hill. Throughout the ode, Smith wonders “how history defines a place, how time becomes a place, and how that history can bear on a person’s life.”