Knoxville, in early times a capital of the State, was, in 1860, the metropolis of East Tennessee; Chattanooga, at the southern extremity of the valley, is separated from Bristol, on the Virginia line, by a distance of more than two hundred and forty miles; Cleveland and Greenville were towns of less importance. The absence of large cities makes it evident that manufacturing had not yet begun to attract serious attention. Like early settlers everywhere in America, the pioneers of Tennessee sought the most immediate returns from the products of the forests and fields around them. The rich mineral deposits, then either unknown or almost untouched, had not given rise to those great extractive operations which in our time have so stimulated the commercial life of East Tennessee. Vast cotton plantations, worked by multitudes of slaves, like those in the western portion of the State, had no existence in these mountain valleys, though occasionally small “patches” were cultivated for domestic use.
Citizens of West Tennessee would naturally place upon the Federal Constitution an interested construction; their industries, they believed, required such an interpretation of that instrument as would place the institution of slavery beyond the reach of Congressional interference. While the people of East Tennessee, too, believed in the several sovereignty of the States, the question of slavery did not touch them so nearly. Indifferent to the subject themselves, they had little sympathy with those who had determined to break up the Union from a mere suspicion that their interests were menaced by the success of a new political party. But to ascribe to the want of interested motives their indifference to the great disturbing question of the time would be to assign but one and that, perhaps, not the chief cause.
Except on its northern and southern boundaries this delightful region is practically isolated from several adjacent States as well as from the remainder of Tennessee. It was in this by-place of nature and amidst such a population that The Manumission Intelligencer, a weekly newspaper, made its appearance in 1819.[[6]] It was followed the next year by The Emancipator of Elijah Embree, a Pennsylvania Quaker; this in turn was soon succeeded by a more celebrated publication, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, conducted by Benjamin Lundy. While these publications served to perpetuate and to extend, they did not create the sentiment of which they became exponents, for, several years before their appearance, an anti-slavery society flourished in Jefferson County. Its existence is noticed as early as 1814.[[7]] This anti-slavery feeling was part of the philosophic movement encouraged by nearly all Southern as well as Northern statesmen before the inauguration of General Jackson. A new industrial era, beginning about that time, put an end to the abolition societies in the South; and though Lundy’s paper was discontinued in Tennessee after 1824, events of frequent occurrence sustained the anti-slavery sentiments of the people.
The Tennessee valley was a natural thoroughfare from Virginia to the south-west, and when slaves were purchased on the Potomac they were chained together, to prevent escape, and in that condition driven to the homes of their new masters.[[8]] The plaintive songs of captives as they were marched in lines along the valley highways often caused the free mountaineer to pause in his labors and reflect on what was passing before his eyes. He “saw slavery in its bitterness and without disguise.” The remembrance of such spectacles was apt to strengthen in him anti-slavery feelings that had come down from Revolutionary times. But whether Southern leaders ascribed the sentiment to an inherited tendency or regarded it as a consequence of this odious phase of the domestic slave-trade, they did not think it beneath the dignity of attention; for it was, doubtless, to create a sympathy for their institution that a “Southern Commercial Convention” was held at Knoxville in 1857. It was too late, however, to root out the convictions of two generations; the counsels of the wise were soon to be confounded and the fretful agitation of leaders soon to be hushed in the tempest of war.
No Republican electoral ticket was presented in the great political battle of 1860 for the suffrage of Tennessee voters, and had any citizen openly advocated the election of Mr. Lincoln he would have had to endure insult or injury, or to abandon his home. This explains why the successful candidates received no vote in all the State. As “Parson” Brownlow, selecting extreme abolition and secession types, characteristically expressed it, his people were equally opposed to the William L. Garrisons and the William L. Yanceys of politics.[[9]] In this situation the supporters of Bell, Breckenridge and Douglas were left to contend for victory among themselves. Addresses of the time reveal not only the emotions of individual speakers, but the excited state of public opinion. The attitude of Constitutional Union men was vigorously stated in a debate at Knoxville by Nathaniel G. Taylor, an elector on the Bell and Everett ticket. “The people of East Tennessee,” said the orator, “are determined to maintain the Union by force of arms against any movement from the South throughout their region of country to assail the government at Washington with violence, and that the secessionists of the cotton States in attempting to carry out their nefarious design to destroy the Republic would have to march over his dead body and the dead bodies of thousands of East Tennessee mountaineers slain in battle.”[[10]]
When Yancey came up from Alabama to “precipitate” this section into rebellion the intrepid Brownlow made a similar reply.[[11]] The energy or the elegance of such utterances may be questioned, but the deeds of loyal Tennesseeans during eventful years to follow are evidence alike of the sincerity of the speakers and their insight into the temper of the times.
Except Tennessee, all the States that attempted secession did so by means of revolutionary bodies styled conventions; this description of them is justified both by the general powers of administration and government which they assumed and by the fact that the legislatures in convoking them transcended their authority, the members of every State legislature being “bound by oath or affirmation to support” the Federal Constitution, which forms a part of the fundamental law of each commonwealth. Though the Legislature of Tennessee, following the example of law-making bodies in other disloyal States, passed a “Convention Bill,” it was promptly defeated by a majority of 13,204 in a total vote of more than 120,000. Notwithstanding the constitutional prohibition that “no State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation,”[[12]] the Legislature on May 1 authorized Governor Harris to appoint commissioners to form a military league with the Confederate States. Six days later the relations entered into by these agents were ratified in a secret session, the State government thereby turning over temporarily to the President of the Confederacy its entire military force. These matters disposed of, the plans of disunionists were completed by the passage on the same day of a declaration of independence and an ordinance dissolving all Federal relations between Tennessee and the United States. Though this measure was to be voted upon a month later, the Legislature, as if anticipating the result, adopted and ratified the Confederate constitution. What was so ardently desired by secessionists was finally accomplished, and on June 24 the Governor declared his State out of the Union, the vote being 104,019 for, and 47,238 against, separation.[[13]] The Tennessee Legislature did not assume the functions of a secession convention till after the commencement of hostilities; but from that date the forms of law ceased to be seriously regarded. While the disunion party scored a present triumph, loyalist leaders like Horace Maynard, Thomas A. R. Nelson and Andrew Johnson, at the imminent risk of injury or even of death, were speaking and working actively against the spirit of secession. The strong Union feeling thus excited resulted ultimately in local insurrections and in the meeting, June 17, of a convention at Greeneville in which a remonstrance was adopted and a committee appointed to petition the Legislature for the separation of East Tennessee and such counties of Middle Tennessee as were willing to coöperate in the formation of a new commonwealth. But the presence there during the following years of veteran Confederate armies prevented Union men from organizing a separate government, and saved the State from the fate of Virginia. All who were known to have had a connection, or who were suspected of sympathy, with this movement were especially obnoxious to the secession party, and at the hands of soldiers were subjected to many indignities. In various ways the feeling of opposition to the Confederacy was intensified, and it was not long before measures of retaliation were considered. Union people were quick to perceive the advantage which the South derived from the use of railways within the State, and, in expectation of assistance from Federal forces in Kentucky, five railroad bridges were burned. East Tennesseeans, however, were destined to be sorely disappointed in the matter of aid from the Union army; and, without effective organization or arms, were easily captured or dispersed. Of the former, many were sent as prisoners of war to Alabama, hundreds were crowded into loathsome jails in the State and others hanged, with circumstances of deliberate cruelty, near the scenes of their alleged crimes.
These were among the outrages to which Mr. Lincoln referred in his letter to the Federal commander. By Horace Maynard a Representative, and Andrew Johnson a Senator, in Congress the President was kept very accurately informed of events in the State and often importuned to relieve their constituents. This he constantly endeavored to do, but his intentions were effectually defeated by the inactivity of General Buell, who cherished other plans for destroying his antagonist. More than two years were to elapse, from the time President Lincoln urged his policy, before Tennesseeans received any aid from Federal armies; long before that time they had been ruthlessly punished for their patriotism, and then their oppressors were chastised by the hand of an abler warrior than General Buell.
Within a month from the date of President Lincoln’s letter of January 6 General Grant had possession of Fort Henry and, ten days later, February 16, received the surrender of Fort Donelson. Nashville, becoming unsafe, was evacuated on February 23, 1862; the State appeared for the first time to be slipping from the grasp of the Confederacy, and a question, hitherto more or less academic, presented itself for practical settlement. In the territory from which hostile armies were reluctantly retiring there would be involved a great derangement in the administration of local civil law from the necessary displacement there of all officials heretofore acting in obedience to the Confederate States.
By other Union victories in the Spring of 1862 the same situation confronted the Federal Government in Arkansas, in North Carolina and in Louisiana. Indeed, this identical question arose as early as 1861 in Virginia and Missouri, but in the former the rebel government was abrogated by a delegate convention that restored a loyal government from which in due time sprang the separate State of West Virginia. In Missouri a lawfully chosen convention appointed a provisional government in sympathy with the Union. This subject, however, will be more conveniently discussed elsewhere.