In West and Middle Tennessee, where the soil and climate were suitable for raising cotton, slave labor was very profitable. In East Tennessee, the poor upland farms scarcely yielded a return to white labor. As the result of this difference in natural conditions, slavery flourished in West and Middle Tennessee, but in East Tennessee, by 1860, it had become almost extinct, except upon the rich plantations that bordered the Tennessee River. The efforts to form a Confederacy based upon slavery found, therefore, no support among the inhabitants of East Tennessee. Their interests and sympathy were with the free States of the North, and they rejected by a vote of two to one every proposal looking toward separation.
In the eyes of the nation, Andrew Johnson stood as the representative of East Tennessee loyalty. Upon the floor of the United States Senate he denounced the withdrawal of the Southern members as treason, and refused to vacate his own seat even after Tennessee had been proclaimed by Jefferson Davis a part of the Confederacy.
Next to Johnson, the most prominent Union man was W. G. Brownlow, the editor of the Knoxville Whig. Mr. Brownlow is in many respects the most unique figure in the history of Tennessee. He commenced life as a carpenter’s apprentice, but after serving his apprenticeship he entered the Methodist ministry and travelled as a circuit rider for ten years without intermission. His love of controversy led him into most of the political and religious discussions of the day, and gained for him the name of the “Fighting Parson.” About 1835 he became the editor and publisher of a Whig newspaper, which rapidly gained a larger circulation than any other political paper in the State.
In the presidential election of 1860 Mr. Brownlow supported Bell and Everett. After the election his voice was on the side of peaceful acquiescence in the results. In vigorous editorials he denounced the sentiments expressed in the message of Governor Harris to the extra session of the Legislature. After the passage of the Convention Bill he joined several prominent citizens in issuing a call for an “East Tennessee Convention.” Every county in East Tennessee except two responded to the call. The Convention assembled at Knoxville, on the 13th of May, 1861. The delegates present numbered four hundred and sixty-nine, and represented twenty-eight counties. Hon. Thos. A. R. Nelson was elected chairman. On motion, he appointed a committee to prepare and report business for the Convention.
This committee drew up an address to the people, which was in part as follows:[7]
“Our country is at this moment in a most deplorable condition. The Constitution of the United States has been openly contravened and set at defiance, while that of our own State has shared no better fate, and by the sworn representatives of the people has been utterly disregarded. In this calamitous state of affairs, when the liberties of the people are so imperilled and their most valued rights endangered, it behooves them, in their primary meetings and in all their other accustomed modes, to assemble, consult calmly as to their safety, and with firmness to give expressions to their opinions and convictions of right.
“We, therefore, the delegates here assembled, representing and reflecting, as we verily believe, the opinions and wishes of a large majority of the people of East Tennessee, do resolve and declare:
“That the evils which now afflict our beloved country, in our opinion, are the legitimate offspring of the ruinous and heretical doctrine of secession; and that the people of East Tennessee have ever been, and we believe still are, opposed to it by a very large majority. That while the country is now upon the very threshold of a most ruinous and desolating Civil War, it may with truth be said, and we protest before God, that the people, so far as we can see, have done nothing to produce it. That the people of Tennessee, when the question was submitted to them in February last, decided by an overwhelming majority that the relations of the State towards the Federal Government should not be changed; thereby expressing their preference for the Union and the Constitution under which they had lived prosperously and happily, and ignoring in the most emphatic manner the idea that they had been oppressed by the General Government in any of its acts, legislative, executive, or judicial.
“That in view of a so decided expression of the will of the people, in whom all power is inherent and on whose authority all free governments are founded, and in the honest conviction that nothing has transpired since that time which should change that deliberate judgment of the people, we have contemplated with peculiar emotions the pertinacity with which those in authority have labored to over-ride the judgment of the people and to bring about the very result which the people themselves had so overwhelmingly condemned.
“That the Legislative Assembly is but the creature of the Constitution of the State, and has no power to enact any laws or to perform any act of sovereignty, except such as may be authorized by that instrument: and believing, as we do, that in their recent legislation, the General Assembly have disregarded the rights of the people and transcended their own legitimate powers, we feel constrained, and we invoke the people throughout the State, as they value their liberties, to visit that hasty, unconsiderate, and unconstitutional legislation with a decided rebuke, by voting on the eighth day of next month against both the Act of Secession and that of Union with the Confederate States.