reciting the founding, in 1791, of a town named Knoxville in honor
of Major-General Henry Knox, “said town consisting of sixty-four
lots, numbered from one to sixty-four consecutively,” enacts in
solemn form, that a town be established on the spot indicated, and
names commissioners for its government. In 1797, fifty-nine more lots
with necessary streets were added. In 1799, the town was authorized
by law to elect its commissioners, but for two years the act seems
to have been ineffective. The commissioners when finally elected
entered promptly upon a course of vigorous municipal legislation and
administration. Among other things a town sergeant was elected, and
required to patrol the streets three nights a week, or oftener at his
option. Slaughter-pens within the town limits, wooden chimneys, hogs
upon the streets, dead or alive, and the firing of guns and pistols
within the corporate limits were declared nuisances, punishable by
fine, fifty cents being the highest lawful fine. Two of the offences
for which this highest fine was prescribed were drunkenness and
Sabbath-breaking. A few years later, presumably under pressure of
popular demand, the hog ordinance was repealed, but the provision
against wooden chimneys seems to have been rigorously enforced.
In 1815, the town was empowered to elect a Mayor, and Thomas Emmerson,
afterwards a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State, became the first
Mayor.
That the name Knoxville had been adopted before November 5, 1791, is
made certain by the fact that on that day appeared the initial number
of the _Knoxville Gazette_, the first newspaper published within the
bounds of Tennessee. Its publisher was one George Roulstone, a native
of New England, whose Yankee enterprise appeared in the fact that while
the paper from the first was called the _Knoxville Gazette_, it was
for some time published at Rogersville, an older town, seventy miles
east of Knoxville. It is supposed that the publisher was prevented by
difficulties of transportation from moving his press to Knoxville.
The _Gazette_ was a three-column paper of four pages. It had not many
advertisements and very little local news, but was filled with accounts
of the French Revolution and of European affairs in general. It gave
much space to questions of ethics, and reprinted many political and
patriotic speeches.
The first and only Legislature of the Territory met at Knoxville in
February, 1794. Among the acts passed was one establishing a college
near Knoxville, to be called Blount College, in honor of the Governor.
This it is believed was the first strictly non-sectarian institution
of higher learning established in the United States. It was afterwards
successively named East Tennessee College, East Tennessee University,
and the University of Tennessee, under which last name it now exists
and flourishes. It is unsurpassed among Southern institutions of
learning for its thoroughness, and in respect of its beautiful
situation is almost unequaled in the whole country.
The treaty made by Governor Blount in 1791 bound the whites to refrain
from encroachments on the Indian lands, and pledged the Indians to
desist from hostilities. The whites did not all act in good faith,
while the Indians, with characteristic treachery, failed from the
outset to regard the treaty. At first the Cherokees contented
themselves with occasional outrages, but in the year 1793 it was known
that the whole nation was in arms. The Indians were emboldened by the
avowedly pacific policy of the Federal Government. Governor Blount had
received specific instructions to act only on the defensive. Arson
and murder were of daily occurrence and went unpunished. It was with
genuine relief, therefore, that the whites received news, late in the
summer of 1793, that the Indians had, in effect, declared war. On the
night of the 24th of September, 1793, a body of more than a thousand
warriors crossed the Tennessee River some twenty-five miles below
Knoxville and marched in the direction of that place. Seven hundred
of this invading force were Creeks and the remainder Cherokees, and,
strangely enough, one hundred of the Creeks were mounted. It was
the intention to reach and to attack Knoxville at daylight, but they
found difficulty in crossing the river, and were further delayed by a
consultation among the leaders upon an interesting question. This was
whether they should kill all the people of Knoxville, or only the men.
The discussion of this nice question of casuistry proved so attractive,
or provoked so many differences, that daylight seems to have found it
still unsettled.
[Illustration: UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE.]
At sunrise on the 25th the Indians heard the morning gun at the
barracks at Knoxville and concluded that it was an alarm signal.
Halting near Cavet’s blockhouse, eight miles from the village, they
entertained themselves by decoying and butchering the inmates. Their
coming had been made known on the 24th to the people of Knoxville, who
prepared with courage and energy to resist them. The total fighting
strength of the whites was forty men. It was determined to waylay
the Indians, and after firing upon them to retreat to the barracks.
Accordingly, leaving two old men with the women and children, the
remaining thirty-eight spent the night concealed on a wooded ridge west
of the town, fearlessly awaiting a foe outnumbering them more than
twenty to one. Early on the morning of the 25th, however, a messenger
brought the news that the Indians had lost heart after the affair at
Cavet’s and were in full retreat.
In this little band of defenders was the Rev. Samuel Carrick, a
Presbyterian minister, afterwards the first President of Blount
College, of whose conduct on this occasion there is a pleasing and
honorable tradition. It is said that when news of the invasion came he
was preparing to bury his wife, who had just died, but, putting aside
his grief, and leaving her beloved remains to be buried by the women of
the neighborhood, he seized his rifle and hastened to take his post at
the front.
A month later the Tennessee militia, led by Sevier, were in the heart
of the Indian country, and the battle of Etowah, on the 17th of
October, 1793, ended the campaign and cowed the savages.
From this time until the Civil War, Knoxville was outside the current
of important public events. From 1792 to 1796, it was the capital of
the “Territory South of the River Ohio”; from 1796 to 1811, except for
a little while in 1807, it was the capital of Tennessee. About this
time the capital of the State became peripatetic, on account of the
westward trend of population. As late as 1834, we find a member of the
Constitutional Convention of that year introducing a resolution for the
ascertainment of the “centre of gravity” of the State, with a view to
the permanent location of the capital upon it. It will be interesting
to know that the official to whom the question was referred reported
the centre of gravity to be identical with the geographical centre.
The capital was finally fixed at Nashville, which is not on the centre
of gravity, but is otherwise fully entitled to the honor. Meanwhile,
in 1817, the capital returned for a brief stay at Knoxville, and then
finally departed westward.
The Constitutional Convention of 1796 met at Knoxville in January of
that year with William Blount as President, and promulgated the first
Constitution of Tennessee. John Sevier was the first Governor and took
up his abode at Knoxville. He began to build a large brick house, but
hospitality and every form of liberality exhausted his means and he
removed to the country before the first story of the house had been
constructed. The house was completed by another owner and was designed
to overlook the town from a distance. It now stands with its back and
one side to intersecting modern streets, and its front to the side
yard. Sevier was for eleven years Governor, and then was elected to
Congress. He died in 1815 while on a journey to the Creek nation as
Commissioner of the United States. His remains reposed in Alabama until
1889, when they were disinterred, brought to Knoxville, and deposited
in the Court-House yard, where their final resting-place is marked by a
graceful shaft of native white marble. Sevier, always the popular hero
of Tennessee, is the most brilliant figure in the pioneer history of
the Southwest.
Blount was one of the first Senators from Tennessee. His impeachment
as Senator upon charges which to this day no man fully understands and
which to the Western people seem to have imported no turpitude, did not
affect his standing in Tennessee. He is buried in Knoxville in the old
First Presbyterian churchyard.
[Illustration: HUGH L. WHITE.]
Within a few feet of his grave is the tomb of Hugh Lawson White, son
of James White, “the founder,” and known as the “American Cato.” He
was a Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, many years a member of
the United States Senate, and for a time its President. He was long
the intimate friend of Andrew Jackson, but was alienated by Jackson’s
imperious methods, and became a candidate for the Presidency of the
United States against Jackson’s political heir, Martin Van Buren. He
was defeated, but carried his own and two other Southern States. He was
one of the strongest, purest and most patriotic of American statesmen,
and was a conspicuous figure in the Senate even in the days of Webster,
Calhoun, Clay and Benton. For fifteen years (from 1812 to 1827) he was
President of the Bank of Tennessee, located at Knoxville, which was
almost the only bank in the South that weathered the financial storms
which followed the War of 1812.
On the western limit of the town stands an old weather-boarded log
house, wherein tradition declares that George Farragut, the father of
the Admiral, once lived. The county records show that George Farragut
owned the ground on which the house is situated. The great Admiral
certainly was born in Knox county at Low’s Ferry near Campbell’s
Station, where, on the 15th of May, 1900, Admiral Dewey unveiled a
monument, which was erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution
to his illustrious predecessor. Old deeds to George Farragut sometimes
call him “Fairregret,” but he signs himself Farragut.
[Illustration: ADMIRAL FARRAGUT.]
Sam Houston was reared near Knoxville, and there are many stories of
his handsome presence, winning manners, great abilities and abounding
debts.
Full of interest to strangers is a frame dwelling in East Knoxville,
standing flush with the sidewalk, and entered by high steps that
encroach upon the pavement. This was the home of William G. Brownlow,
known as the “Fighting Parson,” one of the most remarkable men in
the history of Tennessee. He was a Methodist minister, an editor
with a gift of invective that has never been surpassed, an ardent
and fearless Unionist, the Reconstruction Governor of Tennessee, and
finally United States Senator. Brownlow was a man of the Andrew Jackson
type. The Southwest, and especially Tennessee, gave to public life
in the first half of this century a class of men with distinctive
physical, intellectual and moral qualities. Physically, they were tall,
angular, rawboned; intellectually they were alert, positive and often
narrow; they were honest and sincerely patriotic, but vindictive and
unrelenting, the truest of friends, the most aggressive and dangerous
of foes. Jackson, Brownlow and Isham G. Harris were men of this kind;
Harris seemingly the last of them.
[Illustration: WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW, THE “FIGHTING PARSON.”]
In theological and political controversy, in both of which he
delighted, Brownlow neither sought nor gave quarter, and his fame as
a polemic went through the Southwest long before the Civil War. Soon
after Tennessee seceded he was imprisoned, and then released and sent
North, where he made many characteristic speeches, and wrote a book
into which he gathered all the bitterness of his hatred of secession
and of the secessionists. When the Federal authority was re-established
in Tennessee, it was supported, and its local policy mainly directed,
by the loyalists of East Tennessee, among whom Brownlow was most
prominent in State affairs, and in national affairs Horace Maynard and
Andrew Johnson. The intensity and resolution of Brownlow’s nature were
such that he sometimes followed the logic of his hatred of secession
to extreme ends, so that by the Southern element in the State he was
hated as the Irish Catholics hated Cromwell. But his conduct, after
all, was in keeping with the spirit of the times, and not a little of
the censure that fell upon him was unjust. In private affairs, while
always forcible and positive, he was a kindly, just and generous man,
of pure life and of correct principles.
Horace Maynard, a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Amherst,
came to Knoxville in 1837 and became Professor of Mathematics
in the University. Later, he was for twelve years a member of
Congress, then Attorney-General of the State, Minister to Turkey and
Postmaster-General. His eminent abilities and his pure character
entitle him to special mention and to the highest commendation. His
son, Commander Washburn Maynard, distinguished himself in the late
Spanish War.
Another noteworthy citizen of Knoxville was Thomas A. R. Nelson, whose
speech in Congress against secession was praised by the London _Times_
in the highest terms. Mr. Nelson was of the counsel for Andrew Johnson
in the impeachment trial, and was afterwards a Judge of the Supreme
Court of the State. He was one of the best lawyers and one of the most
eloquent and accomplished public speakers the State has produced.
When the Civil War broke out, East Tennessee, not being a slaveholding
section, and being the Whig stronghold, was overwhelmingly for the
Union. The Union leaders were Johnson, Maynard, Brownlow and many
others of almost equal ability. Knoxville was the capital of East
Tennessee. It had grown principally by the increase of the original
population, and the kinships of its people, especially of the more
prominent families, were exceptionally extensive and intricate. A
majority of these well-to-do people went with the South, but a large
minority was loyal, and the common people, as a rule, held to the Union.
The first encounter of hostile forces at Knoxville was on the 20th
of June, 1863, when Colonel Saunders with a force of fifteen hundred
Federal soldiers on a raid through East Tennessee, halted in front of
the town. A brief artillery duel ensued, in the course of which Captain
Pleasant McClung of Knoxville, a conspicuously gallant Confederate
officer, was killed. After an hour’s firing Saunders resumed his march
without entering Knoxville.
Toward the end of August, 1863, the Confederates evacuated the city,
never to re-enter it, and on the 2d of September, General Burnside
entered and occupied it. The next event of importance was the siege.
It will be remembered that after his retreat from Gettysburg, General
Lee detached Longstreet’s corps from his army and sent it south to
aid General Bragg. Longstreet remained with Bragg until November
4th, when he set out to rejoin Lee, marching overland through East
Tennessee and western Virginia. This movement was a serious menace to
General Burnside, who had at Knoxville and in its vicinity about twelve
thousand men to oppose to Longstreet’s twenty thousand. Longstreet’s
approach to Knoxville, however, was so deliberate as to allow Burnside
time to concentrate his forces and to fortify himself hastily but
effectively. On the 20th of November, the town was invested, but not
thoroughly. The Confederate General was not aware apparently that
the Holston and French Broad rivers came together four miles above
Knoxville, and contented himself with blockading the Holston above the
junction, leaving open the French Broad, by means of which supplies
were constantly conveyed to the besieged.
On the 29th of November, at daylight, the Confederates assaulted Fort
Saunders, on the west of the town, an almost impregnable point in
its outer defences. The attacking force consisted of three brigades
of McLaw’s division. The attack was delivered upon the northwest
angle of the fort, probably its strongest point. It was necessary for
the storming party, after climbing a high hill, to pass a difficult
abattis, and to make its way through a labyrinth of telegraph wires
stretched between the stumps of the original forest trees which had
been felled. Having overcome these obstacles, a deep ditch was reached,
beyond which rose the parapet of the fort to the height of more
than twenty feet. When the broken, disordered and bleeding mass of
Confederates reached the verge of the ditch there was no hesitation.
In the face of a deadly musket fire and of a continuous discharge of
hand grenades, they hurled themselves into the ditch and scrambled upon
hands and knees up the steep and slippery embankment. Three times
they succeeded in planting their battle-flags upon the parapet, and
once they entered the fort, but only to be killed or captured after a
desperate struggle. The assault failed. Three hundred Confederates were
captured, and from five to seven hundred dead and wounded lay before
the abattis, among the broken wires and in the ditch.
This attack upon Fort Saunders was one of the most gallant and
desperate encounters of the whole war, and if it had occurred upon a
more conspicuous field would have been ranked with Pickett’s charge at
Gettysburg.
General Longstreet now concluded to molest Burnside no more, and
leisurely retired to Virginia. Grant sent twenty thousand men to
reinforce Burnside, but Longstreet had already withdrawn.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF FORT SAUNDERS.]
Immediately after the war Knoxville began to increase rapidly in
population. The loyalty of East Tennessee won much favor for it at the
North, and many desirable additions to the population of Knoxville came
from that section.
It is probable that no city in the South contains so large a proportion
of citizens of Northern and Western birth. Of foreign-born citizens
there are comparatively few, the tides of immigration having flowed
always north of Mason and Dixon’s line. Knoxville is therefore a
thoroughly American city, of forty thousand population, free from
sectional sentiment, progressive, but withal conservative, and proud of
its deserved reputation as a center of education and of culture.
Its free schools, handsomely and commodiously housed, are most
liberally supported, while the State University is the pride of the
intelligent people of Tennessee. The State Deaf and Dumb School and a
branch of the Asylum for the Insane are located there, and Knoxville
College for the education of negroes is one of the best of its kind.
Knoxville contributed a handsome building to the “White City” of the
Nashville Centennial, and afterwards the women of the city secured the
removal of the building to Knoxville, where, at a point of vantage, it
was re-erected and dedicated to the cause of woman’s advancement and to
all the Muses.
Knoxville is an old town as things go in America, yet much of it is
new. Its population has increased tenfold within thirty-five years. It
is therefore, in the main, modern in construction. In proportion to
population it has by far the largest wholesale trade among the Southern
cities. It enjoys a high degree of prosperity. It is the industrial,
commercial and educational center of East Tennessee, and its future is
full of promise.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
NASHVILLE
“THE ADVANCE-GUARD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.”
BY GATES P. THRUSTON
The beautiful site upon which the city of Nashville stands must have
been famous in prehistoric times. Its natural salt spring near the
bank of the Cumberland River was a noted resort of the Indian and
buffalo. Some years ago, the huge bones of a mastodon were exhumed
from the alluvial deposit upon its margin. Near the flowing spring was
an ancient cemetery of the long-vanished Stone Grave race, the mound
builders, of Tennessee, and upon the opposite bank of the river and
in the adjacent valleys have been found not less than ten thousand
rude stone cists containing their mortuary remains. These interesting
memorials have yielded a vast store of archæological treasures,
illustrating their arts and industries and telling a pathetic story of
aboriginal life in the valley of the Cumberland.
A race of Village Indians, probably akin to the Pueblo Builders or
Village Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, once made their home in
Middle Tennessee and the adjacent territory. These industrious pottery
makers and mound builders must have dwelt for several centuries in this
lovely Garden of Eden.
In an evil hour, unhappily, some destroyer came, perhaps the ancestors
of the savage and vindictive Mohawk or Iroquois Indians of the north,
and devastated their towns and homes and scattered or exterminated the
humble and less warlike Villagers. The first white hunters and pioneers
discovered in the shadowy forest only their strange and mysterious
mounds, and the ancient lines of earthworks that had formed their forts.
For perhaps a hundred years or more before the advent of the white man,
the beautiful valley of the Cumberland seems to have been a wilderness
uninhabited save by the wild animals of the forest.
As early as 1714, M. Charleville, a French trader, came, and tarried
for a time near the salt spring, known thereafter as the French
Lick. In 1775, Timothy De Monbreun, a native of France, visited the
spring, and later settled near the site of Nashville. Occasionally
adventurous hunters and trappers passed down the valley. In 1778, a
man of singular courage and gigantic stature named Spencer came with a
party from Kentucky in search of homes and fortune, and settled near
Bledsoe’s Lick, north of the Cumberland. They planted a small field
of corn. Spencer’s companions soon became discouraged and returned to
Kentucky, but this self-reliant hunter, undismayed by the solitude of
the wilderness and the fear of the crafty Cherokee, refused to leave
his new home in the lonely forest, and passed the long winter there,
with only a great hollow sycamore tree as a shelter.
The story of the founding of Nashville is full of heroic incidents.
It reads like a romance. About ten years had elapsed since the
stout-hearted pioneers of Virginia and the Carolinas had pushed their
way westward through the blue ridges of the Alleghanies, and planted
an independent colony upon the banks of the Watauga River. Its master
spirits, John Sevier, James Robertson and Isaac and Evan Shelby would
have been men of mark in any community.
From this parent hive, already grown into a strong and prosperous
settlement, a new colony of two hundred and more hardy riflemen and
pioneers, in the fall of 1779, set out upon a far journey to the west,
under the leadership of James Robertson.
Allured by the wonderful stories of the beauty and fertility of the
Cumberland Valley, they determined to seek there new homes. It was an
heroic venture, unsurpassed in the history of the march of western
civilization. No military force blazed a way for them. High mountain
ranges, deep and unknown rivers, hundreds of miles of dense forest, lay
before them. The dread of the crafty savage, upon whose hunting-grounds
they were encroaching, did not deter them.
Bidding farewell to their friends at Watauga they struck out upon the
wilderness trail of Daniel Boone for the Far West. They passed through
the gap in the Cumberland Mountains, across the headwaters of the
Cumberland River, and still westward across the rivers and valleys of
Central and Southern Kentucky, until, after weary weeks of marching,
through storm and snow and ice, they finally reached the old French
Lick on Christmas Day, 1779.
[Illustration: JAMES ROBERTSON.]
The wives and families of this advance-guard of the frontier, unable to
endure the hardships of the march, were sent in boats and canoes down
the Holston and Tennessee rivers. Captain John Donelson was in command,
a man of rare courage and judgment. His handsome young daughter,
Rachel, one of the voyagers, afterwards became mistress of the White
House as the wife of President Jackson.