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[Illustration: ASSAULT ON FORT SANDERS.
LLOYD BRANSON, DEL.]
THE
LOYAL MOUNTAINEERS
OF
TENNESSEE
BY
THOMAS WILLIAM HUMES, S. T. D.
“The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtues
is Loyalty”--JOHN RUSKIN.
KNOXVILLE, TENN.
OGDEN BROTHERS & COMPANY
1888.
Copyright, 1888,
BY THOMAS WILLIAM HUMES.
_Ogden Bros. & Co.
Printers and Stationers,
Knoxville, Tenn._
DEDICATED
IN
LOVE AND GRATITUDE
TO
The Memory
OF
LLOYD P. SMITH AND EDWARD EVERETT,
FRIENDS AND HELPERS
OF A
SUFFERING PEOPLE.
PREFACE.
The attitude which a large majority of the people of East Tennessee
deliberately assumed and persistently maintained in the Civil War
of 1861-’65, was remarkable. It had no precise parallel within the
limits of the ten seceded States, and there was no distinctive and
numerous population in any one of the loyal States whose surroundings
were so greatly unfavorable to a like attitude of devotion to the
Union.
The majority of citizens in each of the border slave States of
Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri adhered to the United States, and
their respective governments were administered accordingly. But their
territorial and other important relations were altogether different
from those of East Tennessee. Maryland lay contiguous to the district
and capital, where the Federal Government must and did especially
defend itself. It is separated from Virginia not only by the District
of Columbia but by the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, and it had
no nearness to any other seceded State; while Pennsylvania stretched
all along its northern border, and the other loyal States of New
Jersey, New York and Ohio were not far distant. Kentucky was bordered
by the States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. And Missouri was almost
surrounded by Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. A majority of
the people of West Virginia were steadfast in their friendship for
the Union, notwithstanding the State, of which they were citizens,
seceded. But West Virginia bordered chiefly upon Pennsylvania, Ohio
and Kentucky. It was easy of access to influences favorable to the
Union. At the same time the armies of the United States could without
great difficulties enter and occupy its territory, and this fact
helped to confirm the loyalty of its people.
East Tennessee was entirely removed from thoroughly loyal States.
The only contiguous one that did not join in the work of secession
was Kentucky, which was held to its place in the Union against the
will of a considerable minority of its citizens. Otherwise, East
Tennessee was bounded on the north and east by Virginia, on the east
by North Carolina (lying between Virginia and South Carolina), and on
the south by North Carolina and Georgia. High mountains surrounded
it on every side, and on the west separated it from the other grand
divisions of Tennessee, where prevailed a spirit of disunion that
found sympathy and support in the adjoining Gulf States of Alabama
and Mississippi.
The wonder is that the people of East Tennessee, situated as they
were--far removed from States and populations where slavery did not
exist; having railway connections and water communications only with
those States that were hostile to the United States--should yet have
set their faces as a flint against secession. The wonder is, not
only that they sprung quickly with uplifted hands to the defence
of the Union at the very beginning of the assaults upon its life,
but were also its active or suffering friends to the close of the
strife. Difficulties and dangers on that behalf, they encountered
without flinching. Reproaches, and severities that in some instances
were cruel persecutions, they endured with fortitude. Under the
influence of an ardent patriotism, most of their able-bodied men,
in order to save their personal liberty or life, or to escape being
forced to fight against the Nation, left home and family and fled, as
they then called it, to “God’s Country”; crossing difficult rivers
and mountains by day, and snatching at night short sleep in the
dark forests through which they passed; suffering from hunger and
fatigue, from drenching rains and alarms from foes, until at length,
where the star-spangled banner was floating securely in the air,
they enlisted by tens of thousands, to help with arms in saving the
Nation’s life.
During the War period, in more than two years of which the Southern
Confederacy ruled over East Tennessee, the property of these refugees
and that of Union people who remained at home, was seized and used
or destroyed, until impoverishment and want prevailed to an alarming
extent. In numerous instances, starvation, like a gaunt wolf,
threatened the door, and the hearts of many were sickened by hope of
succor long deferred; but the fire of devotion to the Union still
lived and glowed within them strong and bright until the end came.
The scene in a momentous tragedy, thus presented in a region of
country so isolated from the great world that its actors could
have no stimulus to their constancy in the heard applause of
admiring spectators, was phenomenal, even in that time of heroic
deeds. It was the reproduction, upon the same stage, after nearly
a vanished century, of the same broad patriotism--to some extent
inherited--which sent a thousand riflemen from Sycamore Shoals on
the Watauga River, to win for the American colonies a victory
at King’s Mountain; and which afterwards triumphed over a spirit
of revolutionary separation, in retaining the allegiance of the
people of Frankland to the mother State of North Carolina. Without
doubt, the chief sentiment that animated the hearts of loyal East
Tennesseeans in 1861-’65 was one of duty. “The duty of preserving
the liberty which their ancestors, through God’s blessing, won,
established and handed down” to them--a duty which has been said to
be “no less imperative than any commandment in the second table; if
it be not the concentration of the whole.”[1] To whatever causes
their conduct may be attributed, it at least conveys the impression
of their strong individuality as a people and invites the closer
observation and study of the political philosopher.
It is certain, also, that the steadfast attachment of East Tennessee
to the Union and the efficient aid it gave to its preservation,
formed an important factor in the war and contributed in no small
degree to its final result. Had its territory been friendly ground
for the encampment, sustenance and transit of Southern armies, and
had the ranks of those armies been recruited with the thirty thousand
East Tennesseeans who volunteered in the service of the United
States, the course of events might have been seriously deflected and
the war been prolonged, to the hurt of the whole country.
It is of occurrences during the conflict in that territory, shut
in by rock-ribbed mountains, and chiefly in its central town, that
these pages will tell. The purpose of the narrative is to instruct
as well as to interest the general reader, and it may afford a help,
however slight, to some gifted mind that shall in the future attempt
the history of the War of 1861-’65 in the spirit of a sound Christian
philosophy.
It is also the hope of the author that this volume will serve to
confirm the reader’s patriotism, or to quicken the sentiment into
life, if it only slumber within him. The love of country has justly
been extolled by the tongue of the eloquent orator and the pen of
the gifted poet. Both the philosopher and the religious teacher
commend it, and it is profoundly interesting to know that the Author
of Christianity cherished that sentiment in its purity, and in full
harmony with his wide-reaching love for other nations than His own
of Israel. Some of His countrymen once interceded for His favor in
behalf of a Roman centurion, with the reason, “he loveth our nation.”
The plea was not rebuked by Him, and as the petition which it aimed
to strengthen was quickly granted, we may infer that it influenced
Him.
Every one will probably admit that the spirit of patriotism is
praiseworthy, but it is well to consider that it is sometimes liable
to slip from the guidance of wisdom and to be narrowed down in its
range of working to a section or a party. On the contrary, it should
be as broad as it is ardent; its boundaries those of the Nation;
and while it rises immeasurably above the base greed for office, it
should equally rise above the bitterness and contentions of partisan
zeal into the pure and serene atmosphere of fellow-citizenship. It
may be blindly perverted, but a true love of country can never be
intelligently applied to the uses of an inordinate ambition, or
to supply the necessities of a huge wrong. “History,” it is often
repeated, “is Philosophy teaching by example.” If so, then it would
be wrong to let the splendid example of unadulterated patriotism
given by the Union people of East Tennessee in the War of 1861-’65,
go unchronicled. No popular leaders induced it. The courage and
fortitude it presents sprang from deep and strong love for the Union
of the States in one Nation--deep and strong love for their _whole
country_.
Impressive also are the lessons of true and far-reaching patriotism
given by the heroic Rhode Islander and his fellow-soldiers, in
rescuing East Tennessee, at great pains, danger and loss, from
a usurped power; and by the generous people of Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, New York, Maine and other States, in relieving it
from impending famine. These interpositions, not to destroy, but to
save its people, should teach Americans, as long as the Republic
lasts, that, in the words of Mr. Edward Everett: “If the Union means
anything, it means not merely political connection and commercial
intercourse, but to bear each other’s burdens and to share each
other’s sacrifices; it means active sympathy and efficient aid.”
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE.
FIRST SETTLEMENT IN EAST TENNESSEE--NATURAL FEATURES OF
THE REGION--ITS PEOPLE--ITS CENTRAL TOWN. 19
CHAPTER I.
EARLY HISTORY--THE FRONTIER--PATRIOTIC SPIRIT--CALL TO
ARMS--MARCH TO BATTLE. 37
CHAPTER II.
EARLY HISTORY--THE PURSUIT--THE BATTLE--THE VICTORY. 49
CHAPTER III.
EARLY HISTORY--MOUNTAINEERS DISSATISFIED--AN INDEPENDENT
STATE--CONFLICT OF AUTHORITIES. 57
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY HISTORY--FRANKLAND’S CORRESPONDENCE--ITS STRIFES--ITS
DEATH, UPON DEFEAT OF ITS CHIEF--HIS ESCAPE. 67
CHAPTER V.
SHADOWS OF COMING EVENTS--POLITICAL HARANGUES--A SUSPECTED
“INCENDIARY”--BIBLE SOCIETY COLPORTEUR IN
SCOTT COUNTY. 77
CHAPTER VI.
THE STATE FOR THE UNION--A STRANGER IN TOWN--SECESSION
OF TENNESSEE PRE-ARRANGED--BIBLICAL CO-INCIDENCE--UNION
ORATORS--AN ASSASSINATION. 90
CHAPTER VII.
THE UNION CONVENTION AT KNOXVILLE--THE UNION CONVENTION
AT GREENEVILLE. 103
CHAPTER VIII.
GROWING WRATH--JOY OVER VICTORY--GEN. ZOLICOFFER--A
YANKEE BOY’S PASSPORT--LIGHTS AND SHADOWS--ESCAPE
OF CONGRESSMEN--FORGED LETTERS TO BOSTON--A MILITARY
ZEALOT--BRIDGE-BURNING. 120
CHAPTER IX.
SEVERE TREATMENT OF UNION MEN--OATHS OF ALLEGIANCE
--IMPRISONMENTS--EXECUTIONS. 138
CHAPTER X.
REIGN OF TERROR--A NOTED PATRIOT--HIS PAINFUL EXPERIENCES
AND FINAL DELIVERANCE--A REFUGEE’S PERILOUS
JOURNEY--CONSCRIPTION--CAPTURE OF FLEEING MEN. 152
CHAPTER XI.
GENERALS KIRBY SMITH, J. E. JOHNSON AND BRAGG--REFUGEES
INVITED HOME BY PROCLAMATION--MRS. BROWNLOW, HER
CHILDREN AND MRS. MAYNARD EXILED--GENERAL CONDITION
OF THINGS RESULTING FROM SECESSION. 169
CHAPTER XII.
NEWS AND LITERATURE IN THE CONFEDERACY--A MIXED DINNER
PARTY AND ITS CONVERSATION--CARTER’S RAID AND
WHAT BEFELL A RECRUITING OFFICER--AN UNTERRIFIED
YANKEE CITIZEN OF GEORGIA--SANDERS’ RAID--DEATH OF
PLEASANT MCCLUNG. 188
CHAPTER XIII.
GEN. BUCKNER’S RETREAT--A CITIZEN’S ADVENTURE--GENERAL
BURNSIDE; HIS WELCOME; HIS EXPEDITION--CUMBERLAND
GAP; ITS SURRENDER--AN ECCENTRIC FARMER--MILITARY
MOVEMENTS IN EAST TENNESSEE--FIGHT AT BLUE SPRINGS--AFFAIRS
AT AND NEAR LOUDON--BURNSIDE AND THE
PEOPLE. 208
CHAPTER XIV.
GRANT AT CHATTANOOGA--PERIL OF BURNSIDE--THEIR CO-OPERATION
--LONGSTREET AT LOUDON--BURNSIDE RETREATS AND IS PURSUED
--BATTLE OF CAMPBELL’S STATION--MILITARY CONDITIONS AT
KNOXVILLE--ESCAPE OF LEADING UNIONISTS. 234
CHAPTER XV.
SIEGE OF KNOXVILLE--ITS DEFENDERS AND DEFENCES--COLONEL
SANDERS--HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL--PROGRESS OF THE
SIEGE--BURNING OF NORTH KNOXVILLE. 250
CHAPTER XVI.
HOSPITAL NEEDS--A SCENE AT HEADQUARTERS--INCREASED
DESTITUTION--ASSAULT ON FORT SANDERS--LONGSTREET
RETREATS--SHERMAN’S APPROACH--BURNSIDE GIVES HONOR
TO HIS ARMY. 268
CHAPTER XVII.
CAPT. POE’S CONCLUSIONS--PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S PROCLAMATION
--GENERALS SHERMAN AND GRANT--INTERCESSIONS WITH GEN. FOSTER
--BATTLE OF RESACA--INFLUX OF REFUGEES TO KNOXVILLE. 285
CHAPTER XVIII.
DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF EAST TENNESSEE--WATAUGA
SCENERY--LANDON C. HAYNES AT A DINNER PARTY--NATHANIEL
G. TAYLOR--HIS WRONGS--HIS FEARS FOR THE PEOPLE--HIS MISSION
TO THE NORTH AND WORK AT PHILADELPHIA--EDWARD EVERETT’S
SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL. 301
CHAPTER XIX.
FUND FOR RELIEF OF EAST TENNESSEE AT BOSTON, PORTLAND
AND NEW YORK--MR. TAYLOR AND FAMILY IN GREAT
TROUBLE--THEIR TIMELY RELIEF--KNOXVILLE EAST TENNESSEE
RELIEF SOCIETY--PENNSYLVANIA COMMITTEE--EFFECTIVE
WORK IN RELIEVING DESTITUTION--SUMMARY OF
RESULTS. 316
APPENDICES 337
ILLUSTRATIONS.
ASSAULT ON FORT SANDERS _Frontispiece._
PORTRAIT OF HON. EDWARD EVERETT 22
PORTRAIT OF MR. LLOYD P. SMITH 34
PORTRAIT OF REV. WM. G. BROWNLOW 77
PORTRAIT OF HON. THOMAS A. R. NELSON 90
PORTRAIT OF HON. JOHN BAXTER 108
PORTRAIT OF HON. ANDREW JOHNSON 129
PORTRAIT OF HON. CONNELLY F. TRIGG 153
PORTRAIT OF HON. HORACE MAYNARD 174
PORTRAIT OF GEN. A. E. BURNSIDE 208
PORTRAIT OF GEN. S. P. CARTER 245
PORTRAIT OF GEN. JOSEPH A. COOPER 294
PORTRAIT OF REV. NATHANIEL G. TAYLOR 313
INTRODUCTION.
FIRST SETTLEMENT IN EAST TENNESSEE--NATURAL FEATURES OF THE
REGION--ITS PEOPLE--ITS CENTRAL TOWN.
“With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow;
If bleak and barren Scotia’s hills arise;
There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow;
Here peaceful are the vales, and pure the skies,
And freedom fires the soul, and sparkles in the eyes.”
BEATTIE.
The first English fort built in Eastern Tennessee was that of Loudon,
in 1757, so called for the Earl of Loudon, at the time Governor
of Virginia. It stood at the junction of the Tellico and Little
Tennessee rivers, now in Monroe County, and 35 miles southwest of
Knoxville. Its garrison of from two to three hundred men was, with
three exceptions, massacred by the Indians in 1760, and with it a
number of women and children.
The first permanent settlement of Anglo-Americans in the region was
made on the Watauga River, not far from the present northwestern
border of North Carolina. As early as 1748, explorers, traders and
hunters from Virginia had visited that part of the land. Thirteen
years afterwards, nineteen men were attracted to it from the same
State by the abundance of its game and were employed as sportsmen on
Clinch and Powell’s rivers for eighteen months. Another company went
towards it from North Carolina, but with the exception of the famous
Indian hunter and fighter Daniel Boone, they halted at the spot where
now is Abingdon, Virginia. Probably he had before been on the waters
of the Watauga, for a beech tree, that stands on Boone’s creek, a
tributary of that river, not far from Jonesboro, still bears this
inscription,
“_D. Boon cilled a Bar on tree in the year 1760._”
These visits were followed by others from companies of hunting
pioneers. In 1764 Boone returned to the same region from his home
on the Yadkin River, North Carolina. Another pioneer gave him a
glowing description of the country which is now Kentucky, and in
1771 he endeavored with a party of eighty persons--forty of whom
were hunters--to pass into it through Cumberland Gap. They were
waylaid and fiercely assailed by Indians and were forced to abandon
the enterprise. Some four years later it was successfully renewed,
and Boone, passing over the Clinch and Cumberland mountains from
East Tennessee, led in the establishment beyond them of a great
Commonwealth.
An eminent historian of the United States, after relating the wrongs
to which the people of North Carolina were subjected in 1770-71,
under the provincial Governor, Tryon, proceeds to tell how and where
they fled from oppression.
“Without concert--instinctively impelled by discontent and the
wearisomeness of life exposed to bondage--men crossed the Alleghanies
and descending into the basin of the Tennessee, made their homes in
the valley of the Watauga. There no lawyer followed them; there no
King’s Governor came to be their Lord; there the flag of England
never waved. They rapidly extended their settlements. By degrees they
took possession of the more romantic banks of the broader Nolachucky,
whose sparkling waters spring out of the tallest mountains in the
range. The climate was invigorating; the health-giving westerly wind
blew at all seasons; in spring the wild crab-apple filled the air
with the sweetest perfumes. A fertile soil gave to industry good
crops of maize; the clear streams flowed pleasantly, without tearing
floods; where the closest thickets of spruce and rhododendron flung
the cooling shade furthest over the river, trout abounded. The elk
and the red deer were not wanting in the natural parks of oak and
hickory, of maple, elm, black oak and buckeye. Of quails and turkeys
and pigeons there was no end. The golden eagle built its nest on the
topmost ledge of the mountain, and might be seen wheeling in wide
circles high above the pines, or dropping like a meteor upon its
prey. The black bear, whose flesh was held to be the most delicate
of meats, grew so fat upon the abundant acorns and chestnuts that he
could be run down in a chase of a hundred yards; and sometimes the
hunters gave chase to the coward panther, strong enough to beat off
twenty dogs, yet flying from one.”[2]
The entire valley of East Tennessee, extending from the southwestern
border of Virginia to Northern Georgia, embedded in the mountains,
offers peculiar attractions. Nearly fifty years ago an English
gentleman, who had lived there several years, published a pamphlet in
London,[3] in which he said:
“To one who has resided some years in the valley of East Tennessee,
breathing the pure air from its mountains and drinking of its crystal
springs, enjoying the sunny smile of its temperature and the cooling
shade of its noble forests, delighting the eye and the heart with its
fields of fruitfulness which at every turn present a new aspect, it
is not ‘England’s laughing meads,’ nor ‘her flowering orchard trees,’
nor yet Lomond and the Trosachs, with all their beauty and historical
associations and the magic thrown around them by the exuberant
imagination of the poet, that could tempt him again to quit the
peaceful solitude, the clear blue sky, the song of the mocking-bird,
the note of the dove, the hum of the humming-bird, and the silence of
nature where all is echo.”
[Illustration: HON. EDWARD EVERETT.]
The Hon. Edward Everett, in an address he delivered in Faneuil
Hall, Boston, February, 1864, which was called forth by the then
suffering condition of the people of East Tennessee in consequence of
the war, said of it:
“A more interesting region, or one more entitled to our most active
sympathy, is not to be found within the limits of the United States.
Forming a part of the noble State of Tennessee, it is in many
respects a State in itself, and not a small one either. It consists
of the broad valley of the magnificent river, which traverses it from
northeast to southwest, three hundred miles in length, and with a
varying width of from fifty to seventy-five miles--and of the slopes
of the mountains, which separate it on the north from Kentucky, on
the southwest from Middle Tennessee, and on the southeast from North
Carolina and Georgia: a beautiful valley, between beautiful enclosing
hills, fertile many of them to their summits, sparkling with a
hundred tributaries to the noble stream which forms its principal
feature.
“That river is in some respects one of the most remarkable on the
continent. Its northern affluents rise in the State of Virginia, but,
as if to read a lesson of patriotism in the very face of the soil,
as if to prop the fabric of the Union by the eternal buttresses of
the hills, instead of flowing to the Atlantic like the other rivers
of Virginia, it gathers up the waters of its tributary streams,
Holston and Clinch and French Broad, and connecting Virginia and
the Carolinas with East Tennessee, flows southward down to the
northwestern corner of Georgia. There, after kissing the feet of the
glorious hills of Chattanooga, instead of flowing to the Gulf, its
seeming natural direction, it coquets with Northern Alabama, breaks
into the Muscle Shoals, plants Decatur at their head and Florence at
their feet, and then sweeping back to its native North, traverses
the entire width of Tennessee a second time, apparently running up
hill--for while it is flowing northward, the Mississippi, parallel to
it, and at no great distance, is rolling its floods southward--enters
the State of Kentucky, and empties into the Ohio, fifty miles above
the junction of that river with the Mississippi, thus binding seven
States in its silver circuit, and connecting them all with the great
central basin of the continent.
“The soil of Eastern Tennessee is rich; the mountains are filled
with coal and almost every variety of ore; their slopes bubble
with mineral springs; the climate is temperate and healthful; the
territory divided into farms of a moderate size, for the most part
tilled by frugal, industrious men, who own the soil, which yields
them its well-earned abundance. In no part of the State are there so
few slaves; in none is there a more substantial population; in no
part of the South is the slave interest so feeble. East Tennessee
greatly resembles the lower ranges and fertile valleys of the Alps,
and it has been often called the American Switzerland. It is divided
into thirty counties, and its population does not, I think, fall
short of 300,000 souls.[4]
“But this grand valley, with the hills that enclose it, possesses an
interest for us far beyond that which attaches to their geographical
features, merely as such. It is one of the most important links in
that chain of valley and mountain which traverses the entire North
American continent, from northeast to southwest, separating the
streams which flow into the Atlantic from those which seek the St.
Lawrence, the Ohio and the Mississippi. Forcing its way down into
the heart of the region whose alluvial plains are devoted to the
culture of tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar by slave labor, this ridge
of highlands, with the valleys embosomed in them, from the time
you begin to leave the State of Pennsylvania, begins to assume the
highest political importance in reference to the present stupendous
struggle. Extending to the southwest as far as Northern Alabama, this
noble mountain tract, and the valleys enclosed in its parallel and
transverse ridges, is, by the character of its climate, soil, and
natural productions, the natural ally of the North. Here, if nowhere
else, we may truly say, with the German poet:
‘Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit; der Hauch der Grüfte
Steigt nicht hinauf, in die reinen Lüfte.’
That means--
‘On the mountain is Freedom; the breath of the vales
Rises not up to the pure mountain gales.’”
East Tennessee has been sometimes called the Switzerland of America,
and certainly there are strong resemblances between the two
countries. They are unlike in that the former is wanting in the lake
feature that distinguishes Switzerland. East Tennessee, however,
abounds wonderfully in natural springs of pure and limpid water,
and has a multitude of creeks and rivers. Some of these last bear
euphonious names, as Watauga, Nolachucky, Tellico, Hiwassee and
Tennessee. The climatic advantages of the region result, partly,
at least, from its having a Southern location and a Northern
elevation--peculiarities which a Swiss gentleman who visited it
thirty years ago, in fulfillment of his long-cherished desire, was
quick to observe.
Following the first immigrants to the region, who were from Virginia
and North Carolina, and among whom were some of Scotch-Irish
ancestry, others came, particularly to the county seats, directly
from the north of Ireland; but the great majority of the settlers
were of American birth--hardy and adventurous spirits, in great
variety, such as are apt to seek a frontier life.
In the valleys and along the highways and rivers have always been
much intelligence and moral worth, with admixtures, as elsewhere
found, of ignorance and vice. Sufficient public schools have been
sadly wanting in former years; yet education, by which comparatively
few profited, has been esteemed and promoted in the Commonwealth from
its beginning. Three colleges were established in East Tennessee
before the Territory became a State: one each in Washington, Greene
and Knox counties; and soon after this century began, county
academies were chartered throughout the State.
At first the Presbyterian Church existed almost if not altogether
alone, but before long it was succeeded by Methodist and Baptist
churches.[5]
Accustomed as have been the people of the more mountainous counties
to ruder modes of living and narrower means of education, their
social condition is freer, even from healthy restraints. They are
gifted with good natural qualities, but these have not been always
cultivated to the repression of other traits and tendencies. They
are brave, but many of them are liable to needless tests of personal
valor; independent, but prone to notions of individual liberty
inconsistent with right ideas of law and order; social, but inclined
to promote good cheer by artificial means of excitement.
In 1848 a recent diplomatic agent of the United States in India[6]
found his way to this very secluded region, seeking, under the
pressure of severe domestic bereavement, to “get rid of himself.”
He succeeded in doing so by dwelling for the winter at the southern
base of the Cumberland Mountains. Afterwards he ascribed to the
highlanders among whom he hibernated, three favorite sources
of excitement, namely, political stump-speakings, religious
camp-meetings, and home-made liquors. An unlearned population, far
removed from the world and its thoroughfares, they highly prize
their right of suffrage to make legislatures and judges, members of
congress, governors and presidents. Their religious instinct, once
awakened, is quick to respond to fervent preaching that is sustained
by stirring devotional songs. Their animal spirits are apt to be
depressed by the monotony of their daily life, and the juice of
Indian corn gives relief.[7] That corn is the grain that is chiefly
grown in the highlands. Its meal and the salted flesh of hogs are
principally their food. Eager candidates for office supply them with
mental aliment at heated discussions pending the elections, and
the result is that although many of them are without the knowledge
acquired at school, all of them are informed concerning questions
of public policy. Probably no people of equal numbers can be found
in the land who excel those of East Tennessee in acquaintance with
current politics. It is to be confessed that more than a few of the
mountaineers are deficient in historical lore. Certain great events
of the Nation’s earlier life, whose results they have exaggerated,
have a firm lodgment in their minds, but lie there unqualified by
knowledge of later occurrences. An anecdote related by John Mitchell
will illustrate.
Scarcely had the United States diplomatic agent just now spoken of,
departed upon an Oriental mission, when the weary Irish patriot
arrived from Australia, in this isolated region. He, too, sought
retirement, and in Tuckaleechee Cove, near the Smoky Mountains,
he found it, with his family. One day some of the neighbors met
together, after the not unfrequent idling custom of men in the
mountains--perhaps for friendly gossip, or to shoot at a mark in
rivalry of skill for a prize. One said:
“Who is this stranger, anyhow? He don’t do nuthin’ only him and his
son go fishin’ and shootin’.”
“O,” another replied, “don’t you know who that is? That’s John
Mitchell, the exile of the British Government.”
“British Government indeed!” said the first speaker. “I thought we
had whipp’d that consarn out long ago.”[8]
One virtue obtains almost universally among the people of East
Tennessee--that of hospitality. It has to some extent diminished in
the valleys, where the inhabitants live as did their ancestors from
plentiful tables and various dishes, but where, since the war ended,
the increase of travel and of commercial intercourse with other parts
of the country have checked generosity and enlarged prudence. Yet it
has lost none of its olden-time proportions in the mountains, where
the table lacks nothing in abundance but a good deal in variety;
where the narrow range of habitual diet affords small opportunity for
skill in cookery, and even that opportunity has not been improved.
There the signs of an advanced civilization--the steam-engine, the
telegraph and the telephone--have never invaded the air with whistle
or wires; but the stranger will be kindly entertained for the night
at little or no charge, and probably when he departs in the morning,
will be cheered on his way by the expressed hope of his host that he
will come again. Not that the landlord thinks money is worthless. For
he and his countrymen are sharp traders. Without adventuring at the
start upon fixed sums, they “beat about the bush” to find out how
much can be had or how little be paid by them, and both buyer and
seller are wide awake to “get the best of the bargain.” They also
know points of law, and are unduly given to litigation in defense of
their real or supposed rights.
Slavery, even in the modified, domestic garb it wore among them, had
a depressing, degrading influence upon the white common laborers.
This was more obviously so with the several thousands of inert,
improvident people, such as are to be found more or less in all
regions, but who are apt to be more numerous where the climate is
genial and a few acres of land with a poor tenement can be cheaply
rented. These led an Arab sort of life, living in a log cabin and
growing a crop of corn, then, not “folding their tents,” but packing
up their “plunder”--the synonym for household goods--and flitting
away with their children and dogs to a cabin of another proprietor.
For this class, who lived “from hand to mouth,” and whose contentment
was partly due to the fact that their covetousness had no incitements
to indulgence, the negroes of substantial families had an unconcealed
contempt. Another and better class consisted more numerously of
diligent and thrifty farming people. In them slavery induced, by some
subtle, indefinable influence, an industrial languor. It approximated
them to the slaves, despite their difference in color and personal
relation to the masters; and it barred their way to improvement of
condition, by pushing them as tenants from the more fertile acres
which the slaves tilled, to the thin soil of the hillsides. Now,
under the reign of freedom, these small but industrious farmers have
access by lease to the richer lands.
The mountaineers, strictly speaking, felt no concern about the
institution of slavery itself, and knew but little. Here and there
among them were men of competent means, some of whom owned a few
negroes. Generally they looked upon slavery as something foreign
to their social life, but they had no imperative, philanthropic
impulses to contend against it. They would have been displeased at
its coming near their homes in the imperious majesty it wore in the
cotton States. At the same time they were satisfied to let men of
the South keep serfs at pleasure, but they counted it no business of
theirs to help in the work. If the perpetuity of the Union or that of
slavery were the question at issue, they would have no hesitation in
deciding. Let slavery perish and the Union live. Yes! the Union--the
Government handed down to them from Washington and his compatriots!
_It_ must survive. For it they would fight, and, if necessary, die.
While the men high up on the hills had no philosophic reflections
nor any humanitarian hate towards slavery, a strong aversion to
it had been manifested from an early period by some men of the
valleys. “A powerful appeal for the abolition of slavery” was
published as a communication in the _Knoxville Gazette_, 1797. It
called a meeting of the citizens of East Tennessee at a town in
Washington County, March, 1797, to form a Manumission Society. The
communication bears internal evidence of having been written by a
member of the Society of Friends. Not then, but in 1815 the proposed
society was organized.[9] The Rev. John Rankin, born February 4,
1793, Jefferson County, East Tennessee, graduated at Washington
College, was ordained a Presbyterian minister, but having imbibed
anti-slavery sentiments from his mother in Rockbridge County,
Virginia, he removed his residence from Tennessee to a free State
and became a leading abolitionist. Before his recent death at the
advanced age of nearly ninety years, at Ironton, Ohio, he gave
authority to the statement that “the sentiment of abolitionism
originated in Tennessee about 1814, there being then an anti-slavery
society in Jefferson County, East Tennessee.”[10] The Manumission
Society first mentioned, prosecuted its work diligently for years. In
March, 1819, “_The Manumission Intelligencer_,” a weekly newspaper,
was issued at Jonesboro, and its publication gave place, the year
following, to “_The Emancipator_,” monthly, by Elijah Embree, one
of two brothers, Friends, from Pennsylvania, who manufactured iron
near Elizabethton. On his death, it was succeeded by “_The Genius
of Universal Emancipation_,” at Greeneville, published by Benjamin
Lundy, a Friend, from New Jersey. It lived until 1824.
After that date, the sentiment of aversion to slavery survived and
in various ways was manifested, and although it was eventually
counteracted by the political strife which grew out of the subject,
it never ceased to exist firmly in many minds. A home in the great
valley of East Tennessee was not formerly adapted to the cultivation
of pro-slavery sympathies in persons of humane disposition and
healthy sensibilities. For along the highway through that valley,
slave-dealers transported negroes whom they had bought in Virginia
and intended to sell in Southwestern States. The sales of these
unfortunates, often because of their masters’ necessities, had
in some instances separated families: and lest the men, moved by
sorrow over the disruption, by aversion to their destined market,
or by desire for freedom, should escape on the way, the dealers
fettered them two and two to a strong chain running lengthwise
between. It was pathetic to see them march, thus bound, through the
towns, and to hear their melodious voices in plaintive singing as
they went. By-standers then saw slavery without the disguise, with
which Laurence Sterne pronounced it “still a bitter draught,” and
the spectacle was apt to create or strengthen antipathy to the
institution in unbiased minds.
Knoxville, the central town of this entire region, stands on the
northern bank of the Tennessee River, four miles below the junction
of the Holston and French Broad rivers, which rise, the first in
Virginia and the second in North Carolina. From 1792 to 1796 it was
the capital of the “Territory south of the river Ohio,” and from 1796
to 1816, that of the State of Tennessee. Its society had at that
time a relative distinction for character and influence which it has
never lost In 1865 the town received a strong impulse to growth, from
which its population in 1870 was 8,682, in 1880 it was 9,693, and
in 1886 it was about 30,000. The great, and of late, rapid increase
is largely owing to immigration from Northern States. Thrifty and
enterprising new-comers have added in a marked degree to the trade
and prosperity of the place. Like results have followed more or less
throughout East Tennessee, especially at Chattanooga, since the war
disclosed the natural advantages of the whole region to the knowledge
of the world outside of it. So obvious are the benefits that will
accrue to it from worthy immigrants, that even the most zealous
sectionalists have yielded their prejudices so far as to give even
“Yankees” not only a welcome, but an invitation to dwell in the land.
[Illustration: LLOYD P. SMITH.]
Lloyd P. Smith and Frederick Collins, of Philadelphia, visited the
region in March, 1864, upon a benevolent errand. In their published
report of the visit they said: “The existing war is clearly
destined to introduce Northern men, Northern ideas and Northern
enterprise into the border States, and, as our military lines
advance, throughout the whole South.... East Tennessee, with its
fertile lands, its rich mines and valuable water-power, presents a
fine field for the application of Northern labor and capital; and
when this calamity is overpast, and a direct railroad communication
with the North is secured, it will prosper as never before.
Especially will this be the case when the incubus of slavery is
thrown off.” These words are now in a measure fulfilled prophecy.
Topographically, East Tennessee is at the very heart of the
Atlantic States. It has been observed that “Knoxville is the
exact-geographical center of the eastern half of the United States:
the corners of the eastern half being Eastport in Maine, Key West
in Florida, the mouth of the Rio Grande in Texas, and a point in
Lake Superior on the northwest boundary (water or lake) line of
Michigan. The point is north of Isle Royal in the lake. The opposite
sides of the figure formed by lines drawn from and to these corners
are respectively parallel and equal, and its diagonals intersect at
Knoxville. The more exact the map, the more exactly is Knoxville
found to be at the point of intersection.”[11]
THE LOYAL MOUNTAINEERS OF TENNESSEE.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY HISTORY--THE FRONTIER--PATRIOTIC SPIRIT--CALL TO
ARMS--MARCH TO BATTLE.
“Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain;
* * * * *
These constitute a State.”
SIR WILLIAM JONES.
The hardy and brave settlers on the Watauga, Holston and Nolachucky
rivers, among lofty mountains, dwelt in such peace as their savage
neighbors permitted, and in contentment with their great distance
from the busy world. Having leased the territory from the Indians,
they proceeded to organize the
FIRST REPUBLIC EVER FORMED IN AMERICA.
There was no established government of any kind within their reach,
whose protection they could enjoy while they owned its authority.
Therefore, under the pressure of a civil necessity, they met in
convention, entered into a written association, prescribed laws and
elected commissioners for the administration of justice and the
conduct of public affairs. Their commonwealth existed for several
years.
In 1774 the Shawnees and other Indian tribes assailed the western
frontier of Virginia. Lord Dunmore, Governor of that State, called
for volunteers to resist the invasion, and of those enlisted from
southwestern counties of the colony, a regiment under Col. Christian
assembled at New River. To it a company of more than fifty men from
Sullivan and Carter counties (East Tennessee), commanded by Capt.
Evan Shelby, joined themselves, and with it went to Greenbrier, where
Gen. Lewis, commander in chief, assembled his forces. From there
the army marched with difficulty for twenty-five days through the
wilderness, along the rugged banks of the Kanawha River, to Point
Pleasant on the Ohio. Two of Capt. Shelby’s men were instrumental
in preventing the Indians, before day on the 10th of October, from
surprising and probably overthrowing the army of Gen. Lewis. In the
hotly contested battle which immediately followed, some of the same
company dislodged a body of the savages from an important vantage
ground, and thus ensured victory to the Americans. The defeat of
the Indians was so complete that they were subdued into a peace
which lasted for two years. Judge Haywood, in commenting upon the
unexpected discovery of the enemy by men from East Tennessee, to the
salvation of the whole army of the provincials, remarks: “Thus it has
happened that East Tennessee, in the earliest stages of her infancy,
has been called on to contribute all in her power to the common
defense, and seems to have been made much less for herself than for
the protection of her neighbors.”
In the resistance made by the American Colonies to the Government
of Great Britain, these settlers early expressed their sympathy.
Important events touching the welfare of a people may be remotely
separated in space while they are closely related in time. On
the fifth day of September, 1774, when the army of Gen. Lewis at
Greenbrier was about starting on its hard march down the Kanawha
River, to win a victory that would compel the Indians into peace, the
first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, to deliberate for the
liberty and welfare of the American people. The King of Great Britain
rejected the offers of that Congress. The British Parliament met in
November, and again after the holidays. The twentieth day of January
was the first day of the session in the House of Lords. On the very
same day the men of the settlements beyond the Alleghanies, where
the Watauga and the Holston flow to the Tennessee, united with the
men of the southwestern corner of Virginia in council near Abingdon.
On hearing what Congress had done, they unanimously declared their
adhesion to it. To the Virginia delegates in Congress they wrote:
“We explored our uncultivated wilderness, bordering on many nations
of savages, and surrounded by mountains almost inaccessible to any
but these savages. But even to these remote regions the hand of power
hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property with which
God, nature and the rights of humanity have vested us. We are willing
to contribute all in our power, if applied to constitutionally, but
cannot think of submitting our liberty or property to a venal British
Parliament or a corrupt ministry. We are deliberately and resolutely
determined never to surrender any of our inestimable privileges to
any power upon earth, but at the expense of our lives. These are our
real though unpolished sentiments of liberty and loyalty, and in them
we are resolved to live and die.”
The War of the American Revolution began at Lexington and Concord
April 19, 1775 (on the anniversary of which day, eighty-six years
afterwards, was the fight at Baltimore). In describing the swift
travel of the war message from Massachusetts throughout the Colonies,
the historian Bancroft represents it as overleaping bays and rivers
and the Dismal Swamp, passing through pines and palmettoes, and
transcending hills and mountains. “The Blue Ridge took up the
voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of
Virginia.” And westward still: “The Alleghanies, as they listened,
opened their barriers that the ‘loud call’ might pass through to the
hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga and the French Broad,”
who, for some years after the beginning of the war, knew that it
was going on, but the scenes of its battles were far removed from
their secluded homes. The echoes of their wooded hills were now
and then awakened by the notes of the “spirit-stirring drum and
ear-piercing fife,” but never by any martial sounds from conflicts
with arms in the American Revolution. Georgia, in 1779, was brought
into subjection to the King. About a hundred patriots, led by Col.
Clarke, had fled to the mountaineers for refuge, and obtained
helpers in their conflict with the British, in order to renew which,
they returned home. Refugee Whigs had also come from east of the
Alleghanies to the Washington District, into which North Carolina in
1777 organized the Watauga and adjacent settlements. The accounts
given by all these of the persecutions and cruelties inflicted by the
British and Tories, had moved the frontier men to friendly sympathy
with the sufferers, and to slumbering wrath against the oppressors,
and they only needed opportunity to actively join their brethren in
the struggle of the Colonies for independence. The summer of 1780 had
opened, and that opportunity was soon offered.
On the 11th of May, Charleston was surrendered by General Lincoln
to Sir Henry Clinton. Shortly afterwards the British power was so
triumphantly extended over South Carolina as to rally to its support
all timid, wavering and disaffected people. North Carolina was in
danger of being conquered. Col. Ferguson, of the British army,
was marching towards it and threatening it with invasion. Col.
Charles McDowell, temporarily chief commander of the Whig forces in
North Carolina, called on Colonels John Sevier and Isaac Shelby,
of Washington District, for help, “as soon as possible,” against
the invader. They promptly responded, and in July, Sevier, with
two hundred mounted riflemen from Washington County, and Shelby,
with an equal number from Sullivan County, joined McDowell’s camp
on Broad River, South Carolina. They did good service in several
conflicts with the enemy, in capturing the fort held by Col. Moore
on the Pacolet River and its garrison, and in winning the battle at
Musgrove’s Mill, where more than two hundred British prisoners were
taken. Upon the heels of this victory came news to McDowell of Gen.
Gates’ defeat at Camden and Sumter’s disaster. This disheartened
the army; it was in a position of danger and could only withdraw. So
great indeed were its apprehensions and sense of inability to hold
its own in the field, that it fairly dissolved. Shelby and Sevier,
with their regiments, returned at once to their distant homes, yet
ready of mind soon to renew the warfare. Not long after, McDowell,
with a company of several hundred men, sought refuge in the same
hospitable region.
Meanwhile, Cornwallis, flushed with his victory over Gates (August
16) at Camden, was eager for other triumphs, and by his direction
Ferguson and his troops pressed their way up to the present
Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The result was to encourage the
Tory inhabitants and rally them to his support. Already, to his
displeasure, the mountaineers had given him lessons of their prowess
in battle. In September he sent a message to the officers on the
western rivers that “if they did not quit their opposition to the
British Government, he would march over the mountains, hang their
leaders, and lay their country waste with fire and sword.” This
fierce missive did not frighten or deter those to whom it went.
It rather incited them to hostile action. The presence in their
country of refugee Whigs, some of whom had but recently arrived,
was a constant reminder of the bitter and relentless hate of their
enemies, that provoked them to sturdy resistance. Their patriotic
spirits only needed an incentive to go forth to war, and Ferguson’s
threat furnished it. Col. Shelby, on receiving it, immediately rode
fifty miles to confer with Col. Sevier. They determined to anticipate
Ferguson, to call their riflemen to arms and march unexpectedly upon
his camp. Col. Wm. Campbell, of Washington County, Virginia, near
by, was asked and consented to join the expedition. Sycamore Shoals,
Carter County, Tennessee, was chosen as the place, and September 25,
as the time, for assembling the forces. On the appointed day, one
thousand and forty men met at the Watauga River, armed with Deckard
rifles--many of them with their feet in moccasins. Officers and men
wore hunting-shirts; every soldier had a shot-pouch, knife, tomahawk,
knapsack and blanket. Four hundred men under Campbell were from
Washington County, Virginia, two hundred and forty under Shelby were
from Sullivan County, North Carolina, and the same number under
Sevier, from Washington County, North Carolina. One hundred and more,
under Col. McDowell, were exiles from east of the Alleghanies.
The scene was picturesque in its natural features. In the valley and
on the surrounding hills the thick woods were no longer dressed in
summer green. Their leaves, touched by the first frosts, had begun
to put on their autumnal coats of yellow, orange and red, mingled
with the perpetual verdure of cedars and pines. In the midst stood a
thousand men in simple, homely attire. They were healthy, because of
the pure, tonic air they breathed--strong, by physical exercise among
the hills--alert, by living in dangers from savage foes--equipped
with guns, which their sharp eyes and skillful fingers made sure of
aim and deadly in effect. Altogether, there were plentiful materials
present for the pencil of an artist. The patriotic enthusiasm that
filled the hearts of the gathered mountaineers, in harmony with the
natural surroundings, gave a nobility to the scene that could not be
portrayed on canvas or described but imperfectly in verse.
They who led in the enterprise had reverence of mind. It was a
bold undertaking for a body of raw militia to encounter trained
and tried soldiers in deadly fray, but their trust was not chiefly
in themselves. There were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians among them
who had strong faith in God, and the influence of their teaching
and life had been felt by other settlers. Before the march began,
prayer was offered by the Rev. Samuel Doak to Him who is supreme
in heaven and earth. The minister associated the occasion and its
purpose with the wars of Israel, under a departed dispensation of
religion. One historian relates that the petitions were “accompanied
with a few stirring remarks befitting the occasion, closing with
the Bible quotation, ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,’ when
the sturdy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians around him, clothed in their
tidy hunting-shirts and leaning upon their rifles in an attitude of
respectful attention, shouted in patriotic acclaim: ‘The sword of the
Lord and of our Gideons!’”[12]
Buoyant with hope of triumph they went forward: on over the Little
Doe and Big Doe rivers,--then through a gap between the Yellow and
the Roan mountains,--then down along Roaring Creek and Big Toe River,
following ravines, over stony ground. All around them from the start,
the mountains stood, sublime in grandeur,--one, not far distant,
higher than any other in the Atlantic States,--and mountains were
ahead of them. On they went,--through the Blue Ridge at Gillespie’s
Gap,--then over Silver and Linville mountains to the Catawba
River,--along its bank and across Linville River to Quaker Meadows.
There Col. Cleveland and Maj. Winston, with three hundred and fifty
North Carolinians, joined them.
When encamped in the gap at South Mountain, they supposed Ferguson
to be at Gilbert-town, about eighteen miles distant, and for the
impending conflict with him, it was needful they should have a
commander. Who should it be? Their choice fell upon Col. Campbell,
who had the largest regiment. Cleveland, McDowell and Shelby
encouraged the men in brief and pithy words, and every one unwilling
to go into battle was allowed to withdraw, but no one left. The march
was resumed. They soon learned that the enemy had retreated.
On top of the Yellow Mountain, the second night after leaving Watauga
River, two men had deserted from Sevier’s regiment, and carried word
to Ferguson that the mountaineers were advancing. He was alarmed,
because, not only that he knew their mettle in fight, but that he
had furloughed many Tory soldiers to visit their homes. Three days
before, he had changed his camp a short distance (from Gilbert-town
to Green River), in the hope of capturing Col. Clarke and his men,
on their way from Georgia to Nolachucky. Quickly, upon learning
that “the Back-water men,” as he called them, were on the way to
assail him, he sent word (September 30) to Lord Cornwallis, sixty
miles distant, whom the message did not reach for a week. To the
British commander at Ninety-Six he also wrote for reinforcements,
which could not be given. In beginning to retreat, he went, not
towards Charlotte, Cornwallis’ headquarters, but southward, as if his
destination were, as he said it was, Ninety-Six; and by this attempt
to deceive, revealed his sense of danger.
Military prudence required that he should call the Tories to his
help. Accordingly, on the second day of the retreat, there went out
from his camp a circular to “the inhabitants of North Carolina,” in
which he described the on-coming descent of Whigs from the hills
as “an inundation of barbarians.” “If you wish,” he said, “to be
pinioned, robbed, and murdered ... by the dregs of mankind; ... if
you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of men, grasp your arms
in a moment and run to camp. The Back-water men have crossed the
mountains. McDowell, Hampton, Shelby and Cleveland are at their head,
so that you know what you have to depend upon. If you choose to be
degraded forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once, and
let your women turn their backs upon you and look out for real men to
protect them.”
The next day, changing the direction of retreat, he went a few miles,
watched all night for an attack, then marched twenty miles and
halted forty-eight hours, with only thirty-five miles between him
and Cornwallis. In a dispatch to that General, he spoke of his enemy
as “of some consequence” by reinforcements, and of his hopefulness,
yet doubt, of success. “Three or four hundred good soldiers--part
dragoons,” he said, “would finish the business. Something must be
done soon.” Sixteen miles more of travel brought him to King’s
Mountain, a ridge sixty feet high, six hundred yards long by
two hundred and fifty wide at its base, and from sixty to one
hundred yards wide on top. Upon it he encamped, October the sixth.
Without fortifying the position, he expressed entire confidence in
maintaining it. Several Whig leaders in their narratives attribute
sayings to him on the subject that are boastful and blasphemous.