THE STATE FOR THE UNION--A STRANGER IN TOWN--SECESSION OF
TENNESSEE PRE-ARRANGED--BIBLICAL CO-INCIDENCE--UNION ORATORS--AN
ASSASSINATION.
“Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream;
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of a man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.”
SHAKS.; _Julius Cæsar_.
Tennessee was unwilling to depart from her wise sisters in the Union
and join the others in committing what one of her adopted sons,--a
General of the Confederate army,--said to his friend after the
war had ended, “was one of the greatest blunders in history.” The
Legislature of the State proposed a convention to decide what the
State should do concerning its national relations. Governor Isham
G. Harris and his sympathizers, no doubt considered the secession
of Tennessee could be most conveniently accomplished through that
instrumentality: and it was ordered that the question of holding such
a convention should be determined by the people at the ballot-box,
February 9, 1861.
[Illustration: HON. T. A. R. NELSON.]
Love for the Union had not yet weakened in many persons throughout
the State, who at later points of time could not withstand the
accumulated force of motives to give it up,--some of whom in finally
surrendering it, hushed their lingering objections with the plea of
necessity. The majority of people were used to think of the Union
as a precious heritage from their ancestors, and they were unable
to see that they ought to throw that inheritance away, because the
Republican candidate for Chief Magistrate of the Nation had been
elected. Even at the city of Memphis an enlightened public sentiment
in favor of maintaining the Union widely existed in the fall of
1860, and found expression at a large public meeting, called and
participated in by more than a few of the best citizens. Before the
February election the question of secession was often discussed,
not only by politicians before assemblies, but by citizens in
conversation. While enthusiastic disputants threw arguments thick and
fast without convincing one another, they still parted in friendship,
that was sometimes abated by the controversy. The time had not then
come for the wrathfulness of the political atmosphere and excitement
of men’s passions, to prevent colloquial and peaceful interchange
of opinions. As a general rule, secessionists and the disaffected
towards the newly-chosen Government at Washington, were more numerous
in East Tennessee among the rich and persons of best social position,
and were greatly out-numbered among the middle and poorer classes.
The election in February resulted in a majority of more than sixty
thousand voters for Tennessee continuing in the United States, and
also in a decided majority against holding the proposed convention.
It was clearly to be seen that the people were content to continue in
old and tried paths, and did not think it wise or expedient even to
send delegates of their own choosing to discuss the vital questions
that agitated and threatened the country. Many of them looked upon
the convention with apprehension as a contrivance for mischief. What
if the enemies of the United States intended and should use it as a
hot-bed to mature an ordinance of secession, which, like the gourd
over the head of the displeased and murmuring Hebrew prophet at
Nineveh, quickly grown, would quickly perish? Has not experience any
lesson to teach on the subject of unusual gatherings of inflammable
materials, which a spark may kindle into a great fire, when the air
is very dry from intense heats?
With the advent of spring, in 1861, the muttering of the storm
gathering in the national heavens became louder and longer. The
inauguration of Mr. Lincoln on the fourth of March, was affirmed
by men in Tennessee with others in the South, who were bent upon
separation, to be an ample reason in itself for a dissolution of
the Union. His words when he took the oath of office,--so full of
friendship and good will to the South, fell idly on their ears, and
his abstinence from any act to disturb its peace, did not abate their
hostility a fraction.
During the month of March a young New Yorker arrived at Knoxville,
returning home from Havana, where he had dwelt in the winter for the
sake of health. He found New Orleans, through which his journey lay,
all in a ferment over the cauldron of political troubles in the land.
Not being versed in State-craft nor fully impressed by the gravity of
the national situation, he was disposed to look with a lenient eye
upon the insubordination to the Federal Government prevailing in the
Queen City of the South. Louisiana desired to have a government of
its own, and with great generosity, he said it might be well to let
its people make the experiment. He, at least, was not inclined to
coerce them into obedience. Now and then in his leisure at Knoxville,
as the times were ominous, he kept on the alert for news. One day,
being told of the fall of Fort Sumter, he inquired of an ardent
secessionist standing near:
“Was the attack upon the Fort without provocation?”
The citizen addressed, took the question, not as it was intended,
merely to learn how the fight began, but as a provocation. At once
he spoke with stern manner and strong words of Southern rights and
as his sectional zeal grew more fervid with its venting, he asserted
that “one Southern man could whip five or six Yankees.” He himself
“could whip three or four.”
“My friend,” was the reply, “you are mistaken. We are all of one
Anglo-Saxon blood and Northern men can fight, as well as Southern.”
A few hot-bloods not far off, overheard the conversation. One of
them told his companions he knew the stranger by his peculiar speech
to be a Yankee, whom the party at once talked of subjecting to the
indignity of “a ride on a rail.” He caught enough of their words to
learn the hostile meaning, and obeying the instinct of his courage,
to which his strength looked unequal, he calmly walked up to the
company and stood, waiting their pleasure. They kept silence, being
discomfited by his composed bearing and shortly went their way.
This boastful estimate of the greatly superior fighting capacity
of Southern men, compared with Northern, was widely entertained
and expressed in terms not much less exaggerated. It had its root
in the idea that Northern people were not “chivalric,” and were so
devoted to money-making that they would not go to war for the sake
of any principles involved in the attempt to dissolve the Union. The
two notions helped no little to embolden the secessionists in their
purpose of disintegration.
The experience of the young stranger with the effervescence of
warlike feelings on the street, did not end with the above incident.
Not many days afterwards, the town postmaster was seen emerging from
his office with an unnatural paleness of face, that indicated intense
mental excitement. The cause was soon explained by his mounting a
goods’-box on the principal business street, for want of a better
rostrum, and reading aloud to the crowd which immediately gathered.
President Lincoln’s Proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand
men. A copy of it had just arrived by mail. The reading was followed
by enthusiastic and martial oratory that stimulated to greater heat
the temper of hearers whom the Proclamation offended. At that moment
the New Yorker appeared on the scene and desired to see the document.
Having no opportunity, he passed along the street with a friend to
a distant point where the postmaster was about to read it from a
door-step to another audience, which they joined.
Profound attention was given by all listeners, until the words “loyal
citizens” were read, when a strong voice cried out:
“If there is a loyal citizen present, let him now speak!”
No one made reply. The call came from one of a company of young men
who were exceedingly zealous, and had it moved the inoffensive Yankee
to speak indiscreetly in the surroundings, it may easily be inferred
that he would have been handled with severity. When the reading was
concluded, he and his friend joined in a subdued laugh over escaped
mischief and joyfully departed.[18]
Governor Isham G. Harris, fired with increased zeal by the beginnings
of actual hostilities, called an extra session of the Legislature
for May, 1861. The certainty of war determined some minds to
favor resistance to the Federal Government by force, which had
before adhered to the Union without reference to such an ordeal. A
conservative regard for institutions derived from the past, had
influenced them at first to cherish Union sentiments, but their
intimate personal and social relations were more with men who were
already enlisted in sympathy with the intended revolution. They
had resisted the influence of these associates while the peace was
unbroken, yet they had combative temperaments and the President’s
Proclamation roused their slumbering pugnacity. Their own passions
being loosed from bit and bridle, as they must have a share in the
contention, on whose side should it be but on that of nearest kith
and kin. The cause they had deemed unrighteous and against which
they had argued and voted, became righteous in their eyes, when seen
through the red and lurid atmosphere of Mars.
Others there were who had little strength of character, and had
been opposed to secession chiefly because it threatened to disturb
the even tenor of their lives. The noise of war in the air did not
stir their blood or change their minds: but the same easy-going
disposition--the same aversion to be disquieted which had made them
Unionists at first, led them to fall into the current of popular
feeling in their vicinity, which the entrance upon bloody strife
made stronger and swifter for secession. Some for the first time,
then heartily responded to the pleas they heard for sympathy and
co-operation from Tennessee with the Southern States, as more nearly
its sisters, and needing its help. Others yielded to those pleas,
because they feared the reproach of their communities for want
of right affection and just conduct, or worse still, to be called
“scalawags” and “Lincolnites.”
The material interests which were affirmed, and by many believed
to be at stake in the conflict for “Southern rights,” had their
influence to increase the number of secessionists in parts of
Tennessee after the appeal to arms. The growth of disunion
sentiments, like their germination, depended more or less upon the
climate and soil. In West Tennessee, where cotton is the chief
product and slaves were very numerous, the friends of the Union
eventually, were few and far between. At the city of Memphis, a
large cotton port, where a strong Union sentiment existed in the
autumn of 1860, the voters against secession four months later,
could be counted on the fingers of one hand. In Middle Tennessee the
secessionists increased in numbers, less in proportion to population,
than in West Tennessee: but in East Tennessee, there was no
important change in the relative strength of parties produced by the
commencement of hostilities. During April, the political excitement
in the chief town of the latter region, rapidly waxed strong as it
did elsewhere in the land: but it differed then and afterwards in
the bitterness mixed with it growing out of the close and sharp
divisions among neighbors. The near prospect of a general civil war
increased the disposition of the revolutionary party to vigorous
proceedings and added something to its confidence. The friends of the
United States were put more on the defensive against the charge of
disloyalty to their own section of country, and found it necessary
to use discretion as well as firmness. Sometimes the adverse parties
came near to collisions on the streets.
Tidings of “the fight at Baltimore” vibrated on men’s nerves like a
shock of electricity. It was on Friday, April 19. On Sunday, people
went to church with the exciting news yet ringing in their ears.
Singularly enough, as a co-incidence, widely observed, and thought
by some to be prophetic, the first lesson for the day (third Sunday
after Easter) read in the worship of God in many churches of the
land, began with the ninth verse of the third chapter of the prophet
Joel, in these words:
“Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; prepare war, wake up the mighty
men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up; beat your
plough-shares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears: let
the weak say, I am strong.”
Universally the worshippers were unprepared to hear a portion of
God’s Word, long before prescribed, but so well suited to the
particular time that it might have been selected that morning, and
they were impressed or startled. Another portion of Holy Scripture
read on the same occasion by like prescription, and which had special
fitness to existing circumstances, breathed no martial strains, and
therefore received less attention as a co-incidence. It was in the
Epistle for the Sunday, from St. Peter’s first Epistle:
“Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake:
whether it be to the king as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them
that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the
praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God.”
Aiming to promote a spirit of order and peace, the minister who
conducted these religious services at Knoxville preached that morning
upon the importance of right government and obedience to it--of using
freedom, not in the service of evil passions, but of neighborly, kind
affections, from the apposite words:
“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not
liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”
As if, however, the hour for discord had come, and its footsteps
would not tarry, the result of the day was the loss to the church of
several leading families whose sympathies were strongly with “the
South,” including that of a church warden. He was a worthy citizen
and sincere christian, but he “could no longer attend as a worshipper
and listen to the ‘prayer for the President of the United States and
all in authority,’” as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. The
prayer dates back to the year 1789.
The agitations and mutual wrath of parties at the locality, each
of them being strong, were sensibly increased by the secession
of Virginia and the forcible seizures of Harper’s Ferry and the
Portsmouth Navy Yard, which followed not long after the Baltimore
fight. Notwithstanding the people of Tennessee had voted against
secession in February, 1861, by a majority of 60,000, now, in the
absence of any later expression of their will on the subject through
an authorized channel, the State Government entered into a military
league with the Southern Confederacy and passed an ordinance of
secession subject to the ratification of the people at the polls on
the eighth of June. Under that league troops were enlisted throughout
the State, and so without having seceded or become a member of the
Confederacy, Tennessee was placed independently in actual rebellion
against the United States. Some eight hundred of these soldiers were
stationed in camp near Knoxville. One day Andrew Johnson and Thomas
A. R. Nelson addressed the people on the principal business street
of the town, the court-room being too small to receive them. The
meeting was disturbed by the loud music of a Confederate band from
a neighboring hotel, and by the threatening demeanor of armed men
who had just been addressed by secession orators and were parading
the streets. A bloody collision was only prevented by the friendly
interposition of peaceably disposed men from both parties. The same
two Union leaders were soon afterwards stopped in addressing the
people at Blountville in the strong Democratic county of Sullivan,
and compelled to desist.
On the twelfth of May the United States flag was raised by some
Unionists to the top of a liberty pole fixed near a spot of public
resort in the town, and a stirring speech in keeping with the
occasion was made by Connelly F. Trigg, Esq. Among his sympathizing
hearers was Charles Douglass, a citizen of violent disposition and
addicted to the use of strong drink, which without detaining him at
home, tended to increase his contentiousness. Being a democrat and
an ardent admirer of Andrew Johnson, he followed that distinguished
politician into the Union party. Between him and a Major of the
Military League State troops--Wash. Morgan--a few angry words were
spoken after the flag raising, and Douglass was subsequently fired
upon by his adversary and a military companion, when not expecting an
assault.
He escaped with slight hurt, but the shots aimed at him mortally
wounded a harmless countryman entering a store door. The soldiers in
camp were excited upon being informed at once of the affair by Major
Morgan, and some hundreds of them under his leading, intent upon
Douglass’s death were intercepted on their way to town by a discreet
Colonel of their army--with help from influential citizens, and
persuaded to return to their tents.[19]
The offending Unionist was not however to escape from his enemies.
While seated before a front window of the second story of his house
he was shot from a hotel upper window, a hundred yards distant. After
a few days of suffering he expired. His murderer was unknown, but
was thought to be either the Major or some one of that antagonist’s
fellow-soldiers procured for the purpose. The circumstances of his
death excited wide regret in the community, except among a few
extremists whose over-heated passions had so beclouded their moral
sense, that they could hear of the assassination with the same
indifference they would hear of a man being slain in battle. By many
of the Union men he was looked upon as a martyr in their cause.
The eighth of June, on which day the people were to vote upon the
ordinance of secession adopted by the General Assembly, was drawing
nigh, and as East Tennesseeans in a majority of cases were averse to
it, special efforts seemed advisable at Nashville to influence them
in its favor. Certain persons therefore, Hon. John Bell among them,
visited Knoxville and other places in the eastern division of the
State, but their addresses and labors were of little or no avail.
Mr. Bell would not advocate secession, being still hostile to it
as a political doctrine, but he was understood to declare himself
“a rebel.” Other visitors from Middle and West Tennessee were less
reserved in advocating the doctrine, and in commending the ordinance
to the people for their suffrages. Meanwhile Andrew Johnson, Horace
Maynard and Thomas A. R. Nelson were active in making public speeches
for the Union. This they did at imminent risk of injury or death from
soldiers of the Confederacy (who were transported at that time from
the Southwest through East Tennessee to the defence of Virginia), or
from the State allied troops