REIGN OF TERROR--A NOTED PATRIOT--HIS PAINFUL
EXPERIENCES AND FINAL DELIVERANCE--A REFUGEE’S PERILOUS
JOURNEY--CONSCRIPTION--CAPTURE OF FLEEING MEN.
“Go, say, I sent thee forth to purchase honor;
And not the king exiled thee. Or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou comest.”
SHAKSPEARE, _Richard II._
For a considerable time, including that in which these trials,
imprisonments and executions occurred, there was a reign of terror
over Union people. The vigilance of the party in power subjected
even citizens of better social position to arraignment for slight
or insufficient reasons. To have been born in a Northern State
was _prima facie_ a ground of suspicion, unless the person were
a pronounced friend of the rebellion. Equally so was the fact
that one had been a conspicuous Unionist before the secession of
Tennessee, more especially if his position in reference to public
affairs generally, was prominent. Dr. R. H. Hodsden, of Sevier, and
Representative of that county and Knox, was hunted for, but evaded
the search until he was induced to believe that he would not
be harshly treated. He then surrendered himself to his pursuers,
and upon giving security for his good conduct and declaring his
submission to the Confederate Government, he was released from
custody. Col. Connelly F. Trigg, chairman of the chief committee in
the Union Convention at Knoxville and Greeneville, of May and June,
feared with good reason that he would be arrested. He therefore made
his escape speedily but with difficulty through the mountains into
Kentucky. Other lawyers, known to have been friends of the Union,
were admitted to the practice of their profession before Judge
Humphreys, upon their submission to the Confederate Government.
[Illustration: HON. C. F. TRIGG.]
During this time, General Zolicoffer, whose camp was on the
Kentucky border, made a visit to Knoxville, and by his direction,
as it was understood, the soldiers who guarded the town and also
the requirement of an oath of allegiance for ingress and egress,
were withdrawn. The general condition of things, however, was so
disturbing and offensive to Union men throughout East Tennessee
that their departure from the country became more frequent. Among
their leaders who had not yet gone away, the person most obnoxious
to the Confederate authorities was the Rev. Wm. G. Brownlow. He had
been from the beginning of their _de facto_ government in the State
a thorn in their flesh. Through his weekly journal, the _Whig_, he
had annoyed them with complaints of acts of oppression and violence,
and a bold use of the freedom of the press, which left no room for
doubt of his loyalty at heart to the United States, yet gave no
occasion for his arrest and punishment. These ills threatened him
so strongly about the middle of October, that he felt compelled to
suspend the publication of his newspaper. In the number issued on
the 21st of that month, he informed its readers of the indictment
impending over him before the grand jury of the Confederate court at
Nashville, and that he could probably “go free by taking the oath”
which the authorities were “administering to other Union men,” but
his “settled purpose” was “not to do any such thing.” He spoke of
“the wanton outrages upon right and liberty” suffered by the people
of East Tennessee “for their devotion to the Constitution and laws of
the Government handed down to them by their fathers and the liberties
secured to them by a war of seven long years of gloom, poverty and
trial;” and concluded with his expectation of “exchanging with proud
satisfaction the editorial chair and the sweet endearments of home
for a cell in the prison or the lot of an exile.” Both these were not
far distant from him. Entreated by friends to be absent for a time,
he went with Rev. Jas. Cumming, an aged Methodist minister, into
Blount County.
Informed that Confederate cavalry were searching for him with deadly
intent, he and others--members of the Legislature, preachers and
farmers--fled into the Smoky Mountains that separate North Carolina
and East Tennessee. There, in Tuckaleeche and Wear’s coves, they
were encamped for days in concealment, but were at length driven by
close pursuit to disperse in pairs, and he, with Rev. W. T. Dowell,
went to a friend’s house six miles from Knoxville. From thence
Brownlow addressed a letter on November 22, by Col. John Williams
to Gen. W. H. Carroll, asserting his innocence of all complicity
in the bridge-burnings; that he had kept the pledge he with other
leading Union men had given Gen. Zolicoffer, “to counsel peace,” and
he claimed protection under the civil law. To this. Gen. Carroll, on
November 28, replied that Mr. Brownlow should meet with no personal
violence by returning to his home, and if he could establish what he
had said by letter, he should have every opportunity to do so before
the civil tribunal, were it necessary: _Provided_, he had committed
no act that would make it necessary for the military law to take
cognizance. Gen. Crittenden had succeeded to the chief command at
Knoxville, and to him, eight days before the above named letter of
Gen. Carroll, the following was written:
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA,
WAR DEPARTMENT, RICHMOND, Nov. 20, 1861.
_To Major General Crittenden_:
DEAR SIR--I have been asked to grant a passport for Brownlow
to leave the State of Tennessee. He is said to have secreted
himself, fearing violence to his person, and to be anxious to
depart from the State.
I cannot give him a formal passport, though I would greatly
prefer seeing him on the other side of our lines as an avowed
enemy. I wish, however, to say that I would be glad to learn that
he has left Tennessee; and I have no objection to interpose to
his leaving if you are willing to let him pass.
Yours, truly,
J. P. BENJAMIN,
Secretary of War.
This advice was obeyed by the transmission of the following:
HEADQUARTERS, KNOXVILLE, TENN., Dec. 4, 1861.
W. G. BROWNLOW, ESQ.: The Major General commanding directs me
to say that upon calling at his headquarters within twenty-four
hours, you can get a passport into Kentucky, accompanied by a
military escort, the route to be designated by Gen. Crittenden.
I am, Sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
A. S. CUNNINGHAM,
Acting Adj’t General.
Before the expiration of the allotted time, Mr. Brownlow, accompanied
by the Hon. John Baxter--who had originally applied at Richmond to
Secretary Benjamin, for the passport--reported in person to General
Crittenden. It was then arranged that he should depart for Kentucky
on the 7th, in charge of Capt. Gillespie and cavalry company. But
on the 6th he was arrested by the marshal upon a warrant issued by
Commissioner Reynolds, and based upon the affidavit of District
Attorney Ramsey, that Brownlow was a traitor to the Confederate
States. Application to bail the prisoner was made by his friends and
a large sum in good bond was offered, but these were refused, and he
was sent to jail. In it he was confined until the last of December,
when upon representation of his dangerous illness to Capt. Monserrat,
then Commandant of the Post, made by his family physician. Dr. O. F.
Hill, he was removed to his own house. The District Attorney had the
case of the prisoner taken up in court, and read to the Commissioner
a letter from Secretary Benjamin to the Attorney of some length,
personally historical and explanatory, concerning the promise of a
passport to the offender, upon his surrender. It concluded with the
words:
Under all the circumstances, therefore, if Brownlow is exposed to
harm from his arrest, I shall deem the honor of the Government
so far compromitted as to consider it my duty to urge on the
President a pardon for any offense of which he may be found
guilty; and I repeat the expression of my regret that he was
prosecuted, however evident may be his guilt.
Thereupon the District Attorney entered a _nolle-prosequi_ in the
case, and Commissioner Reynolds ordered the prisoner’s discharge. He
was instantly arrested by the military authorities, and a guard of
soldiers placed around his house day and night. For the greater part
of January and February his bodily illness continued, partly owing
no doubt to mental anxiety and troubles in the midst of enemies,
some of whom cordially hated and annoyed him. From the threatenings
that surrounded him, the apprehensions they naturally awakened,
and the vexations of his life in custody, he was delivered by the
obedience of Major Monserrat to an order by telegraph from the
Richmond Secretary of War, authorizing him “to send Brownlow out of
Tennessee.” On the third of March, the irrepressible friend of the
Union departed on his journey for another and, certainly for him a
better country, than that in which he sojourned and where he had with
singular determination and zeal waged an angry contest against odds.
Defeated at home, he left it with strong hope of the coming time when
the cause which he had deeply at heart should be there victorious
and he among the victors. His departure at the time, and in the
manner adopted, could not do otherwise than afford a sense of relief
not only to him and his friends, but also to many of his enemies. In
this latter class were some who would have been gratified had he been
sent to jail at Tuscaloosa or even to the gallows, for their passions
against him as the persistent “very head and front” of offence to
them, were kindled to white heat. And the _Register_ of the town
expressed their mind, in declaring the action of the Secretary of
War as “worse than a crime--a blunder,” and that the authorities had
“been outwitted and over-reached diplomatically” by giving a “pledge
to convey Brownlow within the Hessian lines.” Besides, they feared
that the results to the Confederate supremacy in East Tennessee of
his influence and work north of the State, would be as that journal
predicted, disastrous. It was with delays and difficulties he reached
Nashville; but after a journey of two hundred miles, requiring twelve
days, on the fifteenth of March he was delivered by his military
Confederate escort within the Federal lines at that city. There he
was heartily welcomed. Among those who greeted him were his former
East Tennessee compatriots, Andrew Johnson, then Military Governor
of the State, Horace Maynard and Connelly F. Trigg. They and he were
glad to meet again on soil of the United States where, under its
protection, they were free.
For along time previous, less conspicuous Union men had been leaving
East Tennessee for Kentucky in smaller or larger companies. The
stream of departure was sometimes feeble, at others strong, but
always continuous. Among those who left in the earlier part of that
time was R. L. Stanford, M.D., of Sullivan County. His compulsory
expatriation resembled that of many that occurred. On his return to
East Tennessee, a Surgeon of the United States Army under General
Burnside, in September, 1863, he gave substantially a narrative of
his escape that shows the dangers to single refugees:
In 1861 his Union sentiments made him very obnoxious to many of his
neighbors. One day, returning home from visits to patients, he found
on approaching it, that he had to pass through an array of armed men
on both sides of the way. He braced up his nerves and rode between
the threatening lines with his hat off and bowing to the right and
left as he proceeded. No one of his enemies, who were also his
neighbors, was willing to take the responsibility of being the first
to fire upon him; and unhurt, he passed the gauntlet. That night
he concluded, from written warnings, that it was prudent he should
obey the order given him to leave the country. In his journey next
day to Kentucky by way of Cumberland Gap, he was accompanied by Rev.
Mr. M., a Methodist minister. At night they halted at a wayside inn,
north of the Clinch Mountains, where a few Confederate officers soon
arrived. One of them (Col. David Cummings) and Dr. Stanford being
acquaintances, they held a friendly conversation while imbibing
moderately of the drink, stronger than water, set before them by the
landlord.
“Doctor,” said the Colonel, “let me ask where you are going?”
“To tell you the truth, Colonel,” replied the Doctor, “I am going
over the mountains to buy some cattle of these Kentuckians to feed
our people.”
During the colloquy Colonel C. made a significant motion to his
fellow-officer, not unobserved by the watchful refugee. The Methodist
minister being of a timid nature, had meanwhile taken a seat at the
farther end of the long front porch, with his hat pulled over his
ears to avoid recognition. Soon night fell, supper was announced, and
while it went forward Dr. Stanford, feigning illness, rose from the
table and went down the road he had just traveled until a covert of
bushes was reached. He knew that the two Confederate officers would
shortly pass by on their way from Cumberland Gap to Bean’s Station
in the great valley of East Tennessee, and from weary waiting in
concealment he was at length relieved by the sound of their horses’
feet approaching. When arrived opposite the spot where he hid, they
halted, and the owner of a cabin across the way obeyed their summons
to its door. Frightened at first by the thought that he was about to
be discovered, he soon dismissed all anxiety upon over-hearing the
conversation that ensued between Col. Cummings and the man of the
house, to whom the former gave a letter for delivery to the army
messenger who would pass by the next morning to Cumberland Gap.
At a very early hour the next day, the two refugees resumed their
journey. When they were entirely beyond hearing upon the road, the
physician said to the minister: “I think it probable that Col.
Cummings has left a letter to be sent to the Gap for our arrest
there. If the messenger carrying it overtakes us on the way, I
shall instantly shoot him.” At that early period of the war, people
generally were unaccustomed to the pre-meditated destruction of human
life, and some of them at least were slow to think of it as wearing
any complexion but that of bloody murder. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the face of the Christian minister, on hearing the
deadly intention of his companion, should have lost its usual color.
“He turned as white as a sheet.”
Arrived at Cumberland Gap without adventure, Dr. Stanford met with a
Confederate Lieutenant--his personal friend--who had joined the army
under constraint. The young man, knowing the mind of the refugee,
gave him in conversation without the camp and under the pledge of
secrecy, the word and sign by which he might pass the sentries on
the road over the Gap.[26] The minister earnestly dissuaded him
from attempting to cross the mountain, and failing in this effort,
lay sleepless throughout the night, tossed with fears of ills that
would befall them on the morrow. Breakfast over, the Doctor rode
unconcernedly on his way without any interference from the sentinels,
while the minister, abandoning the enterprise, stood and watched his
companion’s progress in ascending the mountain gap.
Once safely beyond interruption, the refugee put spurs to his horse
and rode swiftly forward. By and by, with the mountain fairly left
behind, he checked his horse and fell into reflections upon his
home--his wife--his children. Should he ever see them again? Perhaps
not--certainly not soon--probably not for years. And then, what would
be his personal future? The perils which ordinarily attend human life
are doubly increased to one adventuring as he was among strangers
at a time when the whole country was involved in violent conflict.
Gathering together the reins that hung loosely on his horse’s neck,
and lifting up his head he saw just before him a company of armed
men. “Ah, then,” was his thought, “I am to be foiled after all, and
taken back a prisoner to the Gap.” Rallying courage, he rode forward,
asked for a drink of water, and was told to help himself with a gourd
from the spring near by. The men looked at him with curious and
suspicious eyes. One of them said to him bluntly:
“What are you: Union man or Confederate?”
“Now, gentlemen,” said he, “that’s hardly a fair question. As you are
decidedly in the majority, it seems only right that you should first
tell me what you are.”
He was answered with a smile, but was also assured that their
question could not be met with such evasion. He then boldly said he
was for the Union.
“So are we,” they replied. “These rebels have come and taken
possession of the Gap, and we Kentuckians have met here to see what
they are after.”
From that friendly encounter the refugee went forward without
molestation to his journey’s end, volunteered in the service of the
United States army and was appointed a surgeon.
On the 20th of January, 1862, the battle of Fishing Creek, or Mill’s
Springs, Kentucky, was fought and the victory won by General Thomas,
of the United States army, produced a strong, disturbing sensation
among the Confederates at Knoxville. For this there were good
reasons. The battle-field was not far distant; it was the first fight
of any importance that was at all near the town; the Confederate
chief Zolicoffer and his subordinate Generals, Crittenden and
Carroll, had been successively in command at Knoxville, and many of
their troops had been stationed there at different times. Upon their
defeat, they went according to the rule with Buonaparte’s soldiers
upon their defeat at Waterloo: _sauve qui peut_; and some of them in
the pell-mell flight were not slow in reaching Knoxville. The tidings
they carried created intense excitement, anger and fear. At first the
blame of the defeat was attributed chiefly to Gen. Crittenden and his
inferior in office, Gen. Carroll, both of whom, it was alleged, were
drunk on the eve of the occasion. The story ran, that Zolicoffer,
who was slain in the fight, had opposed the attack upon the Federal
army, and that being over-ruled, he had entered on it reluctantly.
All the reproaches visited upon Crittenden and Carroll grew out of,
or were plausibly justified by, their reputation for using spirituous
liquors to excess. When the agitation subsided, the Fishing Creek
tales were found to be untrue. Gen. Crittenden, from being cursed as
an inebriate and almost suspected as a traitor, became an object of
friendly sympathy as a victim of ill luck in war. Popular opinion
is always capricious and prone to undue elation or depression in
prosperous or adverse circumstances. The wrath to which calamities
move the thoughtless and passionate must be vented upon somebody,
and it is apt to turn upon him through whose well known frailty the
calamity may easily have been incurred. The intemperate man has to
suffer for a time at least, on occasions of ill to which he is a
party, from the quick presumption in people’s minds that his vicious
indulgence stands as an open door to all blunder and disaster.
The fall of Fort Donelson on February 1, 1862, had been followed by
a panic at Nashville that was ludicrous in some of its scenes and
incidents. It spread, feebler and with less extravagant display, to
other places in Tennessee. The small migration of families to Georgia
from Knoxville immediately on the heels of the disaster was really
needless, for the Fort was more than two hundred miles distant, with
the Cumberland Mountains intervening. Governor Isham G. Harris and
the Legislature felt compelled to flee from Nashville. He took up his
residence at Memphis and assembled there a quorum of the Legislature,
which passed an act calling the State militia between the ages of
eighteen and forty-five into active military service. The Governor
took steps promptly to enforce the law, but in East Tennessee the
preliminary measures were not very effective. In many instances the
people refused to attend muster at their regimental parade grounds,
where, indeed, they had not been used for many years to assemble for
military training. It was not long before many men sought refuge in
Kentucky from the conscription. They left their homes in companies
of ten, fifty or a hundred, starting at night, sometimes concealing
themselves during the day and resuming their journey under cover
of the darkness, and at length passed over the border, rejoicing
that they were free from the strong hand that would force them to
fight against the United States. With the joy they felt at their
deliverance was mingled an earnest purpose to return, attended by
powerful friends, to their beloved land and restore it to the nation.
A body of refugees numbering six or seven hundred, assembled early
one day at Blain’s Cross Roads, Grainger County, and took up their
line of march for the mountains on the northern frontier. More than
half safely escaped from the Confederate cavalry which pursued them,
but over three hundred, who had in the morning been unintentionally
separated from their companions, were taken prisoners. Cowardice
was imputed to them by ready censors for surrendering at once to
a force numerically inferior. But they were surrounded by their
enemies in an open field--they were comparatively unarmed--had no
able and efficient leader nor any military training--and were mostly
of immature age. As these young men, with weary eyes and feet, were
marched under guard through the streets of Knoxville on their way
to jail in the South, for the crime of trying to escape enforced
service in arms against the United States, an observer who loved the
Union might be pardoned if his throat choked with a throb of pity
from his heart and his cheek flushed hot with righteous indignation
at the violence. How many of the prisoners, most of whom were only
just old enough to be included in the conscript law, ever saw their
homes again it is impossible to say. Probably some died in a Georgia
prison or on the way to it. Some probably in utter hopelessness were
persuaded to wear the grey, and died in the Confederate service. Some
may have escaped at one time or another to within the Union lines. It
is doubtful if more than a few of them ever returned.
“Parson Brownlow,” as he was often called, made this entry in his
Diary for 1862, while he was in prison:
SATURDAY, MARCH 1.--Thirty Union men, well dressed, were arrested
by the cavalry who found them leaving for Kentucky to avoid the
draft ordered by Governor Harris. Seventeen of them agreed to
join the Confederate army to keep out of jail.
But a Sabbath past they brought twenty Union men out of jail,
arms tied behind them with strong ropes, and marched them with
bayonets to the depot, cursing and insulting them, and sent them
off to Tuscaloosa to be held as prisoners of war.... To have seen
them coming out of the jail yard and entering the street would
have brought tears from the eyes.
Brownlow, two days afterwards, started for Nashville, and the work of
arresting refugees had then only begun.
Mr. Edward J. Sanford, at the time a young man, was, as he is
now, a citizen of Knoxville. His narrative of the escape made by
him and others through the mountains, from the conscript law, is
interesting in itself.[27] It is still more so, as illustrating
the privations, dangers and sufferings through which men of like
principles and decision with him, had to pass at that time, in going
from East Tennessee to a land of liberty, under law and in harmony
with their conscience and will. There did not appear to be any
hope of deliverance coming to them from without. It is true that
early in March, 1862, the 2nd Regiment of East Tennessee Infantry,
accompanied by one company each of the 1st Regiment, East Tennessee
Infantry, and Monday’s Kentucky Cavalry, all commanded by Col. J.
P. T. Carter, adventured from Kentucky through Big Creek Gap in the
Cumberland Mountains into Campbell County, East Tennessee. They
found the Gap blockaded by the Confederate troops, but managed to
pass it, attacked a force at Sharp’s Church in the neighborhood and
routed it, wounding, killing and capturing a considerable number of
the men. The raiders’ cavalry went down the valley to Jacksborough,
where they encountered the scouting party of Capt. James Gibson. In
the fight that ensued, Capt. Gibson was slain and Capt. Winstead, of
the Sappers and Miners, was taken prisoner, but no important results
followed the adventure. Col. Carter without delay retreated into
Kentucky, and at that date no other like military expedition was even
expected.