THE “SWITZERLAND OF AMERICA.”
From the grassy hills and vales of Southwest Virginia, I passed over by
railroad into East Tennessee.
At first sight, the “Switzerland of America” is apt, I think, to
disappoint one. It is a country of pleasant hills, bounded and broken
into by mountains which do not remind you of the Alps. The cottages of
the inhabitants lack the picturesque element. A few first-class farmers
have comfortable-looking painted or brick houses; while scattered
everywhere over the country are poverty-stricken, weather-blackened
little framed dwellings and log-huts. Many of these are without windows;
the inmates living by the daylight let in through doors, and the
firelight from open chimneys. Good barns are rare. The common class of
villages are without sidewalks or paved streets. In the rainy season
they are wretched. They look like Northern villages that have set out to
travel and got stuck in the mud. One or two are noteworthy.
Greenville, the county seat of Greene County, is chiefly interesting as
being the home of the President. It stands on broken ground, and is
surrounded by a fine hilly country shaded by oaken groves. The town, as
I saw it one wet morning, was eminently disagreeable. The mud came up to
the very doors of its old, dilapidated, unpainted wooden houses. Its
more pretentious, white-painted and brick dwellings were not quite so
deep in the mire. A hundred chimney smokes draped the brown irregular
roofs. President Johnson’s house is on Main Street; a commonplace,
respectable brick dwelling. The Rebels smashed the windows for him in
wartimes, but they have been replaced, and the house is now occupied by
the county sheriff. Every man knows “Andy Johnson.” He has a good
reputation for honesty, but I was told he was “hard on money matters.” A
prominent citizen who knew him intimately, said to me, “Johnson is a man
of much greater ability than he has ever had credit for. When he was a
tailor, he did his work well,—always a good honest job. He has many good
traits, and a few bad ones. He is surly and vindictive, and a man of
strong prejudices, but thoroughly a patriot.”
There is in Greenville a spring which bursts out of a hill-side in
sufficient volume to carry a mill. The country abounds in springs, some
of a curious character. In Johnson County, in the mountainous northeast
corner of the State, there is a subterranean reservoir of water, out of
which issue in the night-time, during the spring months, numbers of
small black perch, of a blind species, which are caught in traps at the
mouth of the spring.
Knoxville, (named in honor of Revolutionary General Knox,) the most
considerable town of East Tennessee, is situated on abrupt hills, on the
north bank of the Holston River, which is navigable by steamers to this
point. Here is the junction of the East Tennessee and Virginia, and East
Tennessee and Georgia railroads. The city has something more than eight
thousand inhabitants. It was formerly the capital of the State. It is
surrounded by fortified hills.
The place received rough treatment during the war. The Bell House, at
which I stopped, was a miserable shell, carpetless and dilapidated, full
of broken windows. The landlord apologized for not putting it into
repair. “I don’t know how long I shall stop here. Hotel-keeping a’n’t my
business. Nigger-dealing is my business. But that’s played out. I’ve
bought and sold in my day over six hundred niggers,”—spoken with
mournful satisfaction, mingled pride and regret. “Now I don’t know what
I shall turn my hand to. I’m a Georgian; I came up here from Atlanta
time it was burned.”
At the table of the Bell House, a Southern gentleman who sat next me
called out to one of the waiters, a good-looking colored man, perhaps
thirty years of age,—“Here, boy!”
“My name is Dick,” said the “boy,” respectfully.
“You’ll answer to the name I call you, or I’ll blow a hole through you!”
swore the Southern gentleman.
Dick made no reply, but went about his business. The Southern gentleman
proceeded, addressing the company:—
“Last week, in Chattanooga, I said to a nigger I found at the railroad,
‘Here, Buck! show me the baggage-room.’ He said, ‘My name a’n’t Buck.’ I
just put my six-shooter to his head, and, by ——! he didn’t stop to think
what his name was, but showed me what I wanted.”
This gentlemanly way of dealing with the “d——d impudent niggers” was
warmly applauded by all the guests at the table, except one, who did not
see the impudence; showing that they were gentlemen of a similar spirit.
There were a great many freedmen crowded into Knoxville from Georgia and
the Carolinas, whence they had escaped during the war. The police were
arresting and sending them back. East Tennesseeans, though opposed to
slavery and secession, do not like niggers. There is at this day more
prejudice against color among the middle and poorer classes—the “Union”
men, of the South, who owned few or no slaves—than among the planters
who owned them by scores and hundreds. There was a freedmen’s
school-house burned in Knoxville, while I was in that part of the State;
and on reaching Nashville, I learned that the negro testimony bill had
been defeated in the legislature by the members from East Tennessee.
East Tennessee, owning but a handful of slaves, and having little
interest in slavery, opposed secession by overwhelming majorities. She
opposed the holding of a convention, at the election of February, 1861,
by a vote of 30,903 against 5,577; and, at the election in June
following, opposed the ordinance of separation submitted to the people
by the legislature, by 32,923 votes against 14,780. The secession
element proved a bitter and violent minority. Neighborhood feuds ensued,
of a fierce political and personal character. When the Confederate army
came in, the secessionists pointed out their Union neighbors, and caused
them to be robbed and maltreated. They exposed the retreats of hunted
conscripts lying out in forests and caves, and assisted in the pursuit
of loyal refugees. When the National forces possessed the country, the
Union men retaliated. It was then the persecutor’s turn to be stripped
of his property and driven from his home.
I was sorry to find the fires of these old feuds still burning. The
State Government was in the hands of Union men, and Rebels and refugees
from the Union army were disfranchised. Secessionists, who assisted at
the hanging and robbing of Union men, and burned their houses, were
receiving just punishment for their crimes in the civil courts and at
the hands of the sheriff. This was well; and it should have been enough.
But those who had suffered so long and so cruelly at the hands of their
enemies did not think so. Returning Rebels were mobbed; and if one had
stolen back unawares to his home, it was not safe for him to remain
there. I saw in Virginia one of these exiles, who told me how homesickly
he pined for the hills and meadows of East Tennessee, which he thought
the most delightful region in the world. But there was a rope hanging
from a tree for him there, and he dared not go back. “The bottom rails
are on top,” said he: “that is the trouble.” The Union element, and the
worst part of the Union element, was uppermost. There was some truth in
this statement. It was not the respectable farming class, but the
roughs, who kept the old fires blazing. Many secessionists and Union
men, who had been neighbors before the war, were living side by side
again, in as friendly relations as ever.
At Strawberry Plain, on the Holston River, I saw a manifestation of this
partisan spirit. A laboring man, whom I met on the butment of the burned
railroad bridge, was telling me about the Rebel operations at that
place, when a fine fellow came dashing into the village on horseback.
“There’s a dog-goned Rebel now!” said my man, eyeing him with baleful
glances. “He’s a rebel colonel, just come back. He’ll get warned; and
then if he don’t leave, he must look out!”
I think if the “dog-goned Rebel” had seen what I saw, in the deadly
determination of the man, he would have needed no further warning.
I listened to many tales of persecution and suffering endured by loyal
East Tennesseeans during the war. Here is the outline of one, related to
me by a farmer in Greene County.
“After the Rebel Conscript Act passed, I started with my son and a
hundred other refugees to go over the mountains into Kentucky. The
Rebels pursued us, put on the track by some of our secesh neighbors.
Some escaped, my son with them; but I was taken, and brought back with
irons on my wrists. That was the twenty-fifth of July, 1863. I was
carried to Richmond, and kept in Castle Thunder till the twentieth of
October. They then put me on a train to take me to Salisbury prison, in
North Carolina. I was in a box car, and I found that a board at one
corner of it was so loose that I could pull it off with my hands. Just
at night, when we were about eighteen miles from Salisbury, and the
train was running about ten miles an hour, I pulled away the board, and
jumped off. I took to the fields, and tramped till I came to the Yadkin
River, where a nigger took me over in his canoe. I tramped all night,
and lay by the next day in the woods, and tramped again the next night,
and lay by again the next day, and so on for fourteen nights and days;
in which time I travelled three hundred miles. They were moonlight
nights, and I got along very well, only I near-about starved. I lived on
raw corn and pumpkins. I kept the line of the Western Railroad; I
flanked the depots and pickets, but I was several times nigh being
caught. I never entered a house, or passed near one, if I could help it.
It was a hard, long, lonesome tramp. I did not speak to a human being,
except the nigger that took me across the Yadkin, and another I almost
run over on the road as I was coming to Asheville. He said to me, ‘Good
evening.’ I muttered back something, and went on. I hadn’t gone far
before I changed my mind. Something said to me, ‘Ask help of that
nigger.’ I was sick and worn out, and almost perishing for want of food.
Besides, I did not know the country; I saw I was coming to a town, and
there was danger I might be taken. I went back, and said to the nigger,
‘Can you give me something to eat?’ He was sitting on the ground; but he
jumped up, and looked at me by the moonlight, and said, ‘Where do you
want to go?’ I told him. Then he knew I was a Union man running away
from the Rebels. He told me to wait for him there, and came back in a
little while with a heap of bread and beef. Never anything tasted so
good. After I had eaten, he gave me directions how to avoid the guard,
and strike the road beyond Asheville. I came over the mountains, and
reached here the fourteenth night.”
East Tennessee contributed a liberal quota to the national army.
Twenty-five thousand loyal refugees escaped into Kentucky, and fought
their way back again with Burnside’s forces in 1863.