Though the American Civil War in East Tennessee did not hold the significance of the other major theaters, the conflict there transformed into an insurgency movement like no other in the South. Contrary to the majority of the South, the area was tragically divided politically. In the vote for Tennessee to secede from the Union in June 1861, almost two-thirds of East Tennesseeans voted against secession; but that left over one-third that did, which proved to be a deadly formula for years of bitter strife and conflict.
Political Division
After Tennessee seceded from the United States in June 1861, a convention held in East Tennessee on two separate occasions voted to secede from the state. In response, the state governor sent Brigadier-General Felix Zollicoffer with 4,000 troops into East Tennessee. The presence of the Confederates only served to inflame an already agitated population into action. In the fall, the three eastern mountain congressional districts elected three Unionists who attempted to take their seats in Washington, not Richmond. Vocal Unionists such as William ‘Parson’ Brownlow and Andrew Johnson noted that a de facto free state had been occupied by ‘rebels.’
Strategic Value of East Tennessee
Complicating matters, the region was strategically vital because it either contained or provided access to crucial transportation and natural resources for the Confederacy. Through East Tennessee ran two railroads that provided the only direct connection between Virginia and the lower South, the two connecting in Knoxville. Tennessee had been the last state to secede from the United States, which ‘completed’ the most direct north-south rail line between Virginia and the Deep South. To allow the eastern part of the state to secede would have been to lose that strategically vital direct transportation link for the newly formed Confederacy.
The region also provided access to Saltville, Virginia, which provided the Confederacy with the majority of its salt – a necessary commodity in preserving meat for the population and the armies. To the south lay the copper rich Ducktown region, which provided about 90% of the Confederacy’s copper, invaluable for their cannon and ammunition manufacturing.
Political Division Becomes Military Conflict
Facing such an overwhelming numerical strength, the Unionists decided to burn the nine most important railway bridges in the eastern part of the state on November 8, 1861. The inability of Confederates to send reinforcements to the region would facilitate the invasion by Union forces from southwest Kentucky. Unionists formulated the plan and presented it to Union military commanders in Camp Dick Robinson, Kentucky (near present-day Lancaster) to coordinate the Federal invasion. The plan met with approval in Washington and its designers returned to East Tennessee to implement the operation. The bridge-burners managed to destroy several of the bridges. Confederate forces imprisoned leading Unionists, including Brownlow, and hanged several of them for sedition – they eventually exiled Brownlow.
Opposing leaders in East Tennessee did not form militias as during the American Revolution, but they did form regular units of Confederate troops and groups of ‘loyalist’ partisans, i.e. defenders of the Union. Further, some estimates of men who left their East Tennessee homes to seek enlistment in United States units to the north range as high as 30,000. For those who remained in East Tennessee the fratricide devolved into a petite guerre, or guerrilla war.
As in the American Revolution, the loyalty of residents in any given locale depended upon who controlled the area militarily. The Confederacy never deployed enough troops to adequately ‘cover’ the entire region, which meant the loyalty of residents could change depending upon whether or not Confederate troops were in the area. Just as Confederate leaders in East Tennessee feared residents making armed resistance to their hegemony, Abraham Lincoln expressed a similar concern, “Our friends in East Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair, and even now I fear, are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection.”
Tragic Consequences
The fierce loyalties produced by the political division in East Tennessee ensured bitter rivalry that manifest itself on battlefields and in backyards throughout the region. A resident of the area summarized the conflict succinctly in 1862 when she wrote,
“Some when they walk now march after the drum, with a sword or musket in the ranks of the Confederate army under the new flag…
Others march under the glorious old Stars and Stripes, and they who were once united in
the strongest bonds of friendship are now ready to kill each other, only waiting for the word from their leaders.
God pity the poor soldiers, and forgive those who have caused all this.”
The Confederates fought, politically and militarily, a hostile population throughout the two years it occupied the area. The Confederacy essentially waged a counterinsurgent war within Eastern Tennessee from 1861-1863. Then, after losing the region to a Federal army, it fought for many months afterward to regain it. But old scars do not heal quickly nor does such bitter warfare end abruptly. The killing in East Tennessee stemming from the 'revolution' within the Civil War continued for many years after the end of the Confederacy at Appomattox in April 1865.
Sources:
Coulter, E. Merton. William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the Southern Highlands (Knoxville, TN.: University of Tennessee Press, 1999).
Fisher, Noel C. War at Every Door: Partisan Politics & Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860-1869 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
Temple, Oliver P. East Tennessee and the Civil War (Cincinnati, OH.: The Robert Clark Company, 1889).
Richard Blackmon - Richard Blackmon has worked in the public history sector, taught at the collegiate level, and in historic preservation. His undergraduate ...
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