CHAPTER X.

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the soldiers who guarded the town and also the requirement of an oath of allegiance for ingress and egress, were withdrawn.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.