CHAPTER XIX.

FUND FOR RELIEF OF EAST TENNESSEE AT BOSTON, PORTLAND AND NEW YORK--MR. TAYLOR AND FAMILY IN GREAT TROUBLE--THEIR TIMELY RELIEF--KNOXVILLE EAST TENNESSEE RELIEF SOCIETY--PENNSYLVANIA COMMITTEE--EFFECTIVE WORK IN RELIEVING DESTITUTION--SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 316

APPENDICES 337

ILLUSTRATIONS.

ASSAULT ON FORT SANDERS _Frontispiece._

PORTRAIT OF HON. EDWARD EVERETT 22

PORTRAIT OF MR. LLOYD P. SMITH 34

PORTRAIT OF REV. WM. G. BROWNLOW 77

PORTRAIT OF HON. THOMAS A. R. NELSON 90

PORTRAIT OF HON. JOHN BAXTER 108

PORTRAIT OF HON. ANDREW JOHNSON 129

PORTRAIT OF HON. CONNELLY F. TRIGG 153

PORTRAIT OF HON. HORACE MAYNARD 174

PORTRAIT OF GEN. A. E. BURNSIDE 208

PORTRAIT OF GEN. S. P. CARTER 245

PORTRAIT OF GEN. JOSEPH A. COOPER 294

PORTRAIT OF REV. NATHANIEL G. TAYLOR 313

INTRODUCTION.

FIRST SETTLEMENT IN EAST TENNESSEE--NATURAL FEATURES OF THE REGION--ITS PEOPLE--ITS CENTRAL TOWN.

“With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow; If bleak and barren Scotia’s hills arise; There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow; Here peaceful are the vales, and pure the skies, And freedom fires the soul, and sparkles in the eyes.” BEATTIE.

The first English fort built in Eastern Tennessee was that of Loudon, in 1757, so called for the Earl of Loudon, at the time Governor of Virginia. It stood at the junction of the Tellico and Little Tennessee rivers, now in Monroe County, and 35 miles southwest of Knoxville. Its garrison of from two to three hundred men was, with three exceptions, massacred by the Indians in 1760, and with it a number of women and children.

The first permanent settlement of Anglo-Americans in the region was made on the Watauga River, not far from the present northwestern border of North Carolina. As early as 1748, explorers, traders and hunters from Virginia had visited that part of the land. Thirteen years afterwards, nineteen men were attracted to it from the same State by the abundance of its game and were employed as sportsmen on Clinch and Powell’s rivers for eighteen months. Another company went towards it from North Carolina, but with the exception of the famous Indian hunter and fighter Daniel Boone, they halted at the spot where now is Abingdon, Virginia. Probably he had before been on the waters of the Watauga, for a beech tree, that stands on Boone’s creek, a tributary of that river, not far from Jonesboro, still bears this inscription,

“_D. Boon cilled a Bar on tree in the year 1760._”

These visits were followed by others from companies of hunting pioneers. In 1764 Boone returned to the same region from his home on the Yadkin River, North Carolina. Another pioneer gave him a glowing description of the country which is now Kentucky, and in 1771 he endeavored with a party of eighty persons--forty of whom were hunters--to pass into it through Cumberland Gap. They were waylaid and fiercely assailed by Indians and were forced to abandon the enterprise. Some four years later it was successfully renewed, and Boone, passing over the Clinch and Cumberland mountains from East Tennessee, led in the establishment beyond them of a great Commonwealth.

An eminent historian of the United States, after relating the wrongs to which the people of North Carolina were subjected in 1770-71, under the provincial Governor, Tryon, proceeds to tell how and where they fled from oppression.

“Without concert--instinctively impelled by discontent and the wearisomeness of life exposed to bondage--men crossed the Alleghanies and descending into the basin of the Tennessee, made their homes in the valley of the Watauga. There no lawyer followed them; there no King’s Governor came to be their Lord; there the flag of England never waved. They rapidly extended their settlements. By degrees they took possession of the more romantic banks of the broader Nolachucky, whose sparkling waters spring out of the tallest mountains in the range. The climate was invigorating; the health-giving westerly wind blew at all seasons; in spring the wild crab-apple filled the air with the sweetest perfumes. A fertile soil gave to industry good crops of maize; the clear streams flowed pleasantly, without tearing floods; where the closest thickets of spruce and rhododendron flung the cooling shade furthest over the river, trout abounded. The elk and the red deer were not wanting in the natural parks of oak and hickory, of maple, elm, black oak and buckeye. Of quails and turkeys and pigeons there was no end. The golden eagle built its nest on the topmost ledge of the mountain, and might be seen wheeling in wide circles high above the pines, or dropping like a meteor upon its prey. The black bear, whose flesh was held to be the most delicate of meats, grew so fat upon the abundant acorns and chestnuts that he could be run down in a chase of a hundred yards; and sometimes the hunters gave chase to the coward panther, strong enough to beat off twenty dogs, yet flying from one.”[2]

The entire valley of East Tennessee, extending from the southwestern border of Virginia to Northern Georgia, embedded in the mountains, offers peculiar attractions. Nearly fifty years ago an English gentleman, who had lived there several years, published a pamphlet in London,[3] in which he said:

“To one who has resided some years in the valley of East Tennessee, breathing the pure air from its mountains and drinking of its crystal springs, enjoying the sunny smile of its temperature and the cooling shade of its noble forests, delighting the eye and the heart with its fields of fruitfulness which at every turn present a new aspect, it is not ‘England’s laughing meads,’ nor ‘her flowering orchard trees,’ nor yet Lomond and the Trosachs, with all their beauty and historical associations and the magic thrown around them by the exuberant imagination of the poet, that could tempt him again to quit the peaceful solitude, the clear blue sky, the song of the mocking-bird, the note of the dove, the hum of the humming-bird, and the silence of nature where all is echo.”

[Illustration: HON. EDWARD EVERETT.]

The Hon. Edward Everett, in an address he delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, February, 1864, which was called forth by the then suffering condition of the people of East Tennessee in consequence of the war, said of it:

“A more interesting region, or one more entitled to our most active sympathy, is not to be found within the limits of the United States. Forming a part of the noble State of Tennessee, it is in many respects a State in itself, and not a small one either. It consists of the broad valley of the magnificent river, which traverses it from northeast to southwest, three hundred miles in length, and with a varying width of from fifty to seventy-five miles--and of the slopes of the mountains, which separate it on the north from Kentucky, on the southwest from Middle Tennessee, and on the southeast from North Carolina and Georgia: a beautiful valley, between beautiful enclosing hills, fertile many of them to their summits, sparkling with a hundred tributaries to the noble stream which forms its principal feature.

“That river is in some respects one of the most remarkable on the continent. Its northern affluents rise in the State of Virginia, but, as if to read a lesson of patriotism in the very face of the soil, as if to prop the fabric of the Union by the eternal buttresses of the hills, instead of flowing to the Atlantic like the other rivers of Virginia, it gathers up the waters of its tributary streams, Holston and Clinch and French Broad, and connecting Virginia and the Carolinas with East Tennessee, flows southward down to the northwestern corner of Georgia. There, after kissing the feet of the glorious hills of Chattanooga, instead of flowing to the Gulf, its seeming natural direction, it coquets with Northern Alabama, breaks into the Muscle Shoals, plants Decatur at their head and Florence at their feet, and then sweeping back to its native North, traverses the entire width of Tennessee a second time, apparently running up hill--for while it is flowing northward, the Mississippi, parallel to it, and at no great distance, is rolling its floods southward--enters the State of Kentucky, and empties into the Ohio, fifty miles above the junction of that river with the Mississippi, thus binding seven States in its silver circuit, and connecting them all with the great central basin of the continent.

“The soil of Eastern Tennessee is rich; the mountains are filled with coal and almost every variety of ore; their slopes bubble with mineral springs; the climate is temperate and healthful; the territory divided into farms of a moderate size, for the most part tilled by frugal, industrious men, who own the soil, which yields them its well-earned abundance. In no part of the State are there so few slaves; in none is there a more substantial population; in no part of the South is the slave interest so feeble. East Tennessee greatly resembles the lower ranges and fertile valleys of the Alps, and it has been often called the American Switzerland. It is divided into thirty counties, and its population does not, I think, fall short of 300,000 souls.[4]

“But this grand valley, with the hills that enclose it, possesses an interest for us far beyond that which attaches to their geographical features, merely as such. It is one of the most important links in that chain of valley and mountain which traverses the entire North American continent, from northeast to southwest, separating the streams which flow into the Atlantic from those which seek the St. Lawrence, the Ohio and the Mississippi. Forcing its way down into the heart of the region whose alluvial plains are devoted to the culture of tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar by slave labor, this ridge of highlands, with the valleys embosomed in them, from the time you begin to leave the State of Pennsylvania, begins to assume the highest political importance in reference to the present stupendous struggle. Extending to the southwest as far as Northern Alabama, this noble mountain tract, and the valleys enclosed in its parallel and transverse ridges, is, by the character of its climate, soil, and natural productions, the natural ally of the North. Here, if nowhere else, we may truly say, with the German poet:

‘Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit; der Hauch der Grüfte Steigt nicht hinauf, in die reinen Lüfte.’

That means--

‘On the mountain is Freedom; the breath of the vales Rises not up to the pure mountain gales.’”

East Tennessee has been sometimes called the Switzerland of America, and certainly there are strong resemblances between the two countries. They are unlike in that the former is wanting in the lake feature that distinguishes Switzerland. East Tennessee, however, abounds wonderfully in natural springs of pure and limpid water, and has a multitude of creeks and rivers. Some of these last bear euphonious names, as Watauga, Nolachucky, Tellico, Hiwassee and Tennessee. The climatic advantages of the region result, partly, at least, from its having a Southern location and a Northern elevation--peculiarities which a Swiss gentleman who visited it thirty years ago, in fulfillment of his long-cherished desire, was quick to observe.

Following the first immigrants to the region, who were from Virginia and North Carolina, and among whom were some of Scotch-Irish ancestry, others came, particularly to the county seats, directly from the north of Ireland; but the great majority of the settlers were of American birth--hardy and adventurous spirits, in great variety, such as are apt to seek a frontier life.

In the valleys and along the highways and rivers have always been much intelligence and moral worth, with admixtures, as elsewhere found, of ignorance and vice. Sufficient public schools have been sadly wanting in former years; yet education, by which comparatively few profited, has been esteemed and promoted in the Commonwealth from its beginning. Three colleges were established in East Tennessee before the Territory became a State: one each in Washington, Greene and Knox counties; and soon after this century began, county academies were chartered throughout the State.

At first the Presbyterian Church existed almost if not altogether alone, but before long it was succeeded by Methodist and Baptist churches.[5]

Accustomed as have been the people of the more mountainous counties to ruder modes of living and narrower means of education, their social condition is freer, even from healthy restraints. They are gifted with good natural qualities, but these have not been always cultivated to the repression of other traits and tendencies. They are brave, but many of them are liable to needless tests of personal valor; independent, but prone to notions of individual liberty inconsistent with right ideas of law and order; social, but inclined to promote good cheer by artificial means of excitement.

In 1848 a recent diplomatic agent of the United States in India[6] found his way to this very secluded region, seeking, under the pressure of severe domestic bereavement, to “get rid of himself.” He succeeded in doing so by dwelling for the winter at the southern base of the Cumberland Mountains. Afterwards he ascribed to the highlanders among whom he hibernated, three favorite sources of excitement, namely, political stump-speakings, religious camp-meetings, and home-made liquors. An unlearned population, far removed from the world and its thoroughfares, they highly prize their right of suffrage to make legislatures and judges, members of congress, governors and presidents. Their religious instinct, once awakened, is quick to respond to fervent preaching that is sustained by stirring devotional songs. Their animal spirits are apt to be depressed by the monotony of their daily life, and the juice of Indian corn gives relief.[7] That corn is the grain that is chiefly grown in the highlands. Its meal and the salted flesh of hogs are principally their food. Eager candidates for office supply them with mental aliment at heated discussions pending the elections, and the result is that although many of them are without the knowledge acquired at school, all of them are informed concerning questions of public policy. Probably no people of equal numbers can be found in the land who excel those of East Tennessee in acquaintance with current politics. It is to be confessed that more than a few of the mountaineers are deficient in historical lore. Certain great events of the Nation’s earlier life, whose results they have exaggerated, have a firm lodgment in their minds, but lie there unqualified by knowledge of later occurrences. An anecdote related by John Mitchell will illustrate.

Scarcely had the United States diplomatic agent just now spoken of, departed upon an Oriental mission, when the weary Irish patriot arrived from Australia, in this isolated region. He, too, sought retirement, and in Tuckaleechee Cove, near the Smoky Mountains, he found it, with his family. One day some of the neighbors met together, after the not unfrequent idling custom of men in the mountains--perhaps for friendly gossip, or to shoot at a mark in rivalry of skill for a prize. One said:

“Who is this stranger, anyhow? He don’t do nuthin’ only him and his son go fishin’ and shootin’.”

“O,” another replied, “don’t you know who that is? That’s John Mitchell, the exile of the British Government.”

“British Government indeed!” said the first speaker. “I thought we had whipp’d that consarn out long ago.”[8]

One virtue obtains almost universally among the people of East Tennessee--that of hospitality. It has to some extent diminished in the valleys, where the inhabitants live as did their ancestors from plentiful tables and various dishes, but where, since the war ended, the increase of travel and of commercial intercourse with other parts of the country have checked generosity and enlarged prudence. Yet it has lost none of its olden-time proportions in the mountains, where the table lacks nothing in abundance but a good deal in variety; where the narrow range of habitual diet affords small opportunity for skill in cookery, and even that opportunity has not been improved. There the signs of an advanced civilization--the steam-engine, the telegraph and the telephone--have never invaded the air with whistle or wires; but the stranger will be kindly entertained for the night at little or no charge, and probably when he departs in the morning, will be cheered on his way by the expressed hope of his host that he will come again. Not that the landlord thinks money is worthless. For he and his countrymen are sharp traders. Without adventuring at the start upon fixed sums, they “beat about the bush” to find out how much can be had or how little be paid by them, and both buyer and seller are wide awake to “get the best of the bargain.” They also know points of law, and are unduly given to litigation in defense of their real or supposed rights.

Slavery, even in the modified, domestic garb it wore among them, had a depressing, degrading influence upon the white common laborers. This was more obviously so with the several thousands of inert, improvident people, such as are to be found more or less in all regions, but who are apt to be more numerous where the climate is genial and a few acres of land with a poor tenement can be cheaply rented. These led an Arab sort of life, living in a log cabin and growing a crop of corn, then, not “folding their tents,” but packing up their “plunder”--the synonym for household goods--and flitting away with their children and dogs to a cabin of another proprietor. For this class, who lived “from hand to mouth,” and whose contentment was partly due to the fact that their covetousness had no incitements to indulgence, the negroes of substantial families had an unconcealed contempt. Another and better class consisted more numerously of diligent and thrifty farming people. In them slavery induced, by some subtle, indefinable influence, an industrial languor. It approximated them to the slaves, despite their difference in color and personal relation to the masters; and it barred their way to improvement of condition, by pushing them as tenants from the more fertile acres which the slaves tilled, to the thin soil of the hillsides. Now, under the reign of freedom, these small but industrious farmers have access by lease to the richer lands.

The mountaineers, strictly speaking, felt no concern about the institution of slavery itself, and knew but little. Here and there among them were men of competent means, some of whom owned a few negroes. Generally they looked upon slavery as something foreign to their social life, but they had no imperative, philanthropic impulses to contend against it. They would have been displeased at its coming near their homes in the imperious majesty it wore in the cotton States. At the same time they were satisfied to let men of the South keep serfs at pleasure, but they counted it no business of theirs to help in the work. If the perpetuity of the Union or that of slavery were the question at issue, they would have no hesitation in deciding. Let slavery perish and the Union live. Yes! the Union--the Government handed down to them from Washington and his compatriots! _It_ must survive. For it they would fight, and, if necessary, die.

While the men high up on the hills had no philosophic reflections nor any humanitarian hate towards slavery, a strong aversion to it had been manifested from an early period by some men of the valleys. “A powerful appeal for the abolition of slavery” was published as a communication in the _Knoxville Gazette_, 1797. It called a meeting of the citizens of East Tennessee at a town in Washington County, March, 1797, to form a Manumission Society. The communication bears internal evidence of having been written by a member of the Society of Friends. Not then, but in 1815 the proposed society was organized.[9] The Rev. John Rankin, born February 4, 1793, Jefferson County, East Tennessee, graduated at Washington College, was ordained a Presbyterian minister, but having imbibed anti-slavery sentiments from his mother in Rockbridge County, Virginia, he removed his residence from Tennessee to a free State and became a leading abolitionist. Before his recent death at the advanced age of nearly ninety years, at Ironton, Ohio, he gave authority to the statement that “the sentiment of abolitionism originated in Tennessee about 1814, there being then an anti-slavery society in Jefferson County, East Tennessee.”[10] The Manumission Society first mentioned, prosecuted its work diligently for years. In March, 1819, “_The Manumission Intelligencer_,” a weekly newspaper, was issued at Jonesboro, and its publication gave place, the year following, to “_The Emancipator_,” monthly, by Elijah Embree, one of two brothers, Friends, from Pennsylvania, who manufactured iron near Elizabethton. On his death, it was succeeded by “_The Genius of Universal Emancipation_,” at Greeneville, published by Benjamin Lundy, a Friend, from New Jersey. It lived until 1824.

After that date, the sentiment of aversion to slavery survived and in various ways was manifested, and although it was eventually counteracted by the political strife which grew out of the subject, it never ceased to exist firmly in many minds. A home in the great valley of East Tennessee was not formerly adapted to the cultivation of pro-slavery sympathies in persons of humane disposition and healthy sensibilities. For along the highway through that valley, slave-dealers transported negroes whom they had bought in Virginia and intended to sell in Southwestern States. The sales of these unfortunates, often because of their masters’ necessities, had in some instances separated families: and lest the men, moved by sorrow over the disruption, by aversion to their destined market, or by desire for freedom, should escape on the way, the dealers fettered them two and two to a strong chain running lengthwise between. It was pathetic to see them march, thus bound, through the towns, and to hear their melodious voices in plaintive singing as they went. By-standers then saw slavery without the disguise, with which Laurence Sterne pronounced it “still a bitter draught,” and the spectacle was apt to create or strengthen antipathy to the institution in unbiased minds.

Knoxville, the central town of this entire region, stands on the northern bank of the Tennessee River, four miles below the junction of the Holston and French Broad rivers, which rise, the first in Virginia and the second in North Carolina. From 1792 to 1796 it was the capital of the “Territory south of the river Ohio,” and from 1796 to 1816, that of the State of Tennessee. Its society had at that time a relative distinction for character and influence which it has never lost In 1865 the town received a strong impulse to growth, from which its population in 1870 was 8,682, in 1880 it was 9,693, and in 1886 it was about 30,000. The great, and of late, rapid increase is largely owing to immigration from Northern States. Thrifty and enterprising new-comers have added in a marked degree to the trade and prosperity of the place. Like results have followed more or less throughout East Tennessee, especially at Chattanooga, since the war disclosed the natural advantages of the whole region to the knowledge of the world outside of it. So obvious are the benefits that will accrue to it from worthy immigrants, that even the most zealous sectionalists have yielded their prejudices so far as to give even “Yankees” not only a welcome, but an invitation to dwell in the land.

[Illustration: LLOYD P. SMITH.]

Lloyd P. Smith and Frederick Collins, of Philadelphia, visited the region in March, 1864, upon a benevolent errand. In their published report of the visit they said: “The existing war is clearly destined to introduce Northern men, Northern ideas and Northern enterprise into the border States, and, as our military lines advance, throughout the whole South.... East Tennessee, with its fertile lands, its rich mines and valuable water-power, presents a fine field for the application of Northern labor and capital; and when this calamity is overpast, and a direct railroad communication with the North is secured, it will prosper as never before. Especially will this be the case when the incubus of slavery is thrown off.” These words are now in a measure fulfilled prophecy.

Topographically, East Tennessee is at the very heart of the Atlantic States. It has been observed that “Knoxville is the exact-geographical center of the eastern half of the United States: the corners of the eastern half being Eastport in Maine, Key West in Florida, the mouth of the Rio Grande in Texas, and a point in Lake Superior on the northwest boundary (water or lake) line of Michigan. The point is north of Isle Royal in the lake. The opposite sides of the figure formed by lines drawn from and to these corners are respectively parallel and equal, and its diagonals intersect at Knoxville. The more exact the map, the more exactly is Knoxville found to be at the point of intersection.”[11]

THE LOYAL MOUNTAINEERS OF TENNESSEE.