Meredith P. Gentry, like many Tennesseans of the antebellum era, “had always loved the Union” and never believed in secession as “a remedy for any evil, real or imagined.” Indeed, prior to 1860, the state had been instrumental in quashing the idea of secession and its intellectual cousin, nullification. Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans with his Tennessee Volunteers had stifled the resolutions of the Hartford Convention in 1815 and ushered in a wave of nationalism. Jackson’s resolve, bolstered by Tennesseans’ enthusiastic support, had also cowed the nullifiers of South Carolina in 1831–1832. In 1850, when Fire-Eaters from the Lower South infected Tennessee and advocated secession during the Nashville Convention of 1850, Tennessee moderates took control of the convention and diffused the crisis.
Yet, within the course of a few months in 1860–1861, secessionists overturned Tennesseans’ strong Unionist traditions and carried the state into the Confederacy and civil war. The secessionist tide was so swift, according to Gentry, that resistance was futile. Although secession was “contrary to his feelings,” Gentry’s “friends, neighbors, and kinsmen, all rushed pell-mell aboard” the secessionists’ “d—d old worm-eaten, rickety, stem-wheel boat” against his warnings. Suddenly, he looked around and found himself “alone on the bank of the stream, and they were pulling the gang plank. I shouted to the captain: ‘Hold on! Hold on!’ I’ll get aboard too and we’ll all go to hell together.”1
Peer pressure alone, however, has failed to explain the secessionist triumph in Tennessee. The secessionist minority radicalized Tennessee’s political climate and utilized fraud, intimidation, and coercion to engineer a coup d’état. Tennessee’s historical example during the secession crisis provides a chilling reminder that those with superior numbers do not always win contests and that a determined minority can often achieve political ascendancy. As the English philosopher Edmund Burke observed, the majority, feeling secure in its power to overcome the minority’s influence, often becomes apathetic, advocating patience and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Thus, they are often caught off guard and ill prepared to meet the minority’s challenge in a crisis. The minority that is “more expedite, awakened, active, vigorous and courageous” will campaign incessantly for its cause with a “superabundance of velocity.” “When men are furiously and fanatically fond of an object,” Burke predicted, “they will prefer it to their own peace, to its own property, and to their own lives.”2
As the country prepared to elect a new president in 1860 amid concerns over the future of slavery in the territories, Tennesseans were ready to stand firm and “rebuke fanaticism.” Unable to agree on a party candidate at their Charleston convention, Tennessee Democrats later reconvened with their colleagues in Baltimore, determined to encourage moderation and promote compromise on the slavery issues. To many Tennesseans, breaking up the Union seemed inconceivable. “If you divide the Union how would you divide it? I would not like to part with Pennsylvania, the keystone state, it contains the hall of our independence, it was there American liberty was born,” declared one Memphis citizen. “I cannot give up Massachusetts—even such a devil as she has grown up—Disunion would be a stain of infamy upon all our brows.” The possible secession of the Lower South states in response to a Republican victory in the 1860 presidential election would spell commercial disaster as well as disrupt Tennessee’s thriving border state economy, especially that of the western section of the state. In the event of war to restore the Union, Tennessee and the Upper South might well become a major battleground and incur great losses measured, not only in dollars, but also in lives. Tennesseans therefore searched frantically for a national compromise that could preserve the Union. Their efforts failed, and the last remaining national party, the Democrats, split into sectional factions: the Northern faction, led by Stephen Douglas, appealing for compromise and party unity and the Southern faction, headed by John Breckinridge, strongly advocating states’ rights.3
Meanwhile, remnants of Tennessee’s Whig/American Party, reconstituting themselves statewide as the Opposition Party, endorsed the native son John Bell and his new Constitutional Union Party as a moderate alternative to the extremism they believed now pervaded both the Democratic and Republican parties. The once-dominant anti-Democratic forces had not carried a statewide election in nearly a decade, though the Opposition Party had stiffly challenged the Democrats each time and appeared to be regaining strength amid the growing talk of disunion. Tennessee Opposition leader Gustavaus A. Henry advised his fellow citizens to support Bell because he stood for “a union for the sake of the Union” to avoid the “untold horrors” of secession. Other state Opposition Party leaders seemed less certain of Bell’s chances to stem the tide of secession given the number of candidates currently in the race. The West Tennessee Opposition congressman Emerson Etheridge predicted as early as June 1860 that, with Douglas, Bell, and Breckinridge splitting the slave-state vote, the Republicans stood poised to sweep the fifteen free states, making Lincoln’s election, and, thus, the secession of the Lower South, a “foregone conclusion.”4
In the 1860 presidential contest, moderates carried the day in Tennessee with a plurality voting for Bell. Surprisingly, the Constitutional Union Party made its strongest statement in West Tennessee, the state’s predominant slaveholding region. Although Breckinridge captured 45 percent of the statewide vote, he polled only 31 percent in West Tennessee and a paltry 11 percent in Memphis. Either Douglas or Bell carried many of the planter counties with significant slave populations. Meanwhile, Bell and his Constitutional Union Party polled almost as many votes in West Tennessee as the Democrats Douglas and Breckinridge combined. Thus, despite the sectional agitation over slavery, West Tennessee’s Democrats and a high percentage of West Tennessee slaveholders favored the moderate positions of Douglas or Bell over Breckinridge’s more militant Southern rights stance. Despite Tennesseans’ pleas for moderation expressed at the Democratic convention and at the ballot box, the nascent Republican Party prevailed, and its antislavery candidate, Abraham Lincoln, became the sixteenth president of the United States on the strength of the electoral vote of the free states alone.5
Although somewhat dismayed over the Republicans’ victory in the national presidential contest, most Tennesseans adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward the new Lincoln administration. After all, the Congress remained in Democratic hands, and the Supreme Court, a conservative group that had been appointed mostly by Democrats, would surely prove a barrier to any presidential assault on slavery. The editor of the Memphis Bulletin urged his readers to recognize the constitutionally elected administration “however much we may deplore the result.” According to the Nashville Banner, Tennesseans had expressed their opinion in the presidential election that “disunion is no remedy for existing evils,” perceived or real. The Memphis Enquirer agreed, saying: “Let every man put his foot on secession, it is no remedy for Southern wrong, or it is only a madman’s remedy.”6
Chief among those expressing dismay at the November 1860 results was Governor Isham G. Harris. Having cooperated with the Fire-Eaters throughout the presidential campaign, Harris had remained in constant communication with secessionist leaders in other states. Some political observers even suspected him of having already made secret promises to officials in the Lower South that he would carry the state out of the Union if Lincoln was elected. Unwilling to accept Lincoln as the newly elected president, Harris called a special session of the state legislature to meet in Nashville on January 7, 1861, to consider the present condition of the country.7
Harris must have known that secession faced an uphill struggle in the state, and he likely pinned his hopes on the ability of secessionist agitators to stir up a popular revolution that would eventually carry the state out of the Union. He would begin this revolution in his home region of West Tennessee, an area that was dependent on slave labor and whose broad, flat geography made it easy to control with a relatively small contingent. By late October 1860, a group of South Carolinians had arrived in Memphis to establish a prosecession organization known as the Minute Men to “fire the Southern heart—instruct the Southern mind—give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized and concerted action, we can precipitate the Cotton States into a revolution.” The Minute Men were to act as a revolutionary vanguard to incubate secessionist sentiment in Tennessee. Despite what one paper described as their predisposition to violence and attraction to the “gullible and curious,” the Minute Men’s ranks in and around Memphis began to grow throughout the fall of 1860, and they began to create a climate of fear through intimidation and violence directed against their political opponents. These radicals seized every opportunity to sport their blue cockades and promote their cause. Those who dared resist became targets of physical and economic bullying. The secessionists’ favorite targets were immigrants and nonnative Southerners, whom they blamed for having prevented Breckinridge from carrying Tennessee.8
In the wake of Lincoln’s election, the atmosphere grew steadily more intolerant. The secessionists’ editorial mouthpiece, the Memphis Daily Avalanche, deemed the Minute Men’s efforts “noble work” and begged them to purge the city of those who would falter in the defense of slavery or oppose secession. “Hunt up the cowardly ingrates,” the Avalanche’s editor implored, “and if necessary nail their vile carcasses to their own doors or hang them upon the public lamppost.... When you find a traitor consign him to a dishonored grave, with no monument to mark the accursed spot save a rough stake driven through the body of the miserable ingrate.” Other newspapers decried such vitriolic rhetoric because it supposedly encouraged a “spirit of mobocracy” antithetical to “the better impulses of a peaceful and orderly community.”9
When the South Carolina convention adopted an ordinance of secession on December 20, 1860, the Memphis Minute Men and their supporters poured into the streets, playing loud music, and firing sporadic cannon salvos. The following evening, secessionists held a torchlight procession, and, intoxicated by emotion as well as the abundant champagne and whiskey, the crowd burned an effigy of Tennessee’s U.S. senator Andrew Johnson, who just days before had made a passionate pro-Union speech on the Senate floor. They later sent the scorched rope used to hang Johnson’s blazing effigy to the Minute Men’s national headquarters. The crowd wildly cheered a subsequent motion to hang the real Johnson should he ever visit Memphis again.10
Memphis Unionists charged that secessionist claims of several thousand people attending the December 22 rally were wildly exaggerated, declaring that the event had drawn no more than 250 persons and only “a contemptuable monority [sic] of the citizens” supported secession. Former governor Neill S. Brown reported to Johnson: “All this was the work of a few, and has the sympathy of no respectable class anywhere. It amounts to nothing.” Across West Tennessee, other Unionists gathered to discuss remedies for the crisis sparked by South Carolina’s “demented folly.” Within a week of the Memphis Minute Men’s demonstration, a group of Memphis Unionists, many of whom were reportedly among the city’s most respected and wealthy citizens, met to form a Unionist society to counteract the fiery secessionist agitators. Bolstered by this show of strength, Tennessee Unionists hoped that their organizations, as well as similar groups in Virginia, could form “a great breakwater to Northern Abolitionism and Southern secession.”11
On January 7, 1861, the Tennessee legislature met in special session, and Governor Harris’s opening message attempted to set a prosecession tone. He lectured the members on the “systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question” by Northern states. These “actual and threatened aggressions” of the North on Southern citizens’ constitutional rights should not be allowed to stand, Harris said. He then proposed five amendments to the Constitution in order to safeguard Southerners’ rights, yet he clearly held out little hope that constitutional adjustment could be worked out, saying: “The only practical question for the State to determine will be whether she will unite her fortunes with a Northern or Southern Confederacy.” The governor concluded with a wildly optimistic hope: “I am certain there can be little division in sentiment [in Tennessee], identified as we are in every respect with the South.”12
Mississippi’s decision to secede just two days into this special legislative session, combined with the speeches of secessionist agents from Alabama and Mississippi, whipped prosecession Tennessee legislators into a frenzy. They quickly introduced resolutions to sever political and economic ties with the North and to create a state army under Governor Harris’s command. Unionists managed to defeat these measures, so secessionists proposed calling a special convention.
Unionists publicly blasted this secessionist plan as an attempt to “rush the people of the state into the vortex of secession.” The West Tennessee congressman and Unionist Emerson Etheridge noted that similar tactics had induced the Lower South to act on the matter of secession “with less deliberation than is usually displayed at a coroner’s inquest.” The Unionists charged that holding a convention to adopt a secession ordinance and create a standing army within the state not only violated democratic principles and bypassed the will of the people but also threatened to establish a military despotism. Unionists, however, faced a difficult political quandary. Their constituents might perceive outright opposition to a convention as a sign of political weakness, yet secessionists would never risk losing a direct referendum on the matter, at least not at this time. Therefore, the two sides agreed on a compromise measure whereby Tennesseans would decide by popular referendum whether a convention should be held and, if so, whether they preferred sending Unionist or secessionist delegates to the convention. The “disastrous rout” of Harris and the secessionist movement during this special legislative session led many Unionists to conclude that their opponents were finished.13
The General Assembly set February 9, 1861, as the date for the convention referendum. To preempt their adversaries, the Unionists added a provision requiring that a majority of the number of the votes cast at the previous gubernatorial election were necessary to approve the convention, not just a simple majority of votes cast on that particular election day, as the secessionists had proposed. Furthermore, the call for a statewide vote on secession could not take place until twenty days after any such convention had adjourned. By raising the political bar on secession and delaying the vote, Unionists hoped to blunt the secessionists’ call for quick, decisive action. Many Unionists actually began favoring a convention themselves because they believed that they could use it to quash secession once and for all. Because a significant number of Unionists and almost all secessionists favored a convention, the crucial issue in the February election became, not whether to hold a convention, but whether to select Unionist or secessionist delegates to attend it.14
The anticipation and excitement grew as the February 9 vote neared. Both sides used every possible means of persuasion available, including newspaper editorials, stump speeches, and handbills. “States’ Rights Anti-Coercion” supporters derisively labeled their opponents “submissionists.” They denied that immediate secession was their goal and, instead, predicted that calling a convention would pressure the Northern people and the new administration into respecting Southern rights. For their part, Unionists accused secessionists of attempting to capitalize on the heat of the moment and stampede the state into secession. One newspaper called on Tennesseans “to accomplish the salvation of our beloved Union . . . [and] stand at the great breakwater to Northern Abolitionism and Southern secession.” The pro-Union Nashville Banner pleaded for calm deliberation, warning: “If the PEOPLE do not rise in their strength and put back meddling politicians, the latter will chloroform them with ‘sectional prejudice,’ and then ride over them rough-shod before they can recover. . . . The political tricksters who see their power slipping from their grasp are playing a desperate game and will not ‘lose a trick’ if they can help it.” Emerson Etheridge reported that the people “or the noisy portion of them seem mad.” “A panic prevails,” he continued, “which is made to feed itself [off terror].” Confident Unionists held only a modest torchlight parade through Memphis on election eve, with marchers strutting around the city’s statue of Andrew Jackson carrying banners declaring “Secession is Treason” and “Don’t give up the Ship.”15
On election day, people arrived early at the polls and remained to mill about much of the day, anxiously awaiting the outcome. Brass bands entertained the crowds with alternating refrains of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Dixie,” and other patriotic tunes. One observer described the atmosphere at polling places across the state as one of “perfect political saturnalia.” Spectators jammed the polls, and, as each voter cast his ballot, the crowds filled the air with chanting and cheers, and each voter had “his hand shaken ’till his very arm aches and tears of pain attest his heartfelt repentance at having voted at all.” The secessionists’ well-oiled publicity campaign led Unionist candidate Robertson Topp to leave Memphis when the polls closed, certain his side would be defeated. He was wrong.16
Tennesseans narrowly rejected the calling of a convention and voted almost four to one for Unionist delegates. Comparing both the convention and the delegate results of the February 1861 vote illustrates the complexity of deciphering the voters’ message. East Tennesseans perceived a convention as a step toward their state’s secession instigated by slaveholders in Middle and West Tennessee, and they opposed a convention while largely supporting Unionist delegates with a ratio of six Union delegates for every secessionist delegate. Middle Tennessee was more divided on the convention question but still chose Unionist delegates four to one. West Tennesseans believed that they could use the convention to outmaneuver the secessionists and place Tennessee in a position to broker a compromise between the already-seceded states and the national government. At least two-thirds of the West Tennesseans preferred a convention with double the number of pro-Unionist delegates as secessionist ones.
Regardless of party affiliations or connections to slavery, Tennesseans were obviously not yet ready in February 1861 to embrace secession. The real significance of the February 1861 vote, however, lies not so much in statistical correlations to party, slaveholding, or to future loyalties as in how the results shaped future political strategy. Unionist leaders emerged from the election with a sense of confidence that lulled them into believing that keeping Tennessee in the Union would be relatively easy. On the other side, the February 1861 vote initially stunned secessionists and caused considerable consternation among their leaders but, in the end, only made them more determined to carry Tennessee out of the Union.17
Unionists’ overconfidence also encouraged political apathy. On hearing the results of the February vote, the director of the Tennessee State Historical Society, A. Waldo Putnam, proclaimed: “Thank God a thousand times! Tennessee has not been moved from her propriety; neither terrified, hoodwinked, corrupted or ensnared [by fanatics from the North or South].” The secessionists, he continued, “are few indeed,—and we trust and believe, (that, like dogs,) ‘they have had their day.’” On hearing of the “most glorious victory” of the Union ticket, the Carroll County attorney Alvin Hawkins noted that the secessionists were angry and had promised to inflict their “wrath” on him for their defeat but that he expected “the storm will soon pass away.”18
Of course, not all Unionists became complacent, and some warned their leaders of overconfidence. Some worried that the secessionists’ defeat would make them “more desperate.” During a tour of several states that had already seceded, the Memphis physician Jeptha Fowlkes found secessionists “up &c doing” and feared that Unionists might be inclined to bend before their “active and intolerant” opponents unless they devised some “avowed, direct and fixed measures” to conciliate the Southern states. Another Memphian, Benjamin D. Nabers, concurred that “the Seceders here altho writhing under a Waterloo defeat are calling their Scattered forces together for another effort” to remove the “foul blot” cast on the state by the February vote.19
The Union party had “swept like an avalanche over the State,” the West Tennessean Charles Faxon declared, adding that, for the time being, Governor Harris is “Check-Mated.” The Unionist and former governor Neill S. Brown also rejoiced that the “mad waves of secession had found an iron embankment around this commonwealth which defied all their fury.” Yet he and the other Unionists continued to worry about the future. “The secession party per se, is small,” Brown warned, “but there is a large body of Union men who are such under the assurances of a fair settlement—many of whom would be carried off in a storm—Thus would be produced in our midst a formidable division animated by bitterness and violence.” The gradual atrophy of the traditional political party system over the last few years meant that the fragmenting electorate was severely weakened. Tennesseans were desperately searching for the sort of political stability that had existed in the previous decades and ready to embrace any political movement that offered some sense of vigor. Any emotionally charged incident during this delicate stage would dramatically alter the political dynamic. Had any firmness, like that of Jackson in the nullification crisis, been displayed against the seceded states, lamented the Unionist Waldo Putnam, “the spread of this contagion might have been stayed,” but now if Lincoln were “to fire a single gun into these infatuated states—whilest the people of the other Slave States not seceded, are in such a sensitive, nervous, emotional condition—will not war kindle instantly and rage furiously?”20
In the early months of 1861, the prospect of armed confrontation or “collision” at Fort Sumter or Fort Pickens loomed as a Unionist nightmare. Tennessee Unionists admitted that their political position rested on “fragile defenses, ill-suited to withstand the tremors of crisis and war hysteria.” The Louisville Journal encouraged Unionists in Tennessee and other border states to organize, “rouse up,” and express their position else the “timid, conservative majority is overawed by violence and clamor into passive acquiescence.” Unionists therefore urged Andrew Johnson to find a “fair solution” to the crisis before “a collision at some of our southern points” would “create no small excitement & give us much trouble.” Charles Faxon and other Unionists feared that much Unionist support was “conditional” and that any further “excitement” of the national crisis might tip the scales in favor of those “infected with the secession epidemic.” Jeptha Fowlkes suggested that “if no act of violence and no new cause of irritation be furnished the Secession feeling will rapidly lessen,” but he also feared that the uncertainty and hesitancy of the Unionist leadership was stifling the growth of Unionist sentiment.21
Unionists from across the state implored the state’s Unionist leader, Andrew Johnson, to show “Stronger backbone” during the crisis. They detested the “apologetic ifs, peradventures and contingencies’’ implicit in his Unionist appeals that prevented more Tennesseans from rallying to their side. In other states, such as Georgia and Alabama, secessionism had been allowed to grow into “a most savage raving lunacy” by Unionist inaction, making the Unionist cause appear “over awed by the reign of intolerance and terror.” According to one Unionist: “Once I thought it strange that the first Napoleon should have become so universally popular in France by the successful use of strong and prompt coercive measures upon a raging mob. Now I think I can appreciate it.” The Unionist William Lellyett feared that “whenever the piratical forces of the conspirators shall attempt the capture of Fort Sumter or Fort Pickens, many of our so-called Union men will be found to be wolves in sheep’s clothing. . . . They will cry ‘Murder!’ and throw down the stripes and stars. Others of them are so slenderly fortified in their position, that should they prove true, all their work must be done over.” Tennessee Unionists, it was proposed, must “meet the domineering career of this raging fanaticism in Tennessee by presenting a bolder, more threatening and determined front. . . . No half way measures will do.” Another fearful Unionist admitted that his side’s arguments were “weak, impotent weapons” and that, unless their “blank cartridges” were replaced with real ammunition, they faced certain defeat.22
The haphazard, convoluted Unionist arguments stood in stark contrast to the well-orchestrated, straightforward secessionist campaign. For the last decade, Americans had debated the future of slavery. West Tennesseans depended on slavery, and the uncertainty of the peculiar institution’s expansion into the new territories caused many to question their place within the Union. The diversity of the possibilities proffered by the Northern free states regarding slavery’s future made this uncertainty more pronounced. Gradually, many Southerners formulated the opinion that the only way to ensure slavery, their livelihoods, and their culture was through secession. Jeptha Fowlkes claimed that Unionists in West Tennessee were converting daily to the secessionists’ side because the Southern position was “fixed” and “definite” while “doubt, hesitation and uncertainty” characterized their “Northern friends’” position. Furthermore, Unionists’ arguments seemed mired in the past, while secessionists spoke of the future, couching their appeals in the rhetoric of progress, and infusing them with religious themes. Revolution, as one Memphis secessionist newspaper declared, was a means to advance “society towards a higher freedom and more perfect civilization . . . upward towards that ideal perfection, that millennial glory, pictured in the golden dreams of poets and prophets.”23
For their part, secessionists carefully crafted their language to avoid alienating “conditional” Unionists, those who supported the Union but would protest the use of force to bring the seceded states back into the fold. As early as January 1861, it had become apparent to the secessionists that terms such as coercion and revolution carried enough intellectual weight to expose chinks in the armor of Unionist solidarity that they could exploit. Conditional Unionists were more likely to support independence but abhorred the term secession. This might appear to be a distinction without a difference, but to conditional Unionists, especially in the western areas steeped in frontier republicanism, it meant everything. Should the secessionists make a first strike, many Unionists believed, “the act of [federal] resistance will not be coercion but the constitutional defense and maintenance of the Union.” If the federal government resorted to the use of force first, then secessionists could invoke the right of revolution and carry with them the conditional Unionists, who would have to defend their homes against Northern aggression regardless of their opinions on secession or slavery. The West Tennessee Whig, a Constitutional Union and antisecessionist newspaper, warned: “While Tennessee disapproves [of secession] . . . she utterly repudiates and will, in all proper ways, resist any attempt to coerce [seceded states] back into a Union.” However, it remained clear that, unless the federal government resorted to force or could be coaxed into doing so, secessionists would remain on the defensive in West Tennessee.24
Fearing that Unionists, whatever their doubts about the Lincoln administration, might still seek some sort of Union-saving compromise, secessionists urged their supporters to “strike now for independence.” Just four days before the February 1861 vote, delegates from the seceded states gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, while border-state representatives met in Washington at a so-called peace conference. Governor Harris and the secessionist members of the General Assembly tried to convince the legislators to send a delegation to Montgomery rather than Washington but failed, and eventually Tennessee delegates made their way to the nation’s capital. The Memphis Appeal, a recent convert to secession, chastised Tennesseans for defeating secessionist measures and ridiculed the Unionists’ faith in the federal government’s ability to protect Southern rights. Those who hesitated about leaving the Union now were submissionists who maintained a “devotion to the dead glories of an expired nationality.” February’s “shameful verdict,” the editor continued, had revealed the “ignorance of the masses as to the true state of the country.” The Appeal urged “every true Southron” to attend an upcoming meeting of secession supporters: “The fires of the great revolution have but commenced to burn upon our prairies. They will continue to spread until all opposition to southern freedom shall be consumed amid its annihilating flames.” With increasingly militaristic rhetoric, secessionists instructed their supporters to “buckle on the armor, draw their swords, throw away the scabbards, and enter upon the contest with redoubled ardor.” Another speaker commanded them “to keep their flints in order and their powder dry for another contest, which must sooner or later come.”25
The collision that Unionists had long feared came in the early hours of April 12, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina. After enduring a siege for several months, the Union garrison at Fort Sumter came under attack from Confederate shore batteries. Almost immediately on hearing the news, crowds began to congregate around the Memphis telegraph office, eagerly awaiting further word from Washington and Charleston. Three days later, President Abraham Lincoln requested troops from the states, including Tennessee, to put down this insurrection. The secessionists had provoked the federal government into action, yet the wily secessionist propaganda machine made it appear that Lincoln was the aggressor. Lincoln’s call for volunteers sparked great furor throughout the Volunteer State. Militia meetings, drill parades, cannon salutes, and nighttime fireworks commenced almost immediately. Not surprisingly, Governor Harris defiantly responded to Lincoln’s call: “Tennessee will not furnish a Single Man for the purposes of Coercion but 50,000 if necessary for the defense of our rights and those of our Southern brothers.”26
Many Unionists did, indeed, perceive Lincoln’s call for troops as an act of coercion, and it transformed these conditional Unionists into reluctant Confederates. The events sparked by Fort Sumter produced a dramatic change in the state’s mood. One Tennessee Unionist remarked: “Our most influential and strongest Union men of yesterday are today carried by the vortex of circumstance into the powerful stream of public opinion.” The pressure placed on Unionists to defend their homes and oppose Lincoln’s actions was intense.
Perhaps nowhere was the change of sentiment more evident than in West Tennessee. The Memphis Appeal declared that Lincoln’s war proclamation had “made a unit of our people” and created a “perfect unanimity beyond our wildest expectations.” Prominent Unionist politicians, including the Constitutional Union presidential candidate John Bell and former governor Neill S. Brown, briefly pondered their situation and then reluctantly switched to the secessionist side. At a Memphis rally, one Unionist after another took to the podium, where they “repented” and “converted” to the secessionist cause. The one-time Unionist delegate Robertson Topp was among these and offered to transport all Confederate troops on his Memphis and Ohio Railroad free of charge.27
It appeared obvious from the outset that Tennessee would be a key Confederate defensive position, and preparations for war began almost immediately. West Tennessee, with its proximity to key rivers and railroads, became a priority. Within a week, Memphis’s civic leaders had appropriated $50,000 for construction of new defensive works and other military preparations. Men quickly filled the ranks of numerous militia units. Women too offered to do their “patriotic duty” by collecting materials and making clothing and flags. “War with the inexperienced is very popular,” a McNairy County citizen perceptively noted, declaring: “Every man and Boy becomes a Genl. [Andrew] Jackson.”28
Presenting a united front became such a priority that secessionists turned to intimidation and violence to suppress dissent. Warnings appeared all over the state or in the press stating: “You are either with us or against us. Let every citizen remember that ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.’” Throughout Tennessee, secessionists were determined to move against anyone with “Black Republican proclivities.” They organized “Committees of Safety” within communities “for the purpose of hanging or getting rid of all abolitionists . . . [and] Northern unsound men.” Secessionists warned any potential “agitators” in their midst “to be cautious as to how they conduct themselves in the South. This latitude, just at this time, is not healthful for such individuals.”29
The secessionists’ first targets were the “sixteen or eighteen hundred foreign suffragans” in Memphis believed to have voted in “a solid phalanx for the Union ticket” in February. The later determination that at least 15 percent of these immigrants had voted in favor of secessionist delegates forced secessionists to rationalize their previous prejudices and shift the blame onto Unionist operatives who had spread rumors that a vote for secession would violate citizenship oaths and pose a risk of deportation. Unionists had also reportedly warned immigrants that the newly formed Confederate government would impose heavy taxes and might even disfranchise the propertyless.30
The Minute Men units and the “Committees of Safety,” sometimes referred to as the “Vigilance Committees,” carefully searched for signs of dissent. Tennesseans were asked to watch their neighbors and inform officials immediately if anyone left the area for an extended time and then returned. One Memphian of Northern origins felt obliged to publish a letter declaring his Southern loyalties. He wrote: “Let all who are not actually with us in this struggle, from whatever country or clime, quietly and as speedily as convenient, take their departure; and those unwilling to do so be compelled by a prudent and proper manifestation of public sentiment.” Businesses were urged to report anyone who “could not be trusted as friends of the South. . . . It is important that this be done—the security of our property and the safety of our families demand it.” Secessionists portrayed the act of informing on “disloyal” persons as a patriotic duty. Those volunteering for service in the field could take comfort in knowing “that they have not left behind them the lurking enemy, who, while lingering around their homes and firesides, would incite our negroes to insurrection, and bring the worst calamities upon our wives, our mothers, and our daughters.”31
Reports of “mob action” or isolated acts of violence against those brave enough to voice their contrary opinions or those thought to be acting suspiciously soon filled the local papers. One German man announced his support for Lincoln while raising a barn just outside Memphis. Others repeatedly warned him to keep quiet, but he ignored their advice until he was struck with an axe and seriously wounded by a secessionist coworker. In another incident, a Northerner traveling through Memphis was supposedly overheard telling someone how he would fight against the Confederacy on his return home. He was quickly placed under citizens’ arrest and had his head shaved before being allowed to continue his trek upriver, thus serving as a powerful warning to others with similar inclinations.32
Many Unionist residents witnessed the growing secessionist intolerance since the February election and the war hysteria in the wake of Fort Sumter and concluded that it would be impossible to remain neutral and left Tennessee. An estimated two to five thousand Northern or foreignborn persons left Memphis in the week following the attack on Fort Sumter alone. Many residents fled in such haste that they left behind unpaid bills and houses full of furniture. Even in the interior of West Tennessee, mobs descended on Unionist citizens and demanded they take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy enlist, or leave. Posted notices in Brownsville, Tennessee, gave Unionist residents, particularly those born in the North, just ten days to put their affairs in order and depart. After this grace period had expired, anyone still in the area was expected “to stand by and aid us in defending ourselves against invasion, and to all such we pledge the protection of this community.” One Northern-born Unionist who waited until the deadline discovered that many secessionists had already commenced searching trains and pulling off suspect passengers. Most West Tennessee Unionist refugees managed to get north to the area around Cairo, Illinois, soon dubbed by Unionist refugees as “Little Egypt,” before secessionists closed the last transportation routes. Unionists who stayed behind found themselves “obliged to become secessionists whether they liked it or not,” claimed one Memphis Unionist refugee who reached St. Louis.33
Governor Harris capitalized on this war hysteria by pushing for quick and decisive action to take Tennessee out of the Union. On May 6, the General Assembly emerged from a secretly called two-week-long session and declared the state independent. Carefully choosing his words, Harris declined to call this action secession, preferring to justify it as Tennessee’s exercise of the “right of revolution” against a government that was antithetical to its interests. But the legislators believed that they lacked the authority “to put Tennessee out of the Union, or to place it among the Confederate States.” Instead, the people would decide the issue in a referendum to be held June 8, 1861. This method would avoid “the delays, embarrassments, and expense of a convention” and supposedly refute the Unionists’ charges that “trickery or political management” was being used to undermine the will of the people. Despite his nuanced language and apparent victory in the legislature, Harris must have remained uneasy about the referendum’s outcome given the stinging defeats of prosecession forces in February 1861. Therefore, he tried to create a fait accompli by signing a military alliance with the Confederacy on May 7. He also declared a state of emergency and seized the state’s financial and military assets to construct defenses and protect Tennessee against an imminent invasion.34
Secessionists ensured that the June 8 vote would not lead to another embarrassment. Again violence and intimidation were their primary tools. With most of the Northern and foreign-born citizens having departed, the focus of the secessionists’ efforts became the native Southern Unionists who had stood firm in their beliefs and chose to remain. As the Troy Press of Obion County stated, certain “stumbling blocks” in the vicinity “must be crushed out.” Memphis secessionists made certain that they could tell friend from foe during the upcoming June referendum. Subsidized by the Memphis Appeal, they printed red paper ballots indicating a preference for separation in the upcoming election and ballots of a different color for Unionist voters. Some locations printed no Unionist ballots at all. Voting against separation was, of course, a constitutional right, the prosecession Appeal said, but these “traitors” should also have “no objection to their position as Union men being known to the community.”35
The Unionist Emerson Etheridge, or, as the secessionist press dubbed him, “Emerson Blatheridge,” vowed to fight secessionists “with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other; and so help me God, so long as the Stars and Stripes wave over my state, or any part of it, I will never bow to the storm of disunion.” He attempted to speak in his congressional district, but threats and mobs frequently deterred him. The Memphis Daily Avalanche suggested that the people “nail him to the public pillory and cut his black tongue from his sooty mouth.” An editorial in Tipton County warned that, should Etheridge appear there, “if he is not shot or hung, he will be treated to a new coat of tar and feathers, free gratis, and rode on a rail out of town to the tune of the rogues’ march.” “Let him come if he like, and his men too,” the editorial continued, “we will greet them just as kindly as powder and ball will receive them.” The threats of violence grew during the campaign when Etheridge attempted to debate the secessionist Robert G. Payne in Trenton prior to the election. Payne later canceled his appearance but issued a statement saying: “If Etheridge speaks for the South, we have no reply. If against it our only answer to him and his backers must be cold steel and bullets.” Indeed, that was the response during an April 22 pro-Union rally in Paris when a group of secessionists attacked Etheridge and his supporters, leaving one dead and several others wounded.36
The “Vigilance Committees” and local secessionist officials in Tennessee banned Northern newspapers, shut down Union presses, and rummaged through mail searching for expressions of disloyal sentiments. Secessionists shut down Unionist newspapers prior to the June 8 election. The pro-Unionist publishers of the Carroll Patriot, Isaac Hawkins and his cousins Alvin and Ashton, soon found themselves the target of new secessionist threats. Such intimidation efforts, along with the censorship of the press, hamstrung the Unionists’ organizing efforts.
In striking contrast, the secessionists campaigned freely throughout the state with dramatic calls for public unity. As the secessionist Alfred Robb pointed out to the Unionist Isaac Hawkins: “If the vote on the 8th of June next shall show a division that fact will do more for Mr Lincolns army than 50,000 men and millions of money.” “The only hope they have of making a successful foray on the South,” Robb continued, “was in the divisions of her own People.” He begged Hawkins “not to cause a division among our people but let us all go forth together and establish our independence.” Once Tennessee established its independence, there would be plenty of time to debate reconstruction with the federal government or permanent connection with the Confederacy. “We have got to fight now,” Robb argued, “and after the fight is over we may adjust our political states.” Hawkins ignored his friend’s advice and remained a steadfast Unionist.37
As the June 8 vote neared, it became obvious that the election was to be merely a hollow ritual designed to ratify Harris’s push for Tennessee’s secession. Recording the names of voters who cast ballots and implementing “open ticket” voting were tactics meant to intimidate and discourage Unionists from expressing their true sentiments. According to the Memphis Appeal: “Every man should now show his hand, should let his neighbors know where he stands on the great question to be decided.” “Anyone failing to vote,” according to the Appeal, should be the “object of suspicion within the community.” Secessionists deemed a Unionist voter as “an enemy of his state and as the enemy of liberty. . . . We sincerely trust that the election of the 8th of June will not discover a single man of that stripe. We hope that no son of Tennessee will have the insufferable mortification to see a brother untrue.” The West Tennessee Whig even accepted a challenge from a Rutherford County newspaper to see which county could cast the largest percentage of votes for separation.38
Secessionists used intimidation and fraud very effectively on election day. Gibson County resident William T. Dickens sympathized with the Union and believed it “the best govt under the sun,” so he voted against secession in February. Yet he voted for secession in June, explaining his change of sentiment by referring to death threats issued by secession supporters in his community. Dickens said that secessionists told him that “any man who voted at my precinct for the Union would be hung and that every man who did not vote at all was as bad and would be held as guilty as if he voted for the Union.” Secessionists patrolled West Tennessee prior to the June election and threatened to punish those who voted against secession. With his wife ill, and caring for eight children, Dickens believed that he had no choice but to yield to the political pressure. “I would have fled to the country if I could, but could not,” he exclaimed. “I feared I would be arrested and dragged about the country by the soldiers if I did not vote and I voted for the state to go out.”39
Gray B. Medlin of Haywood County had also voted “no convention” in February but “for separation” in June because he “was afraid to do otherwise, as the rebels were ‘spotting’ those who voted against it and who did not vote at all.” Others in Obion County claimed that “Union men were deterred from the polls by rebel bayonets.” According to William P. Orne, an election clerk in Shelby County and Memphis, “all the clerks were ordered to turn over the tickets, to number every one of them with the same number as the poll books and opposite put the man’s name who voted it, so that upon examination of the votes any person was found voting against secession he should be spotted. I mean by ‘spotted’ that he would be handed over to the Vigilance Committee and separated from his family, property, and influence.”40
The secessionists won an overwhelming victory on June 8. Overall, the state voted nearly two to one for separation. East Tennessee, where the valleys, ridges, and a paucity of slave owners, made it difficult for the secessionists to coordinate a successful campaign, remained the only section of the state to oppose disunion. But the Middle and West Tennessee results showed a four to one margin in favor of separation. Only five West Tennessee counties (Carroll, Decatur, Henderson, Weakley, and Hardin) voted to remain in the Union. Several counties recorded unanimous secession votes or seemingly preposterous margins. Shelby County recorded but five Union votes and Lauderdale County only seven. But even this result was a source of great disappointment for the Memphis Appeal, which had promised to “outdo Richmond [Virginia]” with its four pro-Union votes cast in the referendum. Obion County had nearly double the number of voters participate in the June election as in February and, of course, these new voters overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, seemed to favor separation.
In counties where the usual number of voters went to the polls, significant numbers of Unionists cast ballots, while, in counties where turnout lagged significantly or increased more than 5 percent from the previous November, Unionist votes were almost nonexistent. Fraud, intimidation, and coercion likely played a role in these areas where turnout was suppressed or exaggerated, and few men could have been expected to vote their conscience under such circumstances.
The dramatic swing in the public mood bewildered Unionists, who believed that they had won a decisive and lasting victory in February. In the words of the Middle Tennessee Unionist Alvan C. Gillem, it seemed unfathomable “that in the short interval from February to May 104,500 intelligent American citizens could have changed their minds on so important an issue as the dismemberment of a nation” over the seemingly minor confrontation pitting “a major and a few half-starved officers and men at Fort Sumter against ‘Davis and Beauregard.’”41
The secessionists’ turn toward more coercive measures to achieve their goals should hardly have been surprising. The Minute Men had proved in the November presidential contest and in the weeks leading up to Tennessee’s convention vote that the secessionist minority was willing to utilize all possible means, including violence and intimidation, to achieve their goals. They had seen their cause soundly defeated in February 1861, and, being “furiously and fanatically fond” of establishing a Southern nation, they preferred war to peace, disregarding their property and their own lives.
West Tennessee secessionists initiated a coordinated campaign of fear and repression that brought Tennessee ever closer to the precipice of secession by April 1861. All the hesitant electorate needed was a push. Events in Charleston provided the strong shove necessary to send Tennessee over the edge. The secessionists’ organizational strength and brutal tactics of intimidation allowed them to take advantage of the political upheaval generated by the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s subsequent call for troops. Unionists were caught off guard and were ill prepared to meet these challenges from the more expedite and vigorous secessionist forces. Many chose to leave their homes temporarily and move north until the chaos subsided or the Union army advanced south to occupy that area and restore a sense of stability and order. Other Unionists, unable to leave their families and property but too scared to resist, had little choice but to weather the crisis and acquiesce to Confederate authority, at least temporarily. A small core group of unconditional Unionists, now finding themselves as the minority and being “furiously and fanatically” fond of the Union, resolved to stay and fight the Confederates to regain control of their communities, regardless of the risk to their property, their families, or themselves.
As war approached, Confederates instituted a reign of terror in the Unionist areas in Tennessee as they constructed a thin defensive perimeter along the presumed Yankee invasion routes, the rivers and railroads. Outnumbered and outgunned, Tennessee Unionists held out hope that Federal soldiers would soon deliver them from their oppressors and pined for the opportunity to aid in restoring the Union and their cherished sense of stability and order.
1. Oliver P. Temple, Notable Men of Tennessee (New York: Cosmopolitan, 1912), 244.
2. Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 12 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1901), 7:88.
3. Marguerite Bartlett Hamer, “The Presidential Campaign of 1860 in Tennessee,” East Tennessee Historical Society Publications 3 (January 1931): 6–14 (quote, 9).
4. Ibid., 8–9 (Henry quote); Emerson Etheridge to Isaac Hawkins, June 25, 1860, Hawkins Letters, private collection. Because state officials in many Southern states (including Tennessee) had barred the Republicans from appearing on the ballot, the presidential contest in those states narrowed to a field of three: Bell, Douglas, and Breckinridge.
5. Election results have been tabulated from Mary Campbell, The Attitude of Tennesseans towards the Union, 1847–61 (New York: Vantage, 1961), 284–87; Nashville Union and American, December 2, 1860; and University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/ (accessed November 28, 2002). West Tennessee’s voting patterns appeared largely undisturbed by sectional turmoil. The Democrats’ combined totals were just under half a percentage point lower than the Demoeratic returns from the 1859 gubernatorial contest and only 2 percentage points above their decade-long average. Furthermore, an estimated 96 percent of Bell’s supporters came from the old Whig/American/Opposition Party strongholds throughout West Tennessee. West Tennessee’s newspapers played a key role in the presidential campaign, with both Bell and Douglas enjoying the support of well-established partisan newspapers in Memphis and West Tennessee. This organizational advantage that the moderate forces enjoyed may account for their strength on election day over the smaller, but vocal, prosecession Breckinridge elements. Douglas’s emphasis on the economic repercussions of secession may also have swayed many West Tennesseans to his camp, especially in Memphis, the commercial hub of West Tennessee.
6. Memphis Bulletin, November 12, 1860; Nashville Banner, November 13, 1860; Memphis Enquirer, November 13, 1860; Paul Bergeron, Antebellum Politics in Tennessee (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982), 163–66. Bergeron notes that the election of 1860 “conveyed the theme of politics as usual” (ibid., 164) owing to the continuity of party strength from the antebellum period. This voter continuity is even more striking when considering the volatile issues of the campaign and the first-ever three-man race for president in Tennessee’s history. Bergeron further indicates that the 1860 results should not be interpreted as a referendum on secession (ibid., 166), a statement that needs some qualification. Of course, no candidate proposed immediate secession, and, until December 20, 1860, secession from the Union remained only a theoretical option. Nonetheless, early proponents of secession would have supported the Breckinridge Southern rights platform to protect slavery rather than the more moderate positions offered by Douglas or Bell. So, while it can be said that the 1860 vote was not a true test of support for secession, it does offer an early snapshot of support for moderation vs. extremism, at least within Tennessee’s Democratic Party.
7. Stanley F. Horn, “Isham G. Harris in the Pre-War Years,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 19 (1960): 195–207. In a decidedly sympathetic biographical sketch of Harris’s prewar years, Horn downplays the governor’s secessionist sentiments, saying that he “counseled moderation and restraint until the fatal hour of decision in April, 1861” (196). Contemporaries contradict this assertion and believed that Harris played an early and integral role in taking Tennessee out of the Union. For example, Lincoln’s secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, noted his suspicions of Harris’s secret negotiations in their Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: Century, 1914), 4:249–50.
8. Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 111; William L. Yancey to James Slaughter, June 15, 1858, quoted in Allen Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1950), 1:406 (“fire the Southern heart”); Memphis Appeal, October 30, 1860 (“gullible and curious”), December 18, 1860; William H. Carroll to Andrew Johnson, January 2, 1861, in LeRoy Graf and Ralph Haskins, eds., The Papers of Andrew Johnson (hereafter Johnson Papers), 16 vols. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1967–2003), 4:117; Charles Lufkin, “Secession and West Tennessee Unionism, 1860–61” (Ph.D. diss., Memphis State University, 1988), 55–61. The Minute Men was one of several paramilitary groups formed following Lincoln’s election to persuade Southerners to join the secessionist cause. The first of these groups was organized in 1858 when William L. Yancey of Alabama had suggested southern “Committees of Safety” to perpetuate secessionism. These groups adopted the blue cockade to show support for this cause or designate oneself as a member of the group. The cockade, an ornamental knot of ribbon usually worn on a hat, was a historical symbol of revolution or resistance and had been used previously during the Nullification Crisis of 1832 to show support for South Carolina.
9. Evansville Daily Journal, December 22, 1860, quoting the Memphis Daily Avalanche (no date given).
10. Nancy D. Beard, “A Kentucky Physician Examines Memphis,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 36 (1978): 199.
11. Reuben F. Alexander to Andrew Johnson, December 25, 1860, Henry G. Smith to Andrew Johnson, December 23, 1860, and Neill S. Brown to Andrew Johnson, February 17, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:79–80, 88, and 301. On December 18–19, 1860, and February 5–6, 1861, Andrew Johnson rose on the Senate floor, delivering speeches against secession, and outlining his reasons for supporting the Union. As a result, Johnson, a Democrat, was widely seen by secessionists as a traitor to the South, his state, and his party. For the text of these speeches, see Johnson Papers, 4:3–51, 204–55.
12. Robert H. White and Stephen V. Ash, eds., Messages of the Governors of Tennessee, 11 vols. to date (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1952-), 5:261–65; Jonathan M. Atkins, Parties, Politics, and the Sectional Conflict in Tennessee, 1832–1861 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 235–38. Governor Harris’s call for a convention to “consider relations” between Tennessee and the Union certainly lacked clarity. Some have speculated that Harris was intentionally vague in order to win support for a convention from both sides, realizing that, once that convention was convened, secessionist delegates could take the state out of the Union. Unionists presumably viewed the convention as a way to promote compromise measures. Those straddling the fence on the issue would see it as nothing more than a political meeting with little authority to take drastic action.
13. Jordan Stokes to William B. Campbell, January 7, 1861, David Campbell Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Emerson Etheridge to Isaac Hawkins, January 20, 1861, Hawkins Letters; Return J. Meigs to Andrew Johnson, in Johnson Papers, 4:263–64; Campbell, Attitude of Tennesseans, 171–72; Atkins, Parties, Politics, 235–40.
14. Meigs to Johnson, February 7, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:263–64; Atkins, Parties, Politics, 235–38.
15. Trenton, Tenn., Southern Standard, February 16, 1861; Nashville Banner quoted in Memphis Appeal, February 7, 1861; Emerson Etheridge to Isaac Hawkins, January 20, 1861, Hawkins Letters; Atkins, Parties, Politics, 239–41.
16. Memphis Argus, February 11, 1861; Nashville Patriot, February 12, 1861; Sam Vance to W. L. Vance, February 13, 1861, Robertson Topp Papers, Memphis Public Library, Memphis; Memphis Appeal, February 10, 1861.
17. Daniel Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 164–97. See also Mary Campbell, “The Significance of the Union Victory in the Election of February 9, 1861 in Tennessee,” East Tennessee Historical Society Publications 14 (1942): 11–30.
18. A. Waldo Putnam to Andrew Johnson, February 13, 1861, William Lellyett to Andrew Johnson, February 12, 1861, Neill S. Brown to Andrew Johnson, February 17, 1861, and Benjamin D. Nabers to Andrew Johnson, February 13, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:278, 281–82, 289–90, and 300; Alvin Hawkins to Isaac R. Hawkins, February 10, 1861, Hawkins Letters.
19. Jeptha Fowlkes to Andrew Johnson, March 21, 23, 1861, and Benjamin D. Nabers to Andrew Johnson, February 13, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:274, 422–23, and 425–26.
20. Neill S. Brown to Andrew Johnson, February 17, 1861, Charles O. Faxon to Andrew Johnson, February 11, 1861, and A. Waldo Putnam to Andrew Johnson, February 18, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:289–90, 300–301, 310–11. See also Charles Lufkin, “Secession and Coercion in Tennessee: The Spring of 1861,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 50 (1991): 98–109; and LeRoy Graf, “Andrew Johnson and the Coming of the War,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 19 (1960): 208–21.
21. Jeptha Fowlkes to Andrew Johnson, March 21, 23, 1861, and Charles O. Faxon to Andrew Johnson, February 11, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:422–23, 425–26, and 289–90; Louisville Journal, February 26, 1861; Lufkin, “Secession and West Tennessee Unionism,” 55–61.
22. William Lellyett to Andrew Johnson, February 12, 1861, and John Lellyettto Andrew Johnson, January 23, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:184–85, 281–82.
23. Jeptha Fowlkes to Andrew Johnson, March 21, 23, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:425; Memphis Daily Avalanche, June 8, 1861.
24. West Tennessee Whig (Jackson), January 18, 1861; Lufkin, “Secession and West Tennessee Unionism,” 55–61.
25. Memphis Appeal, February 12, 13, 1861. The Washington peace conference, derogatorily termed the “Old Gentleman’s Convention” in reference to many delegates’ old age, was the last attempt at reconciliation before the firing on Fort Sumter. After three weeks of intense debate held in secret sessions, delegates managed to agree on resolutions extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific by constitutional amendment, strengthening the Fugitive Slave Law, and compensating slaveowners for fugitive slaves not returned by Northerners under “personal liberty laws.” Extremists on both sides criticized the conference’s proposals, which were very similar to those of the Crittenden Compromise rejected in January, and defeated them when they were presented in Congress. The conference, called at the request of Virginia, met from February 4 to February 27, 1861, concurrent with the first meeting of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. The conference revealed the persistence of border-state Unionism but proved to be an exercise in futility. Consequently, the gathering never offered any viable options to solve the crisis of the Union.
26. White and Ash, eds., Messages, 5:273; J. Milton Henry, “The Revolution in Tennessee, February 1861, to June 1861,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 18 (1959): 113–19.
27. Memphis Appeal, April 14–17, 1861.
28. Memphis Appeal, April 14–17, May 5, 1861; Pitser Miller to Andrew Johnson, February 27, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:341–42.
29. Frank Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record, 12 vols. (New York: Arno, 1977), 2:58; Memphis Appeal, December 12, 1860, April 14–17, 1861.
30. Memphis Appeal, February 13, 1861; Charles Lufkin, “The Northern Exodus from Memphis,” West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 42 (1988): 6–29. An estimated 56 percent of people living in Memphis had been born either in the North or in a foreign county. In the preceding decades, an influx of Northernborn citizens and immigrants had arrived in Memphis to seek new opportunities. Many had come during the economic depression of 1857, when mechanics and laborers flocked south to assist the growing cotton trade and its attendant industries in the strategic river port. Others sought employment in Tennessee’s railroad construction boom of the 1850s. Immigrants, especially the large Irish population, tended to stay, choosing to side with Confederacy rather than fight for equal rights with blacks, whom they saw as potential competitors for jobs. Germans remained more subdued in their support for secession but did form several companies composed of European war veterans.
31. Memphis Daily Avalanche, April 26, May 1, 1861; Moore, ed., Rebellion Record, 2:58.
32. Memphis Daily Avalanche, April 28, 1861; Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1861; Lufkin, “The Northern Exodus from Memphis.”
33. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1861; Louisville Journal, May 31, June 1, 7, 1861; Daily Missouri Democrat (St. Louis), April 24, 1861; Lufkin, “The Northern Exodus from Memphis.” By the first week in May, the Union army had fortified Cairo, Illinois, and stopped almost all river and railroad traffic south. This area provided sanctuary for Unionist refugees.
34. White and Ash, eds., Messages, 5:279–87, 298; Memphis Appeal, May 8, 1861; Nashville Daily Press, January 11, 1861.
35. William B. Gibbs to Isaac Hawkins, May 5, 1861, Hawkins Letters; Memphis Appeal, May 12, 1861.
36. Speech of Emerson Etheridge, January 23, 1861, Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., 1861, app., 113; Emerson Etheridge to Isaac Hawkins, January 20, 1861, Hawkins Letters; Paris Sentinel, March 6, 1861; Memphis Daily Avalanche, April 20, 1861; Weekly Spy (Covington, Tenn.), May 18, 1861; James W. Patton, Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860–1869 (1934; reprint, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1966), 14.
37. Alfred A. Robb to Isaac Hawkins, May 15, 1861, Hawkins Letters.
38. Memphis Appeal, May 21, June 8, 1861; Nashville Patriot, May 8, 1861; West Tennessee Whig (Jackson), June 7, 1861.
39. Disallowed Claim No. 10378, William T. Dickens, Gibson County, in Barred and Disallowed Case Files of the Southern Claims Commission, 1871–1880, microfilm publication M1407, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
40. Disallowed Claim No. 7517, Minerva J. McGough, Obion County, Disallowed Claim No. 10137, Catherine Pursley, Obion County, Disallowed Claim No. 8660, Gray B. Medlin, Haywood County, and Disallowed Claim, No. 21986, William P. Orne, Shelby County, in ibid.
41. Alvan C. Gillem to Andrew Johnson, August 16, 1861, in Johnson Papers, 4:679.