Knoxville, Tennessee

“ Well, this must end my recollections of the very celebrated march from Chattanooga to Knoxville and the winter campaign of east Tennessee.
General Longstreet finally went back to the army of northern Virginia, not that he was in any danger from us, but simply because he became tired of the scenery and wanted a change, I suppose.
Nothing in history is grander than the relief of Knoxville; nothing tamer and more devoid of sense than the balance of the campaign. ”

“ The freedmen have more hope from Virginia Rebels than from East Tennessee Loyalists, if the public sentiment of Knoxville may be accepted as a test. In this, as in all their other political feelings, the Mountaineers are fervidly in earnest.
353A prophet is generally without honor in his own country, and it is not surprising that there should be other places in the United States where they have more confidence in President Johnson than at Knoxville. The people of Greenville are very proud of having given a President to the country; but in Knoxville they are inclined to reserve their praises. ”

“ A small part of their force can retire slowly toward Nashville, breaking up the railroad as they go, and keep Buell out of that city twenty days. Meantime, Nashville will be abundantly defended by forces from all south and perhaps from here at Manassas. Could not a cavalry force from General Thomas on the upper Cumberland dash across, almost unresisted, and cut the railroad at or near Knoxville, Tennessee? In the midst of a bombardment at Fort Donelson, why could not a gunboat run up and destroy the bridge at Clarksville? ”

“ I ventured to remark to a stranger. “No, not a fine city,” said he, “a fine people, but not a fine city, a wretched city; it needs pulling down and rebuilding, but fine people, the finest people in the world.” This rare self-consciousness and belief in self, this group feeling, I believe, one would look in vain for in the North.
“Sober Knoxville” is one of the most responsible of Southern cities. Tennessee as a whole is quiet and steady. Lynching is infrequent. It was therefore considered very extraordinary that a race riot should break out in the city. ”

“ At length the stillness and thick darkness of the night made our loneliness oppressive, [6] and we groped on. Soon we found a road, and realized that the "darkest hour is just before day."
Knoxville, East Tennessee, was the point at which we first aimed, but on nearing the line of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad we learned Longstreet's forces were in Bull's Gap. ”

“ Being an original secessionist, he left Knoxville, Tennessee, and settled in Roanoke county, Virginia, where he would be less troubled with Federal troops. The negro had also lived in Knoxville, and had before seen Yankee soldiers. When he left us he went home, and soon returned with another supply of food for our present consumption. While we were eating, the negro informed us that Schooler, his master, had seen the man at whose house we had attempted to get rations on the previous night. ”

“ We must not forget that off to the west James Robertson had founded a city that is even older than Knoxville. In the great bend of the Cumberland, on its south bank, in northern Tennessee, stands Nashville, as we have already seen.
If we visit a large city in one of the countries of Europe, we are quite likely to be told, or to read in our guidebook, that its history goes back hundreds of years, and any town that was started only a hundred172 years ago would there seem young. But we measure age differently in America, and a town like Nashville, founded in 1780, we think is old indeed. ”

“ There was a tolerably strong guard at London bridge, where the East Tennessee railroad crosses the Tennessee river; and General E. Kirby Smith occupied Knoxville, with a sufficient force to protect that important point as against General Morgan in his immediate front with a strong force. East Tennessee was very nearly evenly divided between Federals and Confederate sympathizers. Neither side was safe from betrayal. Those who were true to the Southern cause distinguished themselves as officials and soldiers, and those who were recreant to it were a source of great annoyance and disaster ”

“ His grandfather, Moses White, emigrated to America from Ireland about 1742, and married a daughter of Hugh Lawson, one of the patriarchal settlers of the country. He had six sons, James, Moses, John, William, David and Andrew; many of whose descendants now reside in Iredell county. James White, the father of Hugh, was a soldier of the Revolution. About 1786 he moved to Knox county, East Tennessee, and was one of the original founders of the present flourishing city of Knoxville. ”

“ Sewing needles and pins are not to be had. The blockade is breaking them up. It has been remarked on the streets of Knoxville, that no such thing as a fine-toothed comb was to be had, and that all the little secession heads were full of squatter sovereigns hunting for their rights in the territories. [Laughter and applause.]
The Reverend Doctor retired amid continued applause and cheering, and was followed by General Samuel F. Cary, of Ohio, who, though his remarks were brief, were marked with that spirit-stirring eloquence for which he is noted. ”

“ A census ordered by the Territorial legislature in 1795 showed more than 60,000 free inhabitants (the number prescribed before the Territory could become a state) , and accordingly a convention to draft a state constitution met in Knoxville on the 11th of January 1796. The instrument, which closely followed the constitution of North Carolina, was proclaimed without submission to popular vote. John Sevier was elected governor, and William Blount and William Cocke United States senators. ”

“ We come now to the act of the Tennessee legislature of February 2d, 1903, passed avowedly for the purpose of enabling the city to exercise the option it had under the agreement of 1882 and the ordinance of 1899 to purchase and acquire the plant and property of the water company, and maintain it for the benefit of its people. ”

“ These complaints were repeated to Grant, and the latter promised, in dispatches of the 23d and 24th of December, to go to Knoxville in person. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. pp. 472, 479.] In the last of these he said, "If Longstreet is not driven from Tennessee, it shall not be my fault." He came, and saw that it was not Foster's fault, and that no more than Foster could he make a winter campaign with men in such a state of destitution. As I have already said, droves of beef, cattle, and hogs could be brought "on the hoof," in poor condition it is true, but fit to be eaten. ”

“ Our Whig has steadily increased in favor with the people, and its circulation is now THE RISE OF FIVE THOUSAND—being the largest circulation that any political or other journal ever attained in East Tennessee! Indeed, no political weekly in Tennessee now has, or ever did have, a circulation equal to "Brownlow's Knoxville Whig." ”

“ Nashville is the seat of government, and the largest town. Knoxville, Murfreesborough and Memphis are growing settlements. The mountains are the Laurel, Stone, Yellow, Iron, Bald and Unaka, peaks of a continued chain; Welling’s and Copper Ridge, Church, Powell’s and Bay’s mountains are in the north-east. The Cumberland Ridge intersects the state, running from north-east to south-west. The rivers are the Tennessee, Cumberland, Obian, Forked Deer, Big Hatchee and Wolf. ”

“ The United Presbyterians, likewise, had a school in Nashville in 1863, which was carried on in a quiet way till 1875, when Knoxville College was started to do normal work, and forthwith took its position as a central station from which a whole group of schools was directed, several in east Tennessee, others in North Carolina and Virginia, and a number of rural schools in Wilcox County, Ala. ”

“ TENNESSEE, Greene County, Afton vicinity, Brown-Neas House, Old Johnson City Rd. (11/08/84)
TENNESSEE, Hancock County, Sneedville vicinity, Vardy School Community Historic District, Blackwater Rd. (11/08/84)
TENNESSEE, Knox County, Knoxville, Bleak House, 3148 Kingston Pike (11/08/84)
TENNESSEE, Knox County, Knoxville, Westwood, 3425 Kingston Pike (11/08/84)
WYOMING, Johnson County, Buffalo vicinity, HF Bar Ranch Historic District, NW of Buffalo (11/07/84)
WYOMING, Laramie County, Cheyenne, Rainsford Historic District, Roughly bounded by Morrie, 22nd, Warren, and 17th Sts. ”

“ Knoxville is picturesquely situated at an elevation of from 850 to 1000 ft. in the valley between the Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Mountains, and is one of the healthiest cities in the United States. There are several beautiful parks, of which Chilhowie and Fountain City are the largest, and among the public buildings are a city-hall, Federal building, court-house, the Knoxville general hospital, the Lincoln memorial hospital, the Margaret McClung industrial home, a Young Men’s Christian Association building and the Lawson-McGhee public library. ”

“ Knoxville is situated on the northern bank of the Holston River. For the most part, the town is built on a table-land, which is nearly a mile square, and about one hundred and fifty feet above the river. On the northeast, the town is bounded by a small creek. Beyond this creek is an elevation known as Temperance Hill. Still farther to the east is Mayberry's Hill. On the northwest, this table-land descends to a broad valley; on the southwest, the town is bounded by a second creek. ”

“ Several of the women spin cotton and manufacture cotton-stuffs.
The distance from West Point to Knoxville is thirty-five miles. About a mile from West Point the travellers passed through Kingstown, a place consisting of thirty or forty log-houses. After that the road extended, upwards of eighteen miles, through a rugged [Pg 121] and flinty soil, covered with a kind of grass. The trees that occupied this space, grew within twenty or thirty yards of each other.
Knoxville, the seat of government for the state of Tenessee, is situated on the river Holstein, here a hundred and fifty fathoms broad. ”

“ Gov. De Witt Clinton appointed him brigadier-general of militia in 1826. Gen. Knox was a presidential elector on the Harrison ticket in 1840 and on the Lincoln ticket in 1860. For forty-seven years he was a member of the board of trustees of Hamilton college, and for thirty years its chairman.—His brother, James, lawyer, b. in Canajoharie, N. Y., 4 July, 1807; d. in Knoxville, Ill., 8 Oct., 1876, was graduated at Yale in 1830, studied law in Utica, N. Y., and was admitted to the bar in 1833. In 1836 he removed to Knoxville, Ill., and engaged in commercial and agricultural pursuits. ”

“ It is an outgrowth of the Appalachian Exposition, which has been held at Knoxville for the past two years. Knoxville was chosen as the location of the National Conservation Exposition because the Southern States are in great need of education concerning the proper handling of their great natural wealth; because Knoxville, while in the South, is readily accessible to the entire East; because the State in which it lies is in the transition zone between North and South and has more States bordering upon it than any other State in the Nation, and all the bordering States are southern ”

“ His rations were always short, his load a heavy one, and he was asked to haul it over [Pg 140] roads, the wretchedness of which can not be described nor can it be imagined by any one who has not been in a similar place. It is almost literally true that the whole line of march from Camp Nelson to Knoxville was strewn with his dead comrades; what one of the boys said in that connection as we reached Knoxville was not wide of the mark, namely, that he could in the darkest night smell out his way back to Camp Nelson by the odor of the dead mules lying along the way. ”

“ Thus Knox parted from the realm of England. Had he remained much longer in it, he would most probably have shared the fate of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and the "noble army," whom Mary's intolerance "chased up to heaven." But God had other work for him to do, and it was well for Scotland that he listened to the entreaty of those who counselled him when he was "persecuted in one country" to "flee to another"; so it came about that for a brief season he found refuge in that land wherein only a few years before he had been a galley-slave. ”

“ Knox said that the bishop deceived many, if he did not fear God. “Well, do as you will; but that man is a dangerous man.”
Knox wished to take his leave of her majesty, but she pressed him to stay. “I have one of the greatest matters that have touched me, since I came into this realm, to open to you, and I must have your help in it,” said she, with an air of condescension and confidence as enchanting as if she had put a ring on his finger. She then entered into a long discourse with him concerning a domestic difference between the earl and countess of Argyle. ”

“ On these allegations the question arises, Why was the complainant in the country held by Confederate troops? Why could he not return to Knoxville? Why could he not have communication with that place? It was his place of residence. He says that he left Knoxville a short time before the Federal troops arrived. ”

“ Knox continued at Geneva until the month of January, 1559, when, in response to a request sent to him by those who had signed the "Godly Band," which was backed by letters of a more recent date, informing him of the state of things in Scotland, he left his wife and family behind him and set out for his native land. Mary, the English queen, had now gone to her account, and her sister Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne, so that the Protestant refugees on the continent could safely return to their own country, and it was, therefore, no longer necessary for him to retain his position as pastor. ”