Knoxville

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the head of navigation for steamboats on the Tennessee River is Knoxville, the chief city of East Tennessee, in a fine location among the foothills of the Clinch Mountains, which are a sort of offshoot of the Cumberland range. This was the spot where General Knox, then Secretary of War, in the latter part of the eighteenth century made a treaty with the Indians of the upper Tennessee, and the village which grew there was named after him. It is the centre of the Tennessee marble district, shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of this beautiful stone all over the country. ”

“ Disheartened by this calamity, John Crockett made another move. Knoxville, on the Holston River, had by this time become quite a thriving little settlement of log huts. The main route of emigration was across the mountains to Abingdon, in Southwestern Virginia, and then by an extremely rough forest-road across the country to the valley of the Holston, and down that valley to Knoxville. This route was mainly traversed by pack-horses and emigrants on foot. But stout wagons, with great labor, could be driven through. ”

“ 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 ”

“ When the general visited us at Knoxville and Strawberry Plains in the severe weather of early January, he came practically unattended. He had with him Lieutenant-Colonel C. B. Comstock of the engineers, who continued in confidential staff relations to him to the end of the war, well known then and ever since as an officer of rare ability and discretion. At Knoxville Grant received a dispatch in cipher which he could not read because the telegraph operator at his headquarters at Nashville alone had the key. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Knoxville—we’ve only spent two winters there getting our education in music.”
“Is Knoxville a musical city?”
“The advantages there are considered exceptional. We were at the Convent of Sacré-Cœur.”
“At the convent?” I ask.
“All our best schools are the convents, you know, for us girls. At Sacré-Cœur we have instruction from Signor Mancini. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I found the capacity of the railroads from Nashville forward to Decatur, and to Chattanooga, so small, especially in the number of locomotives and care, that it was clear that they were barely able to supply the daily wants of the armies then dependent on them, with no power of accumulating a surplus in advance. The cars were daily loaded down with men returning from furlough, with cattle, horses, etc.; and, by reason of the previous desolation of the country between Chattanooga and Knoxville, General Thomas had authorized the issue of provisions to the suffering inhabitants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The developement of a noble manhood brought with it the craving for a spiritual and a national existence, and at the call of the Reformation the Scotch people rose suddenly into a nation and a Church.
Knox.
One well-known figure embodied the moral strength of the new movement. In the king's boyhood, amidst the wild turmoil which followed on Murray's fall, an old man bent with years and toil might have been seen creeping with a secretary's aid to the pulpit of St. Giles. But age and toil were powerless over the spirit of John Knox. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this critical time, John Knox arrived from Geneva, where he had passed some years in banishment, and where he had imbibed, from his commerce with Calvin, the highest fanaticism of his sect, augmented by the native ferocity of his own character. He had been invited back to Scotland by the leaders of the reformation; and mounting the pulpit at Perth, during the present ferment of men’s minds, he declaimed with his usual vehemence against the idolatry and other abominations of the church of Rome, and incited his audience to exert their utmost zeal for its subversion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certain I am, that it will be difficult to find one in whom the gifts of the Holy Spirit shone so bright, to the comfort of the church of Scotland. None spared himself less in enduring fatigues bodily and mental; none was more intent on discharging the duties of the province assigned to him.” And again, addressing his calumniator Hamilton, he says, “This illustrious, I say illustrious servant of God, John Knox, I shall clear from your feigned accusations and slanders, by the testimony of a venerable assembly rather than by my own denial. ”

“ Knox had now reached that point from which he could take a calm view of the struggle in which he had been engaged. True religion was now established, and he cherished the hope of retiring to that privacy from which the Reformation had drawn him, but he was destined to endure further trials. From the time that the Earl of Murray was appointed regent, a number of the nobility, headed by the house of Hamilton, stood aloof, and refused to acknowledge any other than the Queen's authority. ”

“ On retiring from Edinburgh, Knox undertook a tour of preaching through the kingdom. The wide field which was before him, the interesting situation in which he was placed, the dangers by which he was surrounded, and the hopes which he cherished, increased the ardour of his zeal, and stimulated him to extraordinary exertions both of body and mind. Within less than two months, he travelled over a great part of Scotland. He visited Kelso, and Jedburgh, and Dumfries, and Ayr, and Stirling, and Perth, and Brechin, and Montrose, and Dundee, and returned to St Andrews. ”

“ He took his leave in this courtly yet scriptural fashion, "Madame, I pray God that you may be as blessed within the commonwealth of Scotland as ever Deborah was in the commonwealth of Israel."
Thus for the first time they measured their strength, and the result was, in common speech, a draw. Mary found that Knox was made of more unyielding stuff than those whom heretofore she had been in the habit of meeting; and John formed an estimate of Mary's ability which his subsequent experience only served to confirm. ”

“ When they had time to read the papers they generally turned over to the athletic column. But they had no objection to burning Alfonso or anybody else in effigy, if Hamilton Knox said so; and they pronounced it very good horse, and went to sleep prepared to forget all about it; and so did young Knox, who, next morning arose early, caught the 7.10 for New York, stepped yawningly upon a cross-town car for East Twenty-Sixth Street, and found the little monotonous waves still slapping and swashing against the piles of the dock, which had the same old smell. ”

“ Crowding footsteps of the poor have obliterated the record in many a noble house abandoned by history; even the fated steps of the Queen save in one bloodstained closet have left but little authentic trace. But Knox is still present with all the force of an indestructible individuality—in the existing life of the country which took so strong an impression from him, and in the absolutely personal facts of the church in which he preached, the house in which he lived, the stone under which he lies. ”

“ Go to the castle, and tell him: ‘John Knox remains the same man now when he is about to die, that ever he knew him when able in body, and wills him to consider what he was, and the estate in which he now stands, which is a great part of his trouble. Neither the craggy rock in which he miserably confides, nor the carnal prudence of that man [Maitland] whom he esteems a demi‐god, nor the assistance of strangers, shall preserve him ”

“ His main work was now really done; for the parliament of 1567 made Moray regent, and Knox was only too glad to have his old friend back in power, though they seem to have differed on the question whether the queen should be allowed to pass into retirement without trial for her husband’s death, as they had differed all along on the question of tolerating her private religion. Knox’s victory had not come too early, for his physical strength soon began to fail. But Mary’s escape in 1568 resulted only in her defeat at Langside, and in a long imprisonment and death in England. ”