Middle Tennessee

“ We have very direct intelligence from Tennessee. The western districts are all Secession. Middle Tennessee is about equally divided. East Tennessee, a mountain region, containing few slaves, is inhabited by a hardy, primitive, industrious race. They are thoroughly, enthusiastically loyal.11
[Pg 147]
A Clear-Headed Negro.
The felicitous decision of Major-General Butler, that slaves of the enemy are "contraband of war," disturbs the Rebels not a little, even in the West. A friend just from Louisiana, relates an amusing conversation between a planter and an old, trusted slave. ”

“ He was then in command of the Military Division of the Tennessee which included the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. It was the main object of the committee to obtain information as to the public sentiment touching the treatment of the negroes and the re-establishment of civil government in the States that had been in rebellion. The Union sentiment was stronger in Tennessee than in any other State of the Confederacy. The inhabitants of the mountainous districts of eastern and middle Tennessee had been loyal from the opening of the contest in 1860 and 1860. ”

“ Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, is situated on the Cumberland River, two hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. It is the terminus of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and is also the centering point of numerous other Southern roads. It is sometimes known as the City of Rocks; being built on a high rocky elevation. The population is about twenty-five thousand, and it is a place of considerable trade. Most of the cotton, and other products of Middle Tennessee, here find a market. ”

“ If it has not accomplished all that its friends desire, what agency has?
West Tennessee was more interested in colonization than either East or Middle Tennessee. In fact, colonization was largely anti-free-negro rather than anti-slavery, especially so in West Tennessee, where it was regarded as a means of eliminating the free negro from among the slaves. West Tennessee was not nearly so anti-slavery in sentiment as East Tennessee. There was organized a separate colonization society at Memphis, June 12, 1848, largely through the efforts of the Presbyterian Church. ”

“ It is the natural centre of the finest cotton-producing district in the world, the county of Shelby, of which it is legally known as the Taxing District, yielding more cotton than any other county in the Union except that of Washington in Mississippi. It is almost as much aloof politically from east and middle Tennessee as it is geographically. A homogeneous State might be constructed by taking west Tennessee, all of Mississippi above Vicksburg and Jackson, and a slice off Arkansas, with Memphis for its capital. ”

“ In the first decade of this period, the slave population increased 297.54 per cent; in the second, 227.84 per cent; in the third, 79.87 per cent; and in the fourth, 76.76 per cent. There were 183,059 slaves in the state in 1840. Frontier conditions were largely supplanted by a more prosperous society. Cotton became the chief agricultural product of the state. West Tennessee, the part of the state especially adapted to the production of cotton, was settled during this period. Tobacco was profitably grown in Middle Tennessee, with the aid of slave labor. ”

“ Comparing these cotton planters with the Middle Tennessee planter referred to above, James C. Coggesball, the author of this paper, says, “I must certainly be permitted to speak as to the circumstances of several whose success surpasses his in a four-fold extent.” “And just here,” he says, “permit me to add as my opinion that there is not to be found a location in the United States where a farming community, taking them as a body, is as independent and intelligent as they are in the western district. ”

“ By 1820 the effects of the War of 1812 and the rising tide of westward migration became manifest. Pioneers spread along the river- courses of the northwest well up to the Indian boundary. The zone of settlement along the Ohio ascended the Missouri, in the rush to the Boone's Lick country, towards the center of the present state. From the settlements of middle Tennessee a pioneer farming area reached southward to connect with the settlements of Mobile, and the latter became conterminous with those of the lower Mississippi. ”

“ The settlement of Tennessee was parallel, though subsequent, to that of the Shenandoah and Kentucky. The eastern intramontane valley, broad and fertile but unsuited to the staple crops, gave homes to thousands of small farmers, while the Nashville basin drew planters of both tobacco and cotton, and the counties along the western and southern borders of the state made cotton their one staple. The scale of slaveholdings in middle and western Tennessee, while superior to that in Kentucky, was never so great as those which prevailed in Virginia and the lower South. ”

“ Physical Features.—Tennessee is traversed in the east by the Unaka Ridges of the Older Appalachian Mountains and by the Great Appalachian Valley; in the middle by the Cumberland Plateau, the Highland Rim Plateau, and the Nashville Basin of the Appalachian Plateau; and in the west by the Gulf Coastal Plains and a narrow strip of the Mississippi Flood Plain. From a maximum elevation of 6636 ft. at Mount Guyot on the North Carolina border, in Sevier county, the surface descends to 117 ft. ”

“ The Whig party was so strong that James K. Polk (Democrat) , a resident of the state, lost its electoral vote in 1844. With the disintegration of the Whig party, the state again became nominally Democratic, though Union sentiment was strong, particularly in East Tennessee. There were few large plantations and fewer slaves in that mountainous region, while the middle and western sections were more in harmony with the sentiment in Mississippi and Alabama. In 1850 representatives of nine Southern states met in a convention at Nashville (q.v.) ”

“ Revolutionary War, Highlanders in, 13-14; Indian raids in Kentucky, 139; King's Mountain, 195 et seq.; attitude of France and Spain in, 248 et seq.
Roane, Archibald, Governor of Tennessee, 267.
Robertson, James, "father of Tennessee," 124-125 (note) , 133; at Watauga, 165-166, 170, 181; personal characteristics, 165; and Sevier, 167, 239; commands Wataugans, 172; Indian agent at Chota, 183; leads settlers into middle Tennessee, 185; founds Nashville, 186; and Ferguson, 195; and Indian war, 246, 255; characterizes McGillivray, 259; death (1814) , 270. ”

“ The school-houses serve as meeting-houses. There are few churches beside. Outside of the larger towns, scarce a spire points its finger towards heaven. This is true not only of Tennessee, but of the whole South. It is one of the peculiarities of the country which strike the Northern traveller unpleasantly. The village green, with the neat white-steepled edifice standing upon it, distinguishable from all other buildings, is no feature of the Southern landscape. You may travel thousands of miles and not meet with it. ”

“ There have been a number of books written since the Civil War, dealing with the loyalty, heroism and suffering of the Union people of East Tennessee during that period, but few men have given their individual experience from 1861 to 1864. ”

“ If the structures of state, county and municipal institutions in Tennessee, and the social fabric as well, had been kept in harmony with the pure, simple, steadfast and enduring foundations laid by John Sevier and his contemporaries, what models we would have today for the world to imitate. Are we wiser or better than they? ”

“ The people who made it possible for Tennessee to have a centennial were a wonderful people. Within a period of about fifteen years, they were engaged in three revolutions; participated in organizing and lived under five different governments; established and administered the first free and independent government in America; founded the first church and the first college in the southwest; put in operation the second newspaper in the “New World west of the Alleghanies;” ”

“ From Natural Bridge our photographer took train on the Norfolk and Western Railroad, and proceeded southwestwardly to the junction of that road with the Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad, by which he passed into Tennessee as far as Knoxville, and from that point made excursions into the famous East Tennessee region, where scenes and scenery are quite unlike anything which he had ever before transferred to photographs. Nowhere in all the world are there richer lands, prettier women, braver men, finer landscapes, and bigger prospects than Tennessee affords. ”

“ Not only have we been connected with Tennessee, but we have been identified with the whole country since 1620, and have assisted in producing peace, prosperity. We have helped to clear the forests, till the soil, level the mountains, fill the valleys, bridge rivers, build railroads, factories, schoolhouses, churches, towns, and cities. We have labored assiduously to make this country bloom as a rose. This fact is admitted by multiplied thousands of the best white people in the whole South. We are not ashamed of our record in the history of our State, neither do we wish it to be ashamed of us. ”

“ Seated together, a little farther back, were the two men who signed the act ceding “the territory south of the Ohio” to the United States (19, 20) ; the Virginia statesman in whose honor, at the suggestion of Andrew Jackson, a county was named, in recognition of his earnest advocacy of the admission of Tennessee to the Union (21) ; the man who gave in the Senate the casting vote which secured that admission (22) ; and the commissioner who was sent by the Confederate government to effect the withdrawal of Tennessee from the Union (23) . ”

“ Slavery nowhere in the United States reflected physiographic features more distinctly than in Tennessee. The three sections of the state have always differed very largely in their agriculture, in their sympathy with various sections of the country, and in their politics. In fact, there are almost three peoples and three civilizations in Tennessee. Physiography has been the biggest factor in the differentiation. The human response to the soil is very clearly shown. ”

“ My Fellow-citizens—It gives me pleasure to visit this historical city—a city that has given to the country many men who have been eminent in its councils and brought to the Nation they served and to the people who called them into the public service great honor. I am glad to visit East Tennessee, the scene of that early immigration and of those early struggles of men who, for vigor of intellect, strength of heart, and devotion to republican principles, were among the most conspicuous of the early pioneers of the West and Southwest. ”

“ The extensive mountain region they drain in North Carolina and East Tennessee is a most attractive district, noted as a health resort, and famous for the sturdy independence of its people, while along the Tennessee and upon the mountains near it were fought some of the greatest battles of the Civil War. ”

“ About 1750, East Tennessee was beginning to be settled by adventurous individuals, principally from western North Carolina, south-western Virginia, and occasionally from more northern colonies. The Indians were still regarded as the rightful owners and proper "lords of the soil." At the date of the council held at the Tennessee River in 1757, only that portion of the country north of that stream had become sparsely settled, but soon thereafter purchases of land were sometimes made directly from the Indian chiefs themselves, as in the above instance, and settlements of whites speedily followed. ”

“ The gloom which it threw over the minds of the emigrants was so great, that the majority refused to press any farther into a wilderness where they would encounter such perils.
They had already passed two mountain ridges. Between them there was a very beautiful valley, through which flows the Clinch River. This many leagues below, uniting with the Holston River, flowing on the other side of Powell's Ridge, composes the majestic Tennessee, which, extending far down into Alabama, turns again north, and traversing the whole breadth of Tennessee and Kentucky, empties into the Ohio. ”

“ In his eighteenth year he migrated to Tennessee, and established himself in that rich upland region on the eastern border of the State, where by altitude the same agricultural conditions are developed that characterize the land which lies several degrees further North. Specially adapted to the cereals, the grasses, and the fruits of Southern Pennsylvania and Ohio, East Tennessee could not employ slave-labor with the profit which it brought in the rich cotton-fields of the neighboring lowlands, and the result was that the population contained a large majority of whites. ”

“ Have you a request from the South that you send a committee to inquire into slanders? No. Then hands off. As gentlemen you may ask us these questions,--we will answer you. But, ecclesiastically, you cannot speak in this matter. You have no power to move as you propose.
I beg leave to say, just here, that Tennessee [Footnote: At that time I resided in Tennessee.] will be more calm under this movement than any other slave-region. Tennessee has been ever high above the storm, North and South,--especially we of the mountains. ”

“ A remarkable group was composed of the famous general whose name was bestowed on the largest area ever embraced within the limits of a single county (29) ; a nobleman whose ancestral name, in abbreviated form, is borne by a Tennessee county (30) ; the explorer who named the Cumberland mountains and river (31) ; the governor by whose misspelled name a large part of Tennessee was known for many years (32) ; the revolutionary soldier in whose honor the first settlement on the Cumberland was called (33) ”