Tennessee

“ The advent of the army into East Tennessee was, to its loyal people, a resurrection from the grave. Their joy had an exultation which seemed almost beyond the power of expression. Old men fell down fainting and unconscious under the stress of their emotions as they saw the flag at the head of the column and tried to cheer it! Women wept with happiness as their husbands stepped out of the ranks of the loyal Tennessee regiments when these came marching by the home. [Footnote: Temple's East Tennessee and the Civil War, pp. 476, 478. Humes's The Loyal Mountaineers, pp. 211, 218.] ”

“ Yes, life is easy in the Tennessee mountains. It is not to be assumed, nevertheless, that the man was a do-nothing: probably he had struck work for a few minutes only; but, like a sensible player, he was enjoying the game while it lasted. Perhaps it is a certain inborn Puritanical industriousness, against which I have never found the courage effectually to rebel, that makes me look back upon this dooryard comedy as one of the brightest incidents of my Tennessee vacation. Fancy a Massachusetts farmer playing marbles at nine o'clock in the forenoon! ”

“ CHAPTER III LOYALTY OF EAST TENNESSEE While we have attempted to show the untenable position of those who maintain that the majority of the people of Tennessee were opposed to separation and it was only a coup d’état of Governor Harris that carried the State into the Confederacy, it is, however, true that a great number of her inhabitants did resist withdrawal and remain openly loyal. This was especially the case with East Tennessee. Her persistent loyalty is a striking illustration of the physical conditions and causes which lay behind the Civil War. ”

“ The Ku-Klux "Well, sir, there is such an organization, not only in Tennessee, but all over the South, and its numbers have not been exaggerated."
"What are its numbers, general?"
"In Tennessee there are over 40,000; in all the Southern states they number about 550,000 men."
"What is the character of the organization; May I inquire?"
"Yes, sir. It is a protective political military organization. I am willing to show any man the constitution of the society. The members are sworn to recognize the government of the United States. It does not say anything at all about the government of Tennessee. ”

“ What brave, loving mothers, wives and sisters of East Tennessee, who faced the tempests of hatred and persecution during the Civil War; whose willing hands were always ready to minister to the suffering and distressed; who carried food to the hunted and perishing Union men who wore the homespun clothes wrought by their own hands; who through waiting [Pg 49] years never faltered in love and faith and duty to friend or to country! ”

“ We have a right to expect a high standard of manhood from Tennessee. It was one of the first two States created west of the Alleghany Mountains, and it was in this State that the first self-governing community of American freemen was established upon waters flowing into the Gulf. The pioneers of Tennessee were among the earliest in that great westward march which thrust the nation’s border across the continent to the Pacific, and it is eminently fitting that a son of Tennessee should now play so prominent a part in the further movement [203] of expansion beyond the Pacific. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What a monument is this charter, granted to a private corporation for profit, to the wisdom and far-reaching foresight of the pioneer statesmen who framed and granted it; and how unfortunate it is, for both the people and for the corporations, that subsequent general assemblies in Tennessee have not engrafted its principles upon all charters since granted to private corporations.
“History repeats itself” only when and where human nature parallels itself: have legislative statesmen duplicated themselves in Tennessee? ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I could not live in peace with people I did not agree with, why, what? I could not live. Here is the state of Tennessee going along in its own business, teaching evolution for years, state boards handing out books on evolution, professors in colleges, teachers in schools, lawyers at the bar, physicians, ministers, a great percentage of the intelligent citizens of the state of Tennessee evolutionists, have not even thought it was necessary to leave their church. ”

“ A constitution for the ‘State of Tennessee’ modeled after that of North Carolina was adopted without submission to popular vote; the first General Assembly met March 28th, and the State was admitted June 1, 1796. Almost from the date of admission there was a sharp distinction between East and Middle (West) Tennessee, which was recognized in the appointment of the judiciary. In wealth and material progress the mountainous eastern part lagged behind. The western part of the State began to fill up after 1818. ”

“ The settlement of Tennessee was unlike that of the present new country of the United States. Emigrants [Pg 66] from the Atlantic cities, and from most points in the Western interior, now embark upon steamboats or other craft, and carrying with them all the conveniences and comforts of civilized life—indeed many of its luxuries—are, in a few days, without toil, danger or exposure, transported to their new abodes, and in a few months are surrounded with the appendages of home, of civilization and the blessings of law and of society. ”

“ Elsewhere the foreground was an unbroken forest. For some time I could not distinguish the Ridge itself from the outlying world. Mountains and hills crowded the hazy horizon, range beyond range. Moving along the rocks, I found a vista through which Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain were visible. Another change, and a stretch of the Tennessee River came into sight, and, beyond it, Missionary Ridge with its settlements and its two observatories. ”

“ The boys were worn out, mostly all barefooted and nearly naked from crawling through bushes and briar thickets.
Some of them, when we reached the top of the mountain, looked back into the valley of East Tennessee and said, “Farewell to rebellion;” and they looked North and said, “I can see the Promised Land!” They were happy, but they had been so long hiding in the woods that they would only speak in whispers, and it was a long time before they could break themselves from the habit. You could trail them by the blood from their feet, but like brave men they marched along without a murmur. ”

“ West Tennessee, the seat of the Black Belt, was the home of the Whig aristocracy. When the Whigs became Democrats in the decade between 1850 and 1860, the free farmers and small slaveholders, Democrats of East Tennessee, became Unionists and later Republicans. This same formula worked out over the entire state. There are Republican islands in Democratic sections, and Democratic islands in Republican [64] sections. East Tennessee remained loyal to the Methodist Church, and West Tennessee went into the Methodist Church, South. ”

“ TENNESSEE.—Thus, in 1769, William Bean of North Carolina built a cabin on the banks of the Watauga Creek and began the settlement of what is now Tennessee. The next year James Robertson and many others followed and dotted the valleys of the Holston and the Clinch with clearings and log cabins. These men at first were without government of any sort, so they formed an association and for some years governed themselves; but in 1776 their delegates were seated in the legislature of North Carolina, and next year their settlements were organized as Washington county in that state. ”

“ 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;” ”

“ Tennessee is realizing that beatitude; the old things, the old way of doing things, the stiff clay and steep mountain roads have passed away and the steam-car has come.
The old times of isolation in these valleys, when these pioneers, some of whom I see, made their frontier homes, have passed away, and influences from the outside have come; life has been made easier to men and easier to the toiling women who used to carry the water from the spring at the bottom of the hill in a piggin, but who now by modern appliances have it brought into the kitchen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How amusing the efforts of a Tennessee statesman in a recent great occasion, majestically sweeping the heavens with his hands and solemnly proclaiming that “Tennessee had set more stars in the galaxy of glory than all the other States.” Bosh! Tennessee [114] has as many fools to the acre as any other State, and what she should do just now is to set more hens and fewer stars!
People who live with nature soon learn a great deal. The best way to study nature is to get in harmony with the laws of nature. ”

“ Middle Tennessee is the largest of the three natural divisions of the State. It is separated from the West division by the Tennessee River, and from East Tennessee by the Cumberland Mountains. It is a fine stock-raising country; and the valley of the Cumberland River affords an extensive tract of excellent cotton and tobacco lands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kentucky and Tennessee were practically the only organized settlements; but a popular movement toward Ohio and the Northwest was beginning, and by the end of the century the Mississippi Territory had been formed in the region which Georgia claimed north of the Gulf. Most of the settlers in these outlying communities had moved westward from the frontier portions of the adjoining older states. Thus many of the immigrants to Tennessee came from North Carolina. ”

“ Eastern Tennessee, I have no doubt, is a most salubrious country; properly recommended by the medical fraternity as a refuge for consumptive patients. If to me its meteorological fluctuations seemed surprisingly wide and sudden, it was perhaps because I had been brought up in the equable climate of New England. It would be unfair to judge the world in general by that favored spot. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”