West Tennessee

“ They voted overwhelmingly for the Whig candidate for Governor in 1847. [13]
Present Republican counties of East Tennessee went Democratic. Washington, 1225 to 881 in favor of Polk; Sullivan, 1533 to 350 in favor of Polk; Greene, 1701 to 1031 in favor of Polk. The same line-up expressed itself in 1847 and in the Presidential election of 1848. [14]
There are certain counties in West Tennessee today that are quite as overwhelmingly Republican as any in East Tennessee. These counties are in full sympathy with the point of view of the North in politics and toward life generally. ”

“ In East Tennessee most of the people were small farmers, while West Tennessee was a land of great slave plantations. Johnson began in politics to oppose the aristocratic element and became the spokesman and champion of the poorer and labouring classes. ”

“ The troops were in fine spirits, and the whole Army of West Tennessee seemed eager to emulate the armies of the Potomac and Kentucky. No army ever marched to battle with prouder steps, more hopeful countenances, or with more courage, than marched the Army of West Tennessee out of Ripley on the morning of September 29th, on its way to Corinth. ”

“ The last steamers bring us the news of the recent elections in Maryland, which have not only sustained the Union, but have sent an overwhelming majority to Congress and to State Legislature in favor of immediate emancipation. (Applause.) Tennessee also is ours. From the Mississippi to the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, from Knoxville, in the mountains of the east, to Nashville, the capital, in the centre, and Memphis, the commercial metropolis in the west, Tennessee is wholly ours. So is Arkansas; so is Louisiana, including the great city of New Orleans. So is North Alabama ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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;” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ F. A. Michaux in travelling from Nashville to Knoxville in 1802 says: “Between Nashville and Fort Blount (above Nashville on the Cumberland River about sixty miles) the plantations, although isolated in the woods always, are nevertheless, upon the road, within two or three miles of each other. The inhabitants live in comfortable log houses; the major part keep negroes, and appear to live happy and in abundance.” [32] He says West Tennessee (Cumberland) , now Middle Tennessee, produced a very fine grade of cotton and that manufacture was encouraged by the legislature. ”

“ A fourth anti-slavery society was the Moral Religious, Manumission Society of West Tennessee, which was organized December 18, 1824, at Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee. [35] The spirit of this society is well known in the following extract from the preamble of its constitution:
We, the undersigned, having fully considered the subject of Tyranny and Slavery as practiced by individuals on their brethren in our neighborhood, and elsewhere in America ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her descendants are still found in the Nation. See Haywood, Natural and Aboriginal Tennessee; Ramsey, Tennessee; Nuttall, Travels, p. 130, 1821; Campbell letter, 1781, and Springstone deposition, 1781, in Virginia State Papers I, pp. 435, 436, 447, 1875; Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography.
(15) General James Robertson (p. 48) : This distinguished pioneer and founder of Nashville was born in Brunswick county, Virginia, in 1742, and died at the Chickasaw agency in west Tennessee in 1814. Like most of the men prominent in the early history of Tennessee, he was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. ”

“ 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 old days sleep, the lion of Tennessee sleeps With Daniel Boone and the hunters, The rifle men, the revelers, The laughers and dancers and choppers Who climbed the crests of the Alleghenies, And poured themselves into Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, the bountiful West. But the river never sleeps, the river flows forever, Making land forever, reclaiming the wastes of the sea. And the race never sleeps, the race moves on forever. And wars must come, as the waters must sweep away Drift-wood, dead wood, choking the strength of the river— For Liberty never sleeps! ”

“ We shall find its history lovingly written, and as though to hand, by an inhabitant of the state of Tennessee who has given care in research along those lines. [10] “This lovely mountain section of the old Watauga settlements,” writes he, “being the cradle of Tennessee and in some respects also, of the vast valley of the Mississippi, is rich in historical interest. Here in the month of May, 1772, there was formulated by Sevier, Robertson and others the first written compact of civil government on American soil. ”

“ Tennessee and Kentucky are the two great mule-breeding States. East Tennessee takes first rank among the grazing sections of the South and West. Wild grass abounds in the uncultivated districts. Interminable forests on the mountain sides are carpeted with it. The woods are kept open and free from undergrowth by fires; and this native grass springs up and covers the ground. The mountains are full of deer which feed upon it. Many a beautiful range of thousands of acres is also afforded the farmers’ stock, which is sent in vast numbers to occupy this wild, free, unfenced pasturage. ”

“ What is now West Virginia had squatters here and there.
Virginian pioneers had also betaken themselves southwestward to the head
of the Tennessee. North and South Carolina were inhabited as far west as
the mountains, though the population was not dense. In Northern
Kentucky, along the Ohio, lay considerable settlements, and in
Tennessee, where Nashville now is, there was another centre of
civilization. In the Northwest Territory, Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia,
Prairie du Chien, Mackinac, and Green River were outposts, at each of
which a few white men might have been found. ”

“ The same character of entries will no doubt be found in the old records kept in Sullivan, Greene, Davidson, Hawkins, Sumner, Tennessee and Knox counties, in all of which Jackson practised as an attorney or presided as a judge. The proceedings in the courts of the counties named, especially those that will be set out, will be of interest not alone to Tennesseans, but also to the descendants, scattered throughout the southwest and west, of the men who made these records. ”

“ On the other hand, its control by the confederates gave them the fertile valleys of east Tennessee and allowed them to threaten Kentucky and western Tennessee. They could readily move troops and supplies between the army in Virginia and the forces in the west. The mountaineers in Kentucky and Tennessee were largely unionists and this provided an additional strong incentive for the federals to control the region. ”

“ Tennessee commissioners attend the council.—In the mean time113 Governor Sevier of Tennessee designated General Robertson, James Stuart, and Lachlan McIntosh as agents to represent the interests of that State at the treaty, and gave them minute instructions covering the following points,114 viz:
1. To obtain as wide an extinguishment of the Cherokee claim north of the Tennessee River as possible. 180
2. An unimpeded communication of Holston and Clinch Rivers with the Tennessee and the surrender of the west bank of the Clinch opposite South-West Point. ”

“ New Orleans, battle of—unique account of, 107. Nolichucky River Company—incorporation of, 80. Orthography of “Miro,” 87. Ovations to Andrew Jackson— on Broadway, New York, 109, 135; at Jonesboro, 128. Parton, James—life of Jackson quoted, 2, 123, 135. Pensions to soldiers—granted by Tennessee before action by the United States government, 70, 72. Presidential electors in 1796—method of their selection, 97. Printing press—first in Tennessee and second west of the Alleghanies, established at Rogersville, 36. Pugh, John, “Regulator” and sheriff, 18. Pybourn, Elias—severe punishment of, 53. ”

“ Parton’s injustice to, 121. Robertson, James—suggests name of Miro district, 87. Roulstone, George—established first printing press, 36. Salem church—founding of, 25. School, first, west of the Alleghanies, 25. Settlers, the early—life, habits and characteristics, 15, 16, 18, 24. Sevier, James— clerk of Washington county court, 33; unique record of, 34. Sevier, John— contest with Jackson for Major General, 6; subsequent career, 7; his “rescue” at Morganton, 8; contest for clerk, 40; commissioner of currency, 46, 47, 48. Slaves, emancipation of— early cases in Tennessee, 77 ”