Davidson County TN Archives History - Books .....The Great Civil War 1880
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Book Title: History Of Davidson County , Tennessee

CHAPTER XXX.



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR.



Events and Causes which led to its Inception—Loyalty to the Union in

Tennessee—That feeling suddenly changed by the Policy of the Government in

Reinforcing Fort Sumter—Vote of Secession— Military Fame of

Tennessee—Organization of Companies in Davidson County—State Military
Establishment.



  THE success of the Republican party in electing Abraham Lincoln to the

Presidency in November, 1860, was regarded by some of the slave-holding States

as such a menace to their constitutional rights that by the 1st of February

following seven of them had seceded from the Union. The possibility of a

division of the Union had engaged the minds of the people of the United States

for many years, beginning with the first introduction of the question of African

slavery as an element in American politics. Never was a political question more

thoroughly discussed in all of its bearings, and when a party, then regarded as

hostile to the institution of slavery and bent on, its final overthrow,

succeeded in securing the chief magistracy and one branch of Congress, the

people of the Cotton States deemed that argument was exhausted and that the time

for action had arrived. The wisdom of this policy will not be discussed here,

but its relation to events which shortly followed as affecting the remaining

slave-holding States will be briefly considered. The waves of secession, which

swept seven States out of the Union broke against a solid barrier of adjoining

States and were arrested. In fact, such was the feeling in one of them,

Tennessee, that the question of calling a convention to consider the state of

the country was defeated in February by a vote of over sixty thousand. The

sentiment of her people, as expressed in this vote, was to take no step which

would jeopardize a peaceful solution of the great questions at issue. She

entered heartily into the scheme of a peace congress, through which it was hoped

some constitutional guarantees could be adopted which would be the basis of

reconciliation between the sections, and lead to the return of the seceded

States to the Union. This congress met, but failed of its purpose. During its

session Mr. Chase, a member of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet and spokesman for his

party, declared that the recent victory of the Republican party was not due to a

mere accidental circumstance of the divisions of its opponents; that it would

win victory after victory on its platform of hostility to the extension of

African slavery; that the fugitive slave act was a dead letter, and that the

personal liberty acts passed by the various Northern Legislatures which

nullified this law of Congress would never be repealed; that the expression of

the moral sense of a people on this question was a higher law than congressional

enactments. In spite of the failure of this scheme, the people of Tennessee

still did not despair of averting the calamities of fratricidal war, but through

their General Assembly announced a firm determination to await some overt act of

oppression on her sister Southern States or upon herself before she would yield

the Union; at the same time asking the administration to refrain from any

coercive measures which, would provoke a conflict of arms. On this platform

stood the powerful States of North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and

Arkansas, whose united voices plead for peace. The immediate question upon which

the issue of peace or war turned was the reinforcement and retention of Fort

Sumter by the general government. This powerful battery stood within the harbor

of Charleston, and could by its guns reach any part of the city. It was still

being held for the government by Maj. Anderson; but its evacuation had been

demanded by the State of South Carolina, through the exercise of the right of

eminent domain, which she claimed vested the title in herself after her

separation from the Union. Gen. Scott, the commander-in-chief of the United

States army, advised the administration, in view of the attitude of the Border

slave-holding States, to evacuate the fort and trust to diplomacy for its

recovery. Senator Stephen A. Douglass, and many other leading politicians at the

North, urged the same view, and begged the administration to forego the

collection of custom dues, a paltry sum in comparison with the cost of a great

conflict.



   It was known to the country at this time that an attempt to provision and

reinforce the place would provoke resistance, force the remaining Southern

States to throw off their neutrality, and inaugurate a civil war. Under

assurances of the administration that Sumter would be evacuated, the country

breathed freer, and the advocates of secession in the Border States were awed

into silence or put to a sharper defense of their policy. The feeling in these

States was that the question would be submitted to a trial of diplomacy and not

of arms; that the administration was ready to sacrifice any mere party feeling

for the sake of a peaceful solution of the question. Such was the attitude of

these States when it was suddenly announced that a large fleet had left New York

with two hundred and eighty-five guns and two thousand four hundred soldiers to

forcibly enter Charleston harbor and reinforce Fort Sumter. On this information

being communicated to the Confederate authorities, Gen. Beauregard was ordered

to reduce the fort before the arrival of the fleet, which that officer, after a

bombardment of thirty-two hours, was enabled to accomplish on the 13th of April.

The news of this event shook the country like an earthquake. To the Border

States it was a knell of despair for the Union. They felt that their loyal

efforts for its maintenance against the strongest arguments of their brethren of

the seceded States had been treated with contempt, insult, and perfidy, and that

the blow had been struck before they could interpose their hands to arrest it.

Under these circumstances their indignation knew no bounds, and when the

administration called upon them the day after the fall of Fort Sumter to furnish

soldiers for war against a people to whom they were bound by every tie of

kindred, interest, and association, they flew to arms to resist what they

regarded as a preconcerted attempt at the subjugation of the entire South. All

of the Governors of the remaining slaveholding States, except Maryland, refused

to issue the call fur troops, alleging that the general government had no

constitutional authority to coerce a State after the withdrawal of its delegated

powers from the Union, as the Union was then understood. In the twinkling of an

eye the feelings of the people of Tennessee towards the government had undergone

an almost total change. The sixty thousand majority for the "Union" in the short

space of less than three months had changed into a sixty thousand majority for

"separation." Such, in brief, is the history of the movement which eventuated in

the separation of Tennessee from the Union, the facts of which are verified by

reference to the current files of the press of that day, and from the lips of

living actors whose loyalty remained unshaken up to the very hour of conflict.

At this time the military fame of Tennessee was second to that of no State in

the Union. She had won this fame, not from any adventitious circumstance or cast

of fortune on some narrow field of conflict. On many hard-fought fields and in

many conflicts she had won an enduring reputation for impetuous valor and

chivalric devotion to the call of public duty. For nearly a century her sons had

led the van of civilization in the Southwest, and they could justly claim an

empire vast in extent and importance as mainly due to the exercise of their

enterprise and valor. They had turned the tide of the Revolution at King's

Mountain, wrested their own domain from the wilderness and the savage, thrown

open the great States of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida to peaceful

occupation, saved Louisiana from the horrors of a foreign invasion, peopled

Arkansas, and helped to wrench Texas from the grasp of Mexico,—an event which, a

few years later, led through the Mexican war to the acquisition of the vast

region stretching from Colorado to the Pacific Ocean. Truly, Tennessee had

advanced the standard of national greatness as few other States could claim. So,

when she buckled on her armor again, it was evident that she would exert a

mighty influence over the course and duration of the conflict, and so it proved

in the end. Her sons, in taking sides for or against the Union as convictions of

duty taught, upheld her honor and fame in a contest which tried their valor and

fortitude to the last limit of human endurance.



   The military ardor of the people of Davidson County surpassed all previous

exhibitions. Many of those who a day before had been strong for the Union were

the first to raise the standard of resistance, and in a few weeks nearly forty

companies of infantry, cavalry, and artillery were organized and ready to take

the field for the South, in obedience to a call from Governor Isham G. Harris.

The Legislature quickly convened and passed an act providing for a State

military establishment. Under this act among the appointments from Davidson

County were Samuel R. Anderson, who had been lieutenant-colonel of the First

Tennessee in the Mexican war, as major-general, and Felix K. Zollicoffer, who

had been a captain in the Florida war, B. E. Cheatham, who had commanded first

the Nashville Blues and afterwards the Third Tennessee, and R. C. Foster (3d),

who commanded the Harrison Guards in the Mexican war, as brigadier-generals.

Ex-Governor Neill S. Brown and Gen. W. G. Harding were on the military and

financial board. Dr. Paul F. Eve was made surgeon-general.



  The theatre of the services of the Davidson County volunteers reached, in the

course of the war, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from the Ohio to the

Gulf of Mexico. Our space will not allow more than a brief summary of the

services of the various companies. An extended detail would embrace the history

of the war in the West, which would be incompatible with the scope and design of

this work. Justice would require an extensive volume for the proper treatment of

the subject. Again, where so many acted well their parts it has been deemed

improper to single out individuals for notice, except where such notice was

obviously just.



Additional Comments:
From:



History of Davidson County , Tennessee : with illustrations and biographical

sketches of its prominent men and pioneers

by

W. W. Clayton

Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co. (1880)



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