Tennessee's Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867-1869 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867–1869 Derek W. Frisby Tennessee’s Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction, 1867–1869. By Benjamin Severance. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005. Pp. 336. Cloth, $35.00.) Benjamin Severance's Tennessee's Radical Army ambitiously undertakes an update of the state's tumultuous Reconstruction era, ending a decade or more of silence on the subject. This study chronicles particularly the "politics of force" employed by Tennessee's radical Republicans through their "mailed fist," the State Guard (xi, xvi). Previous studies have often denounced Tennessee's radical governor, William G. Brownlow, as a tyrant who employed this partisan force to restore order and to prop up his crumbling administration. Even seemingly benign treatments label the State Guard as "more annoying than overpowering," "worse than useless," or as a militia that "placed political allegiance above impartial law enforcement" (xv). Severance boldly challenges both interpretations. He describes the Guard as the radicals' best chance of "preserving their hold on the state and completing their plans for a New Tennessee" (xvii). Furthermore, he argues that the State Guard's conduct and employment actually demonstrates that the radicals were "too cautious in their use of force" (xvii). Tennessee slid into a morass of politically inspired violence and social unrest following the restoration of civil government. Radicals had initially seized control of the state's election machinery in 1865 away from Conservative Unionists and had since established franchise restrictions, overturned election results, tossed uncooperative judges, detained opponents, and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment using now-infamous means. These tactics made anti-radical elements (Conservative Unionists and ex-Confederates) howl. [End Page 316] Radical leaders, especially Brownlow, witnessing the growing unrest, including the Memphis riots and the assassination of a Tennessee radical legislator, feared a second civil war or a coup to topple his government. With few Federal troops remaining in the state to assist them and their support declining at the polls, radicals used their remaining political capital to extend the franchise to freedmen and create a military force in 1867 "to suppress insurrection or protect the ballot-box" during the 1867 election (11). The stabilizing rather than intimidating presence of the newly formed State Guard, Severance asserts, protected the Union Leagues, freedmen, and radicals in strategic locations around the state and secured almost unprecedented victories at every level for the radicals during a relatively incident-free campaign. Fearing the expense and public backlash over creating a standing army for the state, Brownlow demobilized the State Guard and reduced it largely to a paper force in 1868. Without any method of enforcing his dictums, Brownlow and the radicals watched helplessly as the antiradicals and groups like the Ku Klux Klan intimidated voters and established de facto control over large areas of the state. The violence reached near-epic proportions, and the radicals again deployed a reconstituted State Guard. Although opponents termed the campaign to reestablish peace "Brownlow's War," Severance proves the Guard's presence usually improved conditions within its area of operations. As the author makes clear, it was too little too late, and the radical coalition under Brownlow collapsed, paving the way for the state's rather quick Redemption. Severance's thoroughly researched account examines the radicals who supported or served in the State Guard and chooses not to focus on Brownlow or his administrative style. In exploring the Guard's composition and its mission, his study of these commands concludes that the State Guard was not a Cromwellian-style coercive instrument. They were instead an "appropriate and reasonable," and arguably successful, use of constitutional militia provisions; however, their inconsistent use impaired the radicals' success (118). They were never used to avenge, and their conduct was overwhelmingly honorable given the circumstances, Severance correctly points out, but most observers will note that the Guard often appeared to be chasing ghosts and rumors while walking a thin line between protection and intimidation. Even the Federal authorities, he explains, were hesitant to assist the Guard or interfere in intrastate confrontations. Severance's decidedly pro-radical sympathies soften the radicals' image and makes Brownlow and his supporters seem "levelheaded...