"The Leniency Shown Them Has Been Unavailing": The Confederate Occupation of East Tennessee

Abstract

"The Leniency Shown Them Has Been Unavailing": The Confederate Occupation of East Tennessee Noel Fisher The divisions within the Confederacy are well documented and have received increasingly sophisticated attention in the last few years. Even so, a number ofconsequences of those divisions have yet to be explored. One is that Southern troops sometimes had to play the role ofoccupiers in their own country and employ force to suppress elements of their own population. These situations challenged the ability of the Confederate government to balance local interests with national needs; they also strained the patience and discipline of Confederate troops and resulted in frequent atrocities. The policies adopted by the Confederate government in these areas, the responses of Southern troops to resistance, and the similarities and differences in Confederate and Federal responses to dissent all reveal a great deal concerning not only the politics of the Confederacy but also its approach to war.' One area in which the struggle between Southern Unionists and the Confederate government became a full-fledged war was East Tennessee. From the beginning of the secession crisis, loyalists there displayed a fierce resistance to Confederate rule. About 70 percent of the region's voters rejected separation in both February and June 1861, and when secession passed in Middle and West Tennessee they attempted to form a separate, loyal state. The collapse of this scheme also failed to deter the Eastern Unionists. Throughout the summer and fall of 1861, they organized regional and local political structures, established¦Victoria E. Bynum, Unruly Women: The Politics ofSocial and Sexual Control in the Old South (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1992), 130-50; Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989): Paul D. Escott, Many Excellent People: PowerandPrivilege in North Carolina, 1850-1000 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1985), 32-84; Steven Hahn, The Roots ofSouthern Populism: Yeomen Farmers and the Transformation ofthe Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 86-1 13. Civil War History, Vol. XL, No. 4 © 1994 by the Kent State University Press 276CIVIL WAR HISTORY military companies known as home guards, and seized control of most counties . Some East Tennessee loyalists left the state to enter Federal units forming in Kentucky, while others began to threaten, kill, and drive out supporters of the Confederacy. In response, in July 1 861 the Confederacy sent two regiments to East Tennessee and initiated attempts to conciliate, or suppress, the dissenting population.2 For the next two years, Confederate officers engaged in a futile quest to find the proper balance between conciliation and repression. The combination varied with changes in circumstances and leadership, but no mix would sway the loyalist population. As Confederate frustrations increased, the emphasis shifted increasingly toward repression, and policy in 1863 was far harsher than that in 1861. Nonetheless, Confederate officers never lost all hope in persuasion , nor did they abandon their commitment to restraint in their dealings with the loyalists. The first man appointed to command the Department of East Tennessee, Brig. Gen. Felix K. Zollicoffer, embodied the Confederacy's emphasis on conciliation in the war's first months. Both Tennessee governor Isham G. Harris and President Jefferson Davis had received numerous reports that the resistance in East Tennessee resulted from unreasonable fears created by demagogic leaders, particularly Senator Andrew Johnson and Representative T. A. R. Nelson. Thus Harris and Davis agreed to station only a small force in East Tennessee and to appoint as commander a moderate and prudent man, preferably a former Whig. Zollicoffer fit these criteria. He had long been an important figure in the state Whig party, first as assistant editor of the influential Nashville Republic Banner and then as the representative of Tennessee's pivotal Eighth District. When the secession crisis emerged, Zollicoffer used all his influence for compromise. He helped organize the Constitutional Union party, represented Tennessee in the Washington Peace Conference, and campaigned against secession in the February referendum. He did not break with the Union until the outbreak of fighting at Fort Sumter, and he remained sensitive to the fears of Southern Unionists.3 Zollicoffer's primary responsibility...