Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 2: November 1863-June 1865Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
History
Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 2: November 1863-June 1865
Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives
As my headquarters were assigned to Knoxville, I had the opportunity
of increasing my knowledge of the people and of the social
complications which grew out of the war. I found quarters for myself
and Lieutenant Theodore Cox, my aide, at the house of Mr. Cowen, a
young merchant of the city, whose father was one of the prominent
business men. The house was on the north side of a suburban street
running parallel to the river, and not far from the buildings of the
East Tennessee University, which were partially fortified and
connected with Fort Sanders by a line of infantry trench. The fields
on the opposite side of the road were open, and sloped down to the
river bank, and in these my headquarters guard pitched their tents
and the general quarters of the staff were also placed. A near
neighbor, in the direction of the college, was the Rev. Dr. Humes,
rector of the Episcopal parish, and after the war President of the
University. General Burnside had spoken of him as a noble man, of
devoted loyalty as well as earnest piety, and I was glad to know him
as one who by his high intelligence and character was an authority
on all that related to Holston valley. [Footnote: Thomas W. Humes,
S.T.D. He has, since the war (1888), published a volume devoted to
the East Tennessee loyalists, entitled "The Loyal Mountaineers of
Tennessee."] John Williams, John M. Fleming, and O. P. Temple were
among those who represented the Union sentiment of Knoxville, as did
Perez Dickinson among the merchants. [Footnote: Since this chapter
was written, Chancellor Temple has contributed a valuable work to
the history of the Rebellion, in his "East Tennessee and the Civil
War," Cincinnati. 1899.] John Baxter, afterward Judge of the United
States Circuit Court, was a strong and wise friend of the
government. Horace Maynard represented the district in Congress both
before and after the war, and was regarded at Washington as its
official representative even in the period when the Confederate
occupation made him an exile from his home. William G. Brownlow was
in Knoxville also, having returned as soon as our army had opened
the way. His son, "Colonel Jim," was doing gallant service at the
head of the First East Tennessee Cavalry. Around this group of
leading men were arrayed the great majority of the people, devoted
in their attachment to the Union. The men of property among them had
sometimes been forced to dissimulate in order to protect their
persons and their possessions; but now that the National army was in
the valley, there was no mistaking the earnest satisfaction and the
hearty sympathy of these people. There was a minority who had been
open Secessionists, and these had been influential beyond their
numbers, by reason of their wealth and social standing; for here, as
well as everywhere else in the South, owners of slaves easily became
champions of the extreme doctrines of what they called the
constitutional guaranty of their property. They claimed to include
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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