They were almost uneventful years at Pall Mall from the days of Coonrod Pile until the Civil War. Less than a score of years lapsed from the death of the pioneer in 1849 until over the mountains broke the warstorm in a fury that has no parallel except in wars where father has fought son, and brother fought brother; where the cause of war and the principles for which it is fought are lost in the presence of cruelties created in personal hatred and deeds of treachery perpetrated for revenge. A third generation had grown to manhood at Pall Mall. In Fentress county, the polling of the vote upon secession was marked with bloodshed. The county was on the military border between the free and the slaveholding states. Coonrod Pile had been a slaveholder, but few of the mountaineers were owners. Slavery as an institution did not appeal to their Anglo-Saxon principles; poverty had prevented slavery's advance into the mountains as a custom, and as racial distinction was not to be clearly defined into master and worker, the negro's presence in the mountains was unwelcomed. A war to uphold a custom they did not practise did not appeal to them; so as a great wedge the Alleghany mountains, extending far into the slaveholding states, was peopled with Union sympathizers. Fentress county on the slope of the great mountain range and on the border between the territory firmly held by the North and by the South became a no-man's land, subjected successively to marauding bands from each side, a land for plunder and revenge. Before the war the county had been sharply divided politically, and with few exceptions that alignment held. Those who were Union sympathizers went north into Kentucky and joined the Federal forces, and those on the side of the South went for enlistment in the armies of the Confederacy. The men who remained at home were compelled by public sentiment to take sides, and the bitterest of feeling was engendered. The raids of passing soldiers was the excuse for the organization, by both sides, of bands who claimed they were "Home Guards"--the Federals under "Tinker" Beaty, and the Confederates under Champ Ferguson. These bands, each striving for the mastery, soon developed into guerrillas of the worst type the war produced, and anarchy prevailed. Churches were closed, for religious services were invaded that the bushwackers could get the men they sought. Homes were burned. Civil courts suspended. Post-offices and post-roads were abandoned. No stores were kept open and the merchandise they formerly held was concealed, and there became a great scarcity of the necessaries of life. Many homes were deserted by entire families and their land turned out as common ground. There was waste and ruin on every hand, and no man's life was safe.