They have a great many arms, and are actually manufacturing Union flags to receive the refugee Tennesseeans when they return. They are getting bold enough.” Col. Wood wrote: “The whole country is now in a state of rebellion. A thousand men are within six miles of Strawberry Plains and an attack is contemplated to-morrow” (November 12). “They (the Unionists) are gathering in large force and may secure (Washington bridge) in a day or two.” “About two miles from here in Sevier County, already three hundred in camp, are being reinforced.” Knoxville was at once put under martial law. The people’s houses were arbitrarily entered day and night by military direction and their guns and pistols demanded. Even weapons intended only for sporting uses or for rivalry in marksmanship were included in the exaction. In but few instances was the requisition evaded by timely secretion of the implements. In others, they were indignantly surrendered, carried off to the armory, and some of them never restored. No one was allowed to depart from the town without a passport signed by a committee of three leading secessionists from among the select few citizens, whom Editor Sperry, of the town newspaper, compared, not facetiously but seriously, to the few righteous men who might have saved Sodom and Gomorrah if they could have been found. At first no one was permitted to enter the town without a paper of that kind, which could only be procured from the committee centrally located. Church-going people from the vicinity were surprised on Sunday morning to find armed men in the way who refused them ingress until a messenger, sent by some friend known to be loyal to “the South,” went and returned with the requisite passes. An old citizen of the county who had a mind of his own and stoutly adhered in sentiment to the Union, went to town without interruption, probably through oversight of the guard, but on returning homeward, his passport was demanded. He had none to show, for to procure such a document, it was necessary by order of the Committee of Three to take an oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy, and _that_ he had predetermined he would not do. He was arrested, led back, arraigned before the committee, and refusing to take the prescribed oath, he was placed on confinement to the limits of the town until his case should be tried before the Confederate States Commissioner. Whether he was sent to jail, into which many were then being cast for what was called “Union talk,” does not appear. Col. Wood, writing from Knoxville to Adjutant General Cooper at Richmond, said: “I feel it to be my duty to place this city under martial law, as there was a large majority of the people sympathizing and communicating with them by the unfrequented mountain paths, and to prevent surprises and the destruction of public property. I need not say that great alarm is felt by the few Southern men here. They are finding places of safety