Solid South, the
The Confederate Congress having passed an act for making all residents loyal to the
Confederate cause,
President Davis issued a proclamation (Aug. 14, 1861) in accordance with the intent of that act. This and the confiscation act put the seal of silence upon the lips of all Union men. Few could leave, for obstacles were cast in their way. To remain was to acquiesce in the new order of things, or suffer intensely from social ostracism, if not from actual persecution.
In
east Tennessee, where the majority of the people were
Unionists, fearful persecutions occurred at times.
Unionists were imprisoned (see
Brownlow, William Gannaway) and their property was plundered.
Very soon the jails were filled with loyalists, and so completely were the people of that region under the control of armed Confederates that, in November, 1861,
Col. W. B. Wood, a Methodist clergyman from
Alabama, holding a Confederate military commission, wrote to
Judah P. Benjamin,
Secretary of War, at
Richmond: “The rebellion [resistance to Confederate rule] in
east Tennessee has been put down in some of the counties, and will be effectually suppressed in less than two weeks.”
After speaking of breaking up the camps of the loyalists, he said, “It is a farce to arrest them and turn them over to the courts.... They really deserve the gallows, and, if consistent with the laws, ought speedily to receive their deserts.”
The gallows was sometimes used, and Union fugitives, driven from their homes, were hunted by blood-hounds in some parts of
Tennessee.
1 On Nov. 20
Colonel Wood again wrote to
Secretary Benjamin, and recommended the summary trial of “bridge-burners and spies.”
To this letter
Benjamin replied (Nov. 25): “All such as can be identified as having been engaged in bridge-burning [to obstruct the march of Confederate raiders] are to be tried summarily by drum-head court-martial, and, if found guilty, executed on the spot, by hanging.
It would be well to leave the bodies hanging in the vicinity of the burned bridges.... In no case is one of the men known to be up in arms against the government to be released on any pledge or oath of allegiance.
The time for such measures is past.
They are all to be held as prisoners of war, and held in jail to the end of the war.”
This spirit of the
Confederate Secretary of War, manifested in all parts of the
Confederate service at that time, produced a “solid South.”
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