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organizations which commanded the sympathy and support of the great body of the people of east Tennessee, and secured that division of the State (in the heart of the Confederate States) to the Federal government.
Farragut and Carter, both natives of east Tennessee, were important factors in making Confederate success impossible.
Tennesseeans in the United States navy who resigned to accept service in the Confederate States navy were: George W. Gift, J. W. Dunnington, Jesse Taylor, W. P. A. Campbell, Thomas Kennedy Porter, A. D. Wharton, George A. Howard and W. W. Carnes.
Lieutenant Gift is famous for having commanded, with Lieutenant Grimball, the 8-inch columbiads on the Confederate ram Arkansas.
The Arkansas was built by Capt. John T. Shirley at Memphis, Tenn. At the fall of New Orleans she was towed up the Yazoo.
On the 15th of July, 1862, the ram started out from Haynes' Bluff, under the command of Capt. I. W. Brown, with a crew of 200 officers and men, for Mobile bay, with orders to raise the blockade of that port.
Lieutenant Gift, in his history of the exploits of the Arkansas, states that ‘Sunrise found us in the Yazoo river with more than twenty ships barring our way, and in for one of the most desperate fights any one ship ever sustained since ships were first made.’
Lieutenant Gift fought the port gun, with John Wilson, of Baltimore, as his lieutenant.
Grimball fought the starboard gun, and had for his lieutenant Midshipman Dabney M. Scales, now a prominent lawyer and ex-State senator from Memphis.
Lieut. A. D. Wharton came next on the starboard side, each lieutenant with two guns.
Soon three Federal gunboats were seen steaming toward the Arkansas, the ironclad Carondelet, of twelve guns, the Tyler, and the Queen of the West.
The Arkansas was steered direct for the Tyler, and Gift fired the first shot with an 8-inch shell, which struck her fair and square, killing a pilot and bursting in the engineroom.
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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