revise their sentiments to harmonize with it. Thus it was, long after the war closed, that the real Union was reëtablished, and this not by solving the questions of law, for they were unable to do that, but by closing the question of fact.

The logical as well as chronological beginning of the history of reconstruction was the appointment of a Military Governor for Tennessee. In the work of Governor Johnson one sees not only the first military government of an American state, but what is more important, the work of the man, who, as President, resumed the work of reconstruction as it fell from the hands of President Lincoln. In the military government and the Military Governor of Tennessee one sees the future of reconstruction and the policy of the future "reconstruction President." This fact makes the reconstruction of Tennessee of greater importance than it would otherwise be, and gives additional weight to every word and act of Governor Johnson.

In the "Address to the People of Tennessee" of March 12, 1862, Governor Johnson declared that he was appointed as "military" governor, in "absence of the regular and established state authorities," for the purpose of "restoring her government to the same condition as before the existing rebellion." More than three years afterwards, in the summer of 1865, he, as President, appointed provisional governors for the states "deprived of all civil government" for the purpose of enabling "the loyal people of said state to organize a state government." In the proclamations of 1865, we see President Johnson pursuing a policy of reconstruction of which his own appointment as Military Governor of Tennessee was the inception.

There were other respects in which Tennessee held a unique position during the period of her reconstruction. She was the last state to secede and the first one to succumb to federal armsonly eight months intervening between the "Declaration of Independence" and the appointment of Governor Johnson. For this reason she was less attached to the Confederacy and less affected by Confederate administration than any other of the seceded states. She was the only seceded state not mentioned in the Emancipation Proclamation and the only one which had the nominal honor of 1. See "Appeal” Union, April 10, 1862.

freeing the slaves. Her geographical position and the direction of her rivers gave easy entrance to both armies and made her soil little else than a camping-ground or a battlefield. Four hundred engagements were fought within the state. Every able-bodied man was compelled to enter one or the other army in order to secure protection. The result of this is seen in the number of troops furnished by the state, which was greater than that furnished by any other state, either North or South. From a male population, which cast 145,000 votes at the presidential election of 1860, came 115,000 troops for the Confederate army, and 31,000 for the Union army.

Tennessee was the only one of the seceded states which had so considerable a body of citizens who remained constantly loyal to the Union. As a consequence she was the only one which escaped military reconstruction, and the only one in which the battle for political power was fought out between factions of native whites. She escaped the ignominy and burdens of "carpet-bag government" and military reconstruction, but the strife between her own people, the effects of which may be seen at the present time, was the penalty which she paid for the privilege. Because the people were so nearly equally divided, the struggle was the more intense, but for the same reason it was the sooner ended.

In one other respect Tennessee held an exceptional position. The re-organization of the state was in the strictest sense a voluntary movement, which fact, apparent to all, won for her many friends in the North, especially in Congress, and gained her early readmission to the Union.

The history of the reconstruction of Tennessee is a drama in three acts and a prologue. The prologue deals with the secession movement, a knowledge of which is necessary to an adequate understanding of the subsequent history, for it was in the secession movement that the division of the people into parties began. The first act begins with the appointment of Governor Johnson and deals with the military administration. The second act begins with the re-organization of the state government in April, 1865, and gives the history of that government to July, 1866, when the state was I. Miller's Manual, p. 93.

formally readmitted to the Union. The third act gives the history of federal reconstruction to the last-named date. To each of these divisions a chapter has been given in the following pages.

As has been said, Tennessee was the last state to secede. The genuine patriotism of a majority of her people was sufficient to prevent secession until after the war had begun. Her commercial and economic relations bound her to both sections. Her geographical situation caused her to dread war, for she foresaw that her soil must become the field of battle. She, therefore, assumed what she called an attitude of neutrality and tried to maintain the peace and to reëstablish the Union. The failure of the Peace Conference on which she had counted so much, and the attack on Fort Sumter drove her from her nominal neutrality into co-operation with the South.

The life of the secession government in Tennessee was short, for it abdicated as the result of the first battle in the state. The chapter on this period is in no sense a discussion of the question of secession, which was settled once and for always by the arbitrament of the sword, but it is merely a narrative of the events by which the state was carried into the Confederacy, and the inevitable consequences of these events upon the people.

The overthrow of the secession government, made necessary the appointment of a military governor. Governor Johnson made attempts immediately and at several times thereafter to re-organize the civil government of the state, but all these attempts failed, until the people of East Tennessee undertook the task in the summer of 1864. The movement started by them at this time led, by successive steps to the inauguration of the Brownlow government in April, 1865.

Having refused to secede, and having taken the leading part in the re-organization of the state, East Tennessee naturally thought she had a right to conduct the affairs of the state after re-organization, as a reward for her faithfulness and sufferings. With the inauguration of the Brownlow administration she undertook the task and the next five years were filled with the history of that government. The present treatise covers only a portion of the period. A very interesting chapter including the Ku Klux moveI. Ft. Donelson, Feb. 16, '62.

ment, the economic history of reconstruction and the coup de main by which the Democrats gained control of the state government in 1869, is still to be written.

From the very inauguration of the Brownlow government, the great question before it was how to prolong the rule of the Radical Party in the state, for upon that depended not only the interests of the party, but also the reconstruction of the state.

The Federal Government began the war with the theory that the states were in the Union and pledged itself to restore them at the close of the war with all their equality, rights and dignities unimpaired. But long before the close of the war, largely owing to the spirit enkindled by the severity of the conflict and the desire to interfere in the states in behalf of the negroes, the theory of simple restoration was given up, and the theory substituted that the federal government had a right to impose conditions upon the states precedent to their readmission to participation in the government of the Union. This was the reconstruction theory of reëstablishing the Union. The question of the nature of the conditions to be imposed and what department of the government should impose them led to a long and bitter contest among the different factions in Congress, and between Congress and the President.

This contest had already been waged for two years, when, in December, 1865, the Senators and Representatives from Tennessee appeared in Washington and asked to be admitted to seats in the national councils. Congress refused to admit them until the state had been declared a member of the Union by a formal act of the legislative power of the United States. For almost eight months they were kept waiting, when, July 23, 1866, the state was declared by joint resolution to be thereby restored to the Union. The next day the entire delegation was admitted to seats, and the state was restored to all her rights under the Constitution.

CHAPTER I.

SECESSION.

The first attitude of Tennessee on the questions dividing the North and the South immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War was one of nominal neutrality. This attitude was foreshadowed by the action of her delegates in the Charleston Convention of 1860. They voted against the Southern proposition to give slavery carte blanche in the territories, and met afterwards with the Northern delegates at Baltimore, but when the Baltimore convention refused to readmit the delegates who withdrew at Charleston, the Tennessee delegates, believing a compromise no longer possible, withdrew and joined the other Southern delegates in nominating Breckinridge, thus forecasting the attitude and action of their state in the secession movement. In the Presidential election which followed, the state gave another example of her neutral attitude by casting her electoral vote for her own son, John Bell, the National Union candidate, who stood for the Constitution and the laws as they then existed and opposed alike the doctrines of the Democrats and Republicans. This electoral vote fitly represented the sentiments of the people. They were in fact neutral because opposed to both the extreme parties, and not merely because they were unable to agree among themselves.

Although Lincoln had not received a single vote in the state there was no cause to fear any opposition from her citizens. They had expected his election and were prepared to do their duty under the Constitution.

When the Legislature of South Carolina took the first steps toward secession the people of Tennessee, though inclined to ridicule its action, were disgusted and indignant. The following quotations from the leading papers of the state correctly represent the prevailing sentiment:

"We take it to be certain that Abraham Lincoln has received