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1. Hamer, Tennessee, 2:594–95; Thomas B. Alexander, Political Reconstruction in Tennessee (Nashville, 1950), 26; Nashville Dispatch, Jan. 10, 1865; Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator, Dec. 14, 1864; William G. Brownlow to Johnson, Dec. 12, 1864, PAJ, 7:336. 2. Hamer, Tennessee, 2:595–96; T. B. Alexander, Reconstruction in Tennessee, 26; Nashville Dispatch , Jan. 10, 1865; Hall, Andrew Johnson, 161; Johnson to Lincoln, Jan. 13, 1865, PAJ, 7:404. CHAPTER 23 Final Months G overnor Johnson called a statewide convention at the capitol on January 9, 1865. (It had been announced earlier for the “third Monday in December” but postponed because of Hood’s march on the city.) More than five hundred delegates from sixty counties, some clad in army blue, attended. Because of the revolutionary circumstances, delegates ignored rules of proportion— though they in theory represented counties—and voted as individuals. Even entire delegations from army units stationed at Nashville, such as Battery D, 1st Tennessee Artillery and the remaining handful of 3rd Tennessee cavalrymen , were seated. A handful of troops from Hurst’s 6th Tennessee represented four different counties in West Tennessee.1 Johnson’s supporters insisted that the delegates act as a constitutional as well as a political convention. They proposed amendments nullifying acts of the Confederacy and freeing the state’s slaves to be voted on in February 1865. Then delegates nominated a slate of candidates for state offices to be voted on in March, including William G. Brownlow for governor (earlier endorsed by the East Tennessee Union Convention at Knoxville on December 5, 1864) and members of the legislature to be voted on in March. Fourteen members of mounted regiments, along with others from the infantry, were nominated for the legislature and later elected, as was Brownlow.2 On January 7 at Decatur, the 2nd Tennessee had 200 cavalrymen. Another Final Months 361 3. Goodwin, 4th Regiment, 44; Knoxville Chronicle, Apr. 29, 1879; Andes and McTeer, Loyal Mountain Troopers, 218; ORS, 65:449; TICW, 1:324. 4. Fielding, “Mary Fielding Diary,” 153 (Jan. 10, 1865). 5. Longacre, Grant’s Cavalryman, 195; TICW, 1:320, 324, 333, 336, 346–47, 350–51. group of 150 mainly wounded, sick, or dismounted men was at Huntsville. And at least one company, Company L, camped at Limestone Creek near Athens , Alabama. When Colonel Prosser returned to Decatur from his pursuit of Hood’s wagon trains on the night of the sixth, he had an order from General Wilson dated January 2 to send his dismounted men to Nashville and concentrate his mounted men at Athens. He also found at Decatur his former superior in the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Cook, wounded and captured at Okolona but now exchanged.3 By the time the men of the 2nd Tennessee arrived at Athens on January 8, they were, according to one local single young woman, Mary Fielding, “boasting [of] chasing Mr. Hood nearly to Miss., [and of] taking his wagons . . . pontoons , etc., and of various other services they had rendered & would render to their country.” She wrote in her diary that “[t]hey talk as if they think we ought to give them the best we’ve got . . . for trying to subjugate us.” She accused one company, temporarily at Dr. Benjamin Maclin’s house (where she resided), of “covering” Maclin’s “dining room . . . with mud & [of having] books & papers . . . scattered all over the floor.” They had used “bureau drawers in the yard” as troughs to feed their horses and had stabled their mounts “in the kitchen and under the colonnade.” All in all she considered the regiment “the meanest in the Army.”4 On January 7 Wilson had ordered almost his entire cavalry to concentrate at Gravelly Springs, Alabama, to go into winter quarters. But for a number of reasons, only five of the Tennessee regiments (1st, 2nd, 4th, 10th, and 12th) ever reported. Others remained in Nashville (5th, 6th, and remnants of the 3rd, 7th, and 14th), while Gillem’s cavalry (8th, 9th, and 13th) operated out of Knoxville.5 Wilson selected this site “near the head of steamboat navigation at all stages of the river.” It enabled him to receive a steady supply of every sort from the North. The terrain provided good drainage, with campsites high above the river and with “sandy and gravelly” soil. The site possessed springs and streams along with an abundance of timber. The general also found the broad fields of area plantations “suitable for drill grounds.” At Gravelly Springs he hoped “to [3.143...

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