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5. "Fevers Ran High"
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“Fevers Ran High” 73 73 Chapter 5 “FEVERS RAN HIGH” The Civil War in the Cumberland JAMES B. JONES JR. Enthusiasm ran high in the Upper Cumberland in 1861, leading to public brawls over secession. In June, Judge Guild of Overton County called for immediate hanging of Union sympathizers. In July, four men in Jamestown assaulted a well-known Unionist.1 When Overton County Judge Horace Maynard attempted to speak against secession at the Livingston courthouse, a mob threatened his life, forcing him to flee. As he left, Maynard promised he would denounce secession the next day in Monroe. Pro-Confederates said that if he tried to speak, the audience would be forcibly dispersed. Maynard spent the next day rounding up Union sympathizers, and by the appointed time, roughly three hundred armed partisans showed up displaying the Stars and Stripes. Speaking against secession with no interruption, Maynard promised to continue the cause for the Union throughout the region.2 Fifty-four Gordonsville women indicated their pro-Union feelings in a postsecession petition to Military Governor Andrew Johnson in November 1862: “We . . . offer our services for the purpose of aiding to put down the rebellion and will be very much obliged if you will supply us with arms and if you will please send them immediately[;] if not we will arm ourselves and bushwhack it.”3 Amanda McDowell of the Cherry Creek Community in White County made a more thoughtful commentary. On May 4, 1861, she confided in her diary that there would be “many a divided family in this once happy Union. There will be father against son, and brother against brother. O, God! . . . That men should in their blindness rush so rashly to ruin, 74 JAMES B. JONES JR. and . . . drag with them so many thousands of innocent and ignorant victims! . . . [I]n my feeble opinion they will have cause to repent their rashness.”4 Fighting in the Upper Cumberland has largely been overlooked by historians, who prefer to study larger battles such as Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Franklin. Yet the war experienced in the region was just as intense, and many wounds inflicted by the conflict fester even today. Though no large-scale battles occurred, many small actions were conducted by local guerrilla forces. Often, it did not matter for whom they fought, because they sought nothing more than plunder. Murders, lacking the sanction of military necessity, were a common occurrence. Civilians suffered a host of privations at the hands of Federal and Confederate troops. As Amanda Meredith Hill of Sparta later remembered, “[S]oldiers both Confederate and Yankee would take anything they wanted without paying for it.”5 War ravaged the landscape, destroying some of the region’s finest homes and businesses. Rebels razed the Bon Air spa in White County because its owner had opposed secession. In the Upper Cumberland , the war literally pitted brothers against brothers, as in the case of Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson and his brother James, who fought for the Federal army. In August 1861, the Confederate congress passed The Alien Enemies Act with the intention of quelling internal rebellion. Anyone refusing to recognize the Confederacy and retaining allegiance to the Union was an enemy alien. “Tories” were given forty days to join the South or leave. If they remained but refused to support the Confederacy , they could be deported and their property confiscated.6 J. D. Hale of Overton County condemned secession; his life was threatened as a result. He first sought refuge in the Wolf River Valley near Pall Mall, but eventually moved into loyalist Kentucky. His sixteen-year-old son, however, was taken prisoner by Confederates and Hale’s property, including a slave, was confiscated.7 Union sympathizers crossed the line into Kentucky, enlisting in the Federal army at Camp Dick Robinson. “Many of them had squirrel rifles and shotguns; many others were unarmed. Their clothes were in tatters , and their feet bleeding from cuts received on rocks in the mountains .” In September, Brigadier General George H. Thomas took over training and organizing troops there.8 Confederate partisans faced similar difficulties. In October 1861, twenty-one citizens from Livingston wrote Governor Isham G. Harris [54.167.52.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:37 GMT) “Fevers Ran High” 75 to express their fear regarding Federal guerrillas, who were so brutal they were “taking scalps and plunder as trophies”: [W]e are left at the mercy of our foes, a portion of whom are still about Albany, Ky., daily scouting...