Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee's Union Cavalry in the Civil War

Introduction: Context and Circumstances

1. Robert E. Corlew, Tennessee: A Short History, 2nd ed. (Knoxville, 1981), 291, 294, 298; Noel C. Fisher, War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860–1869 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 42, 57, 65–69. 2. Fisher, War at Every Door, 65–68. INTRODUCTION Context and Circumstances O f all the states of the Confederacy, Tennessee was the most sectionally divided. East Tennesseans opposed secession at the ballot box in February 1861 and again in June, then in a show of solidarity through conventions in May at Knoxville and in June at Greeneville, where they petitioned for separate statehood. While the government in Nashville denied their request , the state sought East Tennesseans’ cooperation for months before seeking to impose its will—which it found almost impossible to accomplish in at least twenty-five counties. East Tennesseans resisted the Confederate government , enlisted in Union militias, elected U.S. congressmen, and fled as refugees into Kentucky. On the night of November 8, 1861, a select group of them burned five of the nine railroad bridges between Bristol and Chattanooga that they had targeted for destruction.1 East Tennesseans trudged over the Cumberland Mountains, some in sizable groups (including newly enlisted companies) and others in small squads to avoid patrols, all using guides they called “pilots,” often recruiters themselves . Upon reaching military posts in Kentucky—initially formed to organize and train that state’s loyal units—most joined the Union army. Five regiments of infantry and four of cavalry from Tennessee formed during 1861–62 in central Kentucky.2 During 1862 two infantry regiments and three of cavalry organized in Union-occupied Middle and West Tennessee. Additional units enlisted in cen- 2 Introduction 3. TICW, 1:318–60. 4. Ibid.; Montague quoted in Robert R. Mackey, “The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861–1865” (Ph.D. diss., Texas A&M University, 2000), 324n; B. Franklin Cooling, “A People’s War: Partisan Conflict in Tennessee and Kentucky,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville, Ark., 1999), 114. 5. TICW, 1:318–60; ORS, 65:413–623; RAGT, 328–636. tral Kentucky in early 1863 as well as in occupied East Tennessee during fall 1863. Stemming from the efforts of military governor Andrew Johnson—a former civil governor and U.S. senator—earlier that year to help rescue East Tennessee by recruiting northerners, two mixed cavalry regiments of Yankees and Tories enlisted at Nashville. One additional battalion later organized in West Tennessee. Johnson also created several regiments of one-year-enlistment mounted infantry during 1863–65 that operated in Middle and East Tennessee.3 Most Tennesseans denounced the state’s bluecoats as renegades, turncoats, and Tories. Many used designations with the words home and Yankees: home Yankees, homemade Yankees, homespun Yankees, and homegrown Yankees. Confederates deemed these wartime unionists lower than northern soldiers: they had betrayed their people, their section, and their race. Along with slaves turning on their masters, loyal Confederates found such men unfit to live among civilized southerners. Pvt. Adolphus Montague of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) described the “Home-Made Yankees [as being] composed of the roughest most good-for-nothing men who would not join the Confederates but waited for an opportunity to join the Federals that they might stay near home and pilfer the houses in the community as well as settle their grudges by attacking their personal enemies.”4 This book describes Tennessee’s Union cavalry: fourteen regiments that fought primarily within the boundaries of the state as well as eight local loyal mounted-infantry units. In a state that witnessed more fighting than any other except Virginia, Tennessee’s three-year cavalry enlistees fought in most of its campaigns after fall 1862: Stones River, Tullahoma, Chickamauga (the actual battle site in Georgia), East Tennessee, and Nashville; two regiments (1st and 4th Tennessee) also fought in the Atlanta Campaign. Beyond this these horsemen skirmished numerous times while scouting the countryside; defending railroads, bridges, and depots; and protecting unionists. They took the war to the enemy in raids and while riding on the infantry’s flanks. During the final stages of the war, they raided the enemy’s sources of supply in Mississippi, Alabama , Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina.5 Context and Circumstances 3 6. TICW, 1:318; ORS, 65:413–623; RAGT, 328–636. 7. TICW, 1:318; ORS, 65:413...