East Tennessee Convention of 1861 - Aftermath

Aftermath

Shortly after the Greeneville meeting, the business committee of the East Tennessee Convention presented the Memorial to Tennessee's General Assembly calling for the formation of a new Union-aligned state in East Tennessee. Although the Assembly rejected East Tennessee's bid for statehood, it assured the region that the state would not pass any conscription laws. Governor Isham Harris dispatched Confederate forces to East Tennessee to protect secessionists in the region. Harris chose General Felix Zollicoffer— a former Whig and one-time Knoxville resident— to command the Confederate army in East Tennessee, hoping to pursue a reconciliatory path with the region. Nevertheless, many of the convention members fled to the north or went into hiding, although some agreed to support the Confederacy. Late in 1861, the county court of Scott County, which had voted against secession by a 521 to 19 margin (the highest percentage of any county), passed a resolution stating that it was breaking away from Tennessee and forming the "Free and Independent State of Scott".

In late 1861, Andrew Johnson and Horace Maynard, who had both retained their respective seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, urged President Lincoln to send forces into East Tennessee to drive out the Confederate army. In a letter to General Don Carlos Buell in Kentucky, General George B. McClellan wrote "Johnson, Maynard, etc., are again becoming frantic and have President Lincoln's sympathy excited. Political considerations would make it advisable to get arms and troops into East Tennessee at a very early date." Convention delegate William B. Carter went to Washington to meet with Lincoln and McClellan, and conceived a plan to burn several bridges along the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad between Bristol and Bridgeport, while Buell would simultaneously march across the Cumberland Mountains from Kentucky to capture Knoxville. On November 8, 1861, Carter and his co-conspirators carried out their half of plan, burning nine bridges along the railroad. Buell, however, was unable to invade due to difficulties in crossing the Cumberlands. Zollicoffer's response to the bridge-burning was to institute martial law in East Tennessee, under which the region remained until the arrival of Union forces under Ambrose Burnside in September 1863.