East Tennessee Convention of 1861 - Aftermath - Legacy

Legacy

While the initiatives of the East Tennessee Convention failed, its members would play important roles in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Lincoln selected Andrew Johnson as his running mate in 1864, and upon Lincoln's assassination the following year, Johnson became president. William Brownlow spent much of the first half of the war speaking at rallies in northern states before returning alongside Burnside's forces in 1863. Brownlow was elected governor in 1865, and his controversial and highly divisive policies helped Tennessee to become the first ex-Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union. Brownlow was succeeded by fellow convention delegate Dewitt Clinton Senter, who was on the Grainger County delegation. David T. Patterson, a member of the Greene County delegation, later served in the U.S. senate, and along with Maynard and Nelson, several convention delegates, including Leonidas Houk (representing Anderson County) and George Washington Bridges (representing McMinn County), were later elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. A number of delegates served as Union officers during the war, namely Joseph A. Cooper (who represented Campbell County), James G. Spears of Bledsoe County, and Andrew Johnson's son, Robert.

Whig strength in East Tennessee evolved into support for the Republican Party toward the end of the Civil War. After the war, East Tennessee remained a rare consistent pocket of Republican support in the former Confederacy, voting for the Republican candidate in nearly every presidential election from Reconstruction through the 2008 presidential election (the lone exception coming in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran as a 3rd party candidate).