The Antebellum Period in East Tennessee
The state of Tennessee consists of three major divisions—East, Middle, and West Tennessee. The geography of Middle Tennessee consists of rolling hills, and West Tennessee is generally flat, but East Tennessee has some of the most rugged terrain in the Appalachian Mountains. The rugged terrain of East Tennessee hampered the development of agricultural land in the region, and delayed the development of roads and railways, while obstructions in the Tennessee River below Chattanooga hampered the development of water transportation, making it difficult for East Tennesseans to bring any products to markets. Thus, the agrarianism of the region was limited to food production rather than the production of "cash crops".
This began to change with the completions of the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad in 1855, linking Knoxville to Georgia, and the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad in 1858, linking Knoxville to Bristol. With the completion of these railways, farmers in East Tennessee could finally transport produce, primarily hogs and corn, to Virginia and the Deep South, and a new cash crop emerged in the regions economy: wheat. By the mid-1850s, wheat production in the region had risen by 300 percent.
With the increase and development of agriculture in East Tennessee, there was a corresponding increase in the slave population of the region during the decade of the 1850s—some 21 percent, as opposed to an increase of only 14 percent in the white population. While only about one-fourth of Southerners, as a whole, could afford to own any slaves at all, and the majority being owned by the wealthiest 6 percent, only about 10 percent of East Tennesseans were slaveholders.
Though Tennessee had a strong Union loyalist coalition, with East Tennessee having a particularly strong Unionist presence, in the months following South Carolina's secession, the coalition soon began to splinter. Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion in the South left many of loyalists feeling betrayed. With most loyalists feeling betrayed by Lincoln, secessionist leaders quickly moved to exploit the shift in public opinion.
On April 25, 1861, only thirteen days after General P.G.T. Beauregard's Confederate gunners opened fire on Fort Sumter, Tennessee's legislature met to consider the question of secession. On May 6, the legislature declared the state independent from the United States. The legislature also granted Governor Isham G. Harris the authority to create a state army of 55,000 men.
Though a military alliance was signed with the Confederate States of America the very next day, Tennessee's Declaration of Independence was submitted for a referendum to be held on June 8. Almost 70 percent of the voters approved of secession, but 69 percent of East Tennesseans voted against it.
While Union loyalists viewed the coming war as a struggle for Republican government, secessionists saw Lincoln as a tyrant and many citizens abandoned the old Union for the new Confederacy to remain true to the principles of the Founding Fathers.
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Famous quotes containing the words antebellum, period and/or east:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
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