Felix Zollicoffer - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Felix Zollicoffer was born on a plantation in Bigbyville in Maury County, Tennessee, a son of John Jacob and Martha (Kirk) Zollicoffer. He was a descended from emigrants from Switzerland who had settled in North Carolina in 1710. His grandfather, George Zollicoffer, had served as a captain in the Revolutionary War, and had been granted a tract of land in Tennessee as payment for his military service.

Zollicoffer attended the local schools and studied for a year at Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee. He left at age sixteen and became an apprentice printer, engaged in newspaper work in Paris, Tennessee, from 1828 to 1830. When the newspaper closed, he moved to Knoxville in 1831 and worked for two years as a journeyman printer at the Knoxville Register. Three years later, he became editor and part owner of the Columbia Observer.

Zollicoffer was elected State Printer of Tennessee in 1835. On September 24, 1835, he married Louisa Pocahontas Gordon, with whom he would have fourteen children. However, only six of them survived infancy.

Zollicoffer also edited the Mercury for a time in Huntsville, Alabama. He volunteered for the army in 1836 and served as a lieutenant in the Second Seminole War in Florida. He then returned to Tennessee and became owner and editor of the Columbia Observer and the Southern Agriculturist and in 1843 the editor of the Republican Banner, the state organ of the Whig Party.

This brought Zollicoffer into political circles, and he was Comptroller of the State Treasury from 1845–1849, as well as Adjutant General for the state. He was a memebr of the State Senate from 1849 until 1852, and was a delegate to the Whig National Convention in 1852, supporting General Winfield Scott. Zollicoffer was himself elected as a Whig to the Thirty-third United States Congress and was reelected as a candidate of the American Party to the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses (March 4, 1853 – March 3, 1859). During his first campaign, he fought a duel with the editor of the rival Nashville Union newspaper. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1858 and retired to private life. He supported fellow Tennessee moderate John Bell (CU) for president in the election of 1860.

Following the secession of the Deep South in 1861, Zollicoffer served on the peace convention in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to prevent the approaching civil war. A strong supporter of states rights, Zollicoffer nevertheless opposed Tennessee's secession from the Union.