John Baxter (North Carolina Politician) - Civil War

Civil War

Although a slaveholder, Baxter opposed secession during the sectional crisis that swept the South in the wake of the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860. In an article entitled, "What Shall the South Do?", which was published in the November 24, 1860, edition of the Knoxville Whig, Baxter called for a convention of delegates from all Southern states, believing it would provide an opportunity to calm the secession fervor in the lower South.

In February 1861, Baxter was one of Knox County's pro-Union candidates for a proposed statewide convention to consider secession. Along with Temple and ex-Whig leaders such as William G. Brownlow, Horace Maynard, and John Netherland, he canvassed the region to rally support for the Union. Temple would later write that no one in Tennessee was "so bitter in denunciation of secession and its leaders" than Baxter.

At the East Tennessee Union Convention's Greeneville session in June 1861, Baxter was a member of the Knox County delegation, along with Temple, Brownlow and Maynard. This convention, which met just after Tennessee voted to secede, petitioned the state legislature to allow East Tennessee to withdraw from the state and form a separate, Union-aligned state. Baxter spoke out against a series of resolutions proposed by T.A.R. Nelson that threatened the use of force if the legislature refused the convention's demands. He supported a more peaceful set of resolutions authored by Temple, which were eventually adopted.

Following the Confederate victory at the Battle of Bull Run in late July, Baxter gradually abandoned his campaign against secession, and began to reconcile with the new Confederate government. In September 1861, he took the Oath of Allegiance to the Confederacy, in part to provide legal assistance to Unionists who had been arrested, and in part because he felt the North could not defeat the South in a war. While many secessionists, such as Landon Carter Haynes, welcomed Baxter's defection, others, such as Knoxville Register editor J. Austin Sperry, doubted his sincerity. In September 1861, Baxter ran for the district's seat in the Confederate Congress, but was badly defeated by William G. Swan.

Baxter spent much of late 1861 and early 1862 defending Unionists who had been charged with various crimes by Confederate authorities. In August 1861, he travelled to Richmond, Virginia, to help secure the release of Nelson, who had been arrested. In the aftermath of the East Tennessee bridge-burnings in November 1861, Baxter defended many of the accused conspirators. In late December, he again travelled to Richmond to help secure the release of Brownlow, who had been jailed in Knoxville. In February 1862, Baxter launched a newspaper, the East Tennessean, the purpose of which was to reconcile Southern Unionists with the Confederacy.

By the Spring of 1862, Baxter was again waffling on the disunion issue. He delivered a speech in which he stated there was no hope for the Confederacy, provoking the ire of General Edmund Kirby Smith. Shortly afterward, General Albert Sidney Johnston, at the request of Smith, arrested Baxter while he was on a business trip to Memphis. Though he was released after a few days, Baxter angrily returned to a pro-Union stance, charging Governor Isham G. Harris with orchestrating the arrest.

In June 1862, Temple and Baxter provided legal defense for twelve Union soldiers facing court-martial in Knoxville for their participation in the guerilla operation known as the "Great Locomotive Chase", or Andrews' Raid. Of the twelve, seven went to trial before the prisoners were moved to Chattanooga. Temple and Baxter argued the raiders were essentially Union Army personnel, not spies or saboteurs, and should therefore have been treated as prisoners of war. All seven were found guilty, and sentenced to hang.

When Union forces occupied Knoxville in September 1863, Baxter was recognized as a friend of the Union, and was appointed to the East Tennessee Relief Association, which provided aid to Unionists who had suffered at the hands of the Confederacy. Baxter disagreed with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and supported George B. McClellan in the presidential election of 1864. This provoked the wrath of Brownlow, who would align himself with the Radical Republicans, and the two would assail one another in newspaper columns in subsequent years.