Thomas Dickens Arnold - Later Life and The Civil War

Later Life and The Civil War

After leaving Congress, Arnold returned to the practice of law. Using the aggressive, emotional style that had made him successful in politics, he gradually built a sizeable clientele. Oliver Perry Temple, a fellow attorney and Whig, wrote of Arnold's courtroom tactics: "By ridicule on the one hand, and impassioned appeals on the other, he constantly excited laughter or tears, while his power of invective was simply terrible." Temple noted that Arnold occasionally won cases when facts and evidence were against him by stubbornly seizing on a trivial circumstance of the case and focusing the jury's attention on it.

In 1852, Arnold spoke at a Whig convention in Knoxville. For nearly an hour, he thrashed radical Whig newspaper editor William "Parson" Brownlow in what Temple described as the "bitterest and most taunting manner." Brownlow, who was in attendance, waited quietly for Arnold to finish, and then delivered an equally long retort. Brownlow subsequently entitled this speech, "Reply to Thomas 'Dog' Arnold, Ass."

In the years leading up to the Civil War, Arnold, like many of East Tennessee's Whigs, remained staunchly pro-Union. Throughout the first half of 1861, Arnold, Brownlow, Temple, Nelson, and other Whig leaders relentlessly canvassed East Tennessee to rally support for the Union cause. At the first session of the East Tennessee Union Convention in May 1861, Arnold delivered a two-hour speech that, according to Temple, was the "finest effort of his life."

At the convention's Greeneville session in June (which met after Tennessee had seceded from the Union), Arnold "warmly advocated" a series of resolutions that called for East Tennessee to break away from Tennessee and form a separate Union-aligned state, and to use violent force if necessary. Temple and others proposed a milder set of resolutions (which were eventually adopted) that petitioned the state legislature to let East Tennessee secede, but removed the resolution threatening violent force. Temple later recalled that Arnold mocked these resolutions as cowardly, and "poured a perfect broadside of ridicule and sarcasm."

Arnold spent most of the war at his home in Greeneville, ignoring threats to Union supporters who remained in the region while it was under Confederate control. His family was divided during the war, with two of his sons serving as officers in the Confederate Army.

After the war, Arnold resumed his practice of law. He died on May 26, 1870, while attending court in Jonesborough. He is interred in Greeneville's Oak Grove Cemetery.