USA > Tennessee > History of Tennessee the making of a state > Part 33
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with blood-stained garments at the door of the Senate leaning upon her sword, and begging permission to deposit her glorious banner of San Jacinto beside those won at Brandywine, Princeton, and Yorktown, and all the great battles of the Revolution, while the senator from Ten- nessee rushes forward, rudely slams the door in her face and eries : " Begone. begone! Your sword is a traitor's sword, and the blood on your garments is the blood of rebels." The manner and the gesticulation were such that it was long thought he was quoting Foster's exact words.
At times Brown's oratory broke out in passages of lurid eloquence that were remarkably fine and effective before an audience. In one of these flights he describes the magnitude of the American continent. " When did men- tal vision ever rest upon such a scene ? Moses, when standing on the top of Mount Pisgah, looking over on the Promised Land, gazed not on a scene half so lovely. Oh ! let us this day vow that whatever else we may do, by what- ever name we may be called, we will never surrender one square acre of this goodly heritage to the dictation of any king or potentate on earth. Swear it, swear it, my coun- trymen, and let heaven record the vow forever." The Oregon question was rather diplomatic and historical than political, and came in for a less share of attention. The Democratic position on the annexation of Texas was more acceptable than that of the Whigs, and the popular senti- ment on this question was still more influenced by a visit of Sam Houston to Tennessee during the pendency of the contest. Brown was elected by a majority of 1470 votes.
The strength of political feeling in the ensuing General Assembly was made manifest in the contest for the speak- ership of the Senate, of which Harvey M. Watterson was elected speaker on the 138th ballot. The Democrats had elected a majority of the members of the General Assem- bly. There was a vacancy in the United States Senate, which it was supposed, as a matter of course, the Demo-
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erats could fill. But by some legislative legerdemain a man was elected who failed to receive even so much as a large minority of Democratie votes. The exact details of this intrigue have not been preserved. Enough remains, however, to furnish us an instructive chapter in the his- tory of state politics. It may also supply additional insight into the tortuous methods to which unscrupulous politicians with small talents resorted in those days, in the hopes of defeating the will of a majority whose assent and approval they could never hope to achieve by the strength of their character, the force of their intelleet, or the importance of their public services. A. O. P. Nicholson, who had edited with signal force the " Democratie Statesman," a cam- paign paper set on foot to offset A. A. Hall's "Politi- cian," was nominated by a conference or caucus of Dem- ocrats.
Immediately after the August elections, the Whig papers began to stir up strife by a kind of political barratry, and threw out hints of the possibility of electing a Democrat by the aid of Whig votes. Among the names mentioned was that of H. L. Turney. The leverage for this purpose existed in the feeling of local pride which the " Whig " assiduously cultivated. Two communications appeared in the " Nashville Whig " organ, signed "Shelby," which imperiously demanded as a right that a senator from the Western District should be elected. The " Memphis Ap- peal," the " Somerville Spy," the "Jackson Republican," and the " Trenton True American." all joined in the de- mand. The " M'Minnville Gazette " suggested a Demo- eratic caucus under the two thirds rule. When the legis- lature met, the Democrats had fifty-two members and the Whigs forty-eight. Turney refused to submit his elaims to a caueus on the score that he " believed the system to be radically wrong, especially where the opposing party had offered no candidate. It is anti-republican in its tendencies, and virtually destroys the rights of suffrage of
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those of the party who may prefer another political friend to the caucus nominee." He accused Nicholson of being Polk's candidate. He refused to answer a list of questions tendered him by the Democrats, which he afterwards said he intended to answer before he was denounced by Demo- cratie members of the General Assembly. After the legis- lature proceeded to a ballot for senator, on the earlier ballots, A. O. P. Nicholson received forty votes, all Demno- erats; H. L. Turney received eleven, John Bell thirty-five. Gustavus A. Henry two, W. T. Haskell one, and W. C. Dunlap seven. During the balloting, Turney was bitterly denounced by the Democrats for " having betrayed his party," and even by some of the Whigs who despised his treason. He was charged with having written a letter to the Whigs, meeting their views on the tariff, and the dis- tribution of the sales of publie lands, and pledging himself to denounce Polk and his administration.1 Before the election, Joseph C. Guild withdrew General Trousdale, who had been put in nomination, stating that General Trousdale, if elected, desired to be elected by his own party and would not receive the office unless elected by his own party. Turney was finally elected by a vote of fifty-three ; of these, forty-seven were Whigs, and six were Democrats.
Immediately after his election, Turney tried to defend his course, and pointedly denied the coalition in a letter to the "Shelbyville Free Press." He said : " I am proud to know that by the use of my name, the system (i. e. caucus) has been prostrated in the Tennessee legislature, I trust, forever." He would have answered the interrog- atories submitted to him. but before he could do so, the violent assaults of the Democrats, especially H. M. Wat- terson, forced him to refuse. In this letter he gives his views on the public questions at issue, and deviates from
1 I have been assured by Mr. Harvey M. Watterson that he saw this letter.
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the Democratic position exactly on the two points upon which it was charged he had made concessions to the Whigs. In December thirty-one Democrats published an address formally reading Turney out of the party. Fol- lowing the election of Turney, Felix K. Zollieoffer, a Whig, was elected comptroller of the State. If any one has a taste for personal journalism in its most vigorous development, let him read the " Union," of which Nichol- son was now editor, for the few months succeeding Tur- ney's election to the Senate.
The contest of 1847 came on during the Mexican War. The Democrats had been outspoken in their declarations that there would be no war as a result of the annexation of Texas. In 1845 A. V. Brown had asked Foster, " Where is your war?" In 1847 Neil S. Brown retorted by pointing his long index finger toward the Southwest and exclaiming, " Here is your war." Aaron V. Brown was renominated by the Democrats. This was to be again the opening skirmish of a presidential election in 1848. M. P. Gentry said, referring to this, " the politi- cal position which Tennessee may then take will be a pow- erful. perhaps a controlling influence upon the great con- test of 1848." The whole weight of executive patronage and influence will be thrown into the conflict," said " The Spirit of '76," "and Tennessee will become a battle- ground." The Whigs were anxious not to repeat the mistake of 1845. Foster was solicited to make the race, but his refusal was accepted with unfeigned satisfaction. The names most prominently brought forward were those of G. A Henry, M. P. Gentry, and Neil S. Brown. Gen- try made no effort and cut no figure in the struggle for the nomination. It appeared probable at one time that Henry would be selected by acclamation. and meeting after meeting put him in nomination. Ilis strongest opponent was Neil S. Brown, one of the most amiable characters and one of the brightest minds in Tennessee
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history. Born in Giles County, Tennessee, in 1810, of Scotch-Irish blood, he had fought his way up from pov- erty and was in the noblest sense of the phrase a self- made man. In 1834 he had gone to Texas, but returned and entered the army destined for Florida, and was at the battle of Mud Creek. In 1836 he was a White elector. In 1837 he was sent to the legislature. He had taken a prominent part in all the contests of the day. In 1843 he was nominated to contest his congressional district with Aaron V. Brown and reduced his majority from 1,600 to 460. In this year he was made adjutant-general. The brilliancy of the reputation made in the Brown contest and as eleetor in 1844, his war record, his lack of politi- cal record, for he had never been to Congress, his popular disposition, the keenness of his wit. the effectiveness of his oratory, for he was a stump speaker of the first magni- tude, all pointed to him as the available candidate. He had not been involved in any of the wrangles which had engendered bitterness among the Whig leaders, and he was perhaps more acceptable to the various factions than either Henry or Gentry. The scales were eventually turned in his favor by the absence of the East Tennessee delegations, who were detained by impassable roads, and who would have given their votes to Henry.
The only great issue between the two candidates was President Polk and General Zach Taylor. Neil S. Brown attacked the general prosecution of the war on the part of the administration and eulogized General Taylor, whom he advocated for the presidency in 1848. Aaron V. Brown having accused him of trying to ride on Taylor's back, he turned and pointing his long finger squarely at his opponent, exelaimed, "Who was it for twenty long years without intermission rode upon the back of General Jackson, even to the making spots upon his sides ? Aaron V. Brown, the governor of Tennessee, and James K. Polk, the president of the United States."
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Neil S. Brown accused Polk of making the Mexican War a partisan war by appointing only Democrats to gen- eralships. Brown retorted by claiming for the Demo- cratie party the credit for the results of the war, for no one doubted the result, and denounced the Whigs for orig- inally opposing it. But the heartiness with which the Whigs supported the military measures of the administra- tion weakened the force of this blow. In June, 1846, the Oregon question had been settled by a treaty in which the line of forty-nine degrees was decided upon, after all the turmoil of "Fifty-four-forty-or-fight," and Neil S. Brown turned the Mount Pisgah comparison on his opponent with effective sarcasm. The popularity of Polk's admin- istration had in truth begun to wane and Neil S. Brown ridiculed his opponent's attempt to stir up the old time enthusiasm in his behalf by quoting a popular song,
" There was a piper had a cow, He had no hay to give her ; He took his pipes, began to play, Consider. cow, consider."
Neil S. Brown was elected by a majority of 1.015 votes.
The contest between Taylor and Cass in Tennessee in 1848 was a faint echo of 1840. The Whigs literally vociferated everything before them. There was an at- tempt to make Taylor a people's non-partisan candidate, but without success. The division between the pro-slav- ery and free-soil Democrats destroyed the harmony and unity of that party, and they entered the struggle with but little enthusiasm. Taylor carried Tennessee by a major- ity of 6,286. In this election the slavery question played an important part. Cass was with the South - a North- ern man with Southern principles. Van Buren, who was the Abolition candidate, received 291,263 votes; in New York alone. 120.510. It now became apparent that there was a tendency within the ranks of the Democratic party to divide upon the slavery question. The free-soil ele-
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ment was gradually forced out. The issue was rather sectional than political. The Whigs had no political status in the presence of a controversy which recognized no political division. The Whigs of East Tennessee man- aged to survive the deluge of the Democratic victory and in 1851 turned the tide and elected the last Whig gov- ernor. They had no slaves - they were for the most part Unionists during the war and have been Republicans since. But over the rest of the State the Democrats gained a su- preme ascendency. The reaction from the Taylor move- ment swept Governor Brown, the genial, the amiable, the pure-hearted before it, and W. G. Brownlow, the caustic Whig, the militant preacher, the Ishmael of Tennessee politics, sharpened his wit and envenomed his pen to no purpose. The Democrats had nominated against Brown, General William Trousdale, whose popular sobriquet was the " War Horse of Sumner County." He was born September 23, 1790, in Orange County, North Carolina, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. In 1796 his father re- moved with him to Davidson County, Tennessee. When a boy at school he had joined the expedition against the Creek Indians and was at Tallahatchie and Talladega. During the Creek War, in pursuance of some duty, he swam the Tennessee River near the Muscle Shoals, being on horseback, although unable to swim himself. He was also at Pensacola and New Orleans during the War of 1812. In 1835 he was in the state Senate, and in 1836 major-general of militia. He fought through the Semi- nole War of 1836. In 1837 he was an unsuccessful can- didate for Congress. In 1840 he was a Van Buren elec- tor. He fought through the Mexican War with great bravery and was twice wounded at Chepultepec. He was made brigadier-general by brevet in the United States ariny for gallant and meritorious conduct in that engage- ment. Trousdale was a man of sound understanding and pure character and intellectually not inferior to his com-
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petitor. He was elected by a majority of 1,390. In Knox County, however, the future course of East Tennessee was foreshadowed by a majority for Brown of 1,616 in that county.
In 1851 William B. Campbell defeated Trousdale, who was a candidate for reelection. G. A. Henry, who had been brought forward again by his friends, wrote on the 7th of February, 1851, a letter which emphasizes the position of the Whigs and which sounds strangely as coming from a subsequent Confederate senator. He withdraws from the race for governor and announces his candidacy for the House of Representatives at Nashville. "I need not inform you that I am a Whig - that I have so lived and that I shall die in the faith. Above all, however, I am for the Union of these States, under our present glorious constitution, with all the guaranties which were thrown around it by the foresight and wisdom of our fathers. For its preservation I am now and at any time prepared to pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor."
Campbell was elected by a conjunction of circumstances which foreed the Democrats into the position of favoring disunion. The Southern Convention had met at Nash- ville in May, 1850, as the Whigs said, " to inaugurate a Southern Confederacy." This convention was originally called at the suggestion of A. J. Donelson, who repudiated its action as soon as its anti-union tendencies became ap- parent. W. L. Sharkey, the ablest judicial mind which the Southwest has ever produced, presided over its de- liberations, but his known union sentiments were more than counterbalanced in the public mind by the presence and active participation of R. Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, the impetuous Cassius who was ever ready to sacrifice the common cause rather than yield individual preferences. He introduced an address, a long - drawn document condemnatory of the compromise measures then before Congress, bristling with threats of an intangible
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Fatastrophe and which contained this significant utterance : . Until Congress adjourns, we. cannot know what it will do or fail to do. We must therefore meet again after its adjournment to consider the final condition in which it will leave us." The resolutions which were adopted were such as could have been formally promulgated in America. ilone of all the nations of the world, without some ar- cests for treason. The fifth resolution was very bold. .. The slave-holding States cannot and will not submit to the enactment by Congress of any law imposing onerous conditions or restraints upon the rights of masters to remove with their property into the Territories of the United States, or to any law making discriminations in fa- vor of the proprietors of other property and against them. In the seventh resolution is this passage : "The perform- fance of this duty . . is required by the fundamental law of the Union . . . the warfare against this right is a war upon the constitution. The defenders of this right are defenders of the constitution. Those who deny or im- rair its exereise are unfaithful to the constitution, and if (isunion follows the destruction of this right they are dis- unionist :. " The twelfth resolution declares that "it is the opinion of this convention that this controversy should be ended, either by a recognition of the constitutional rights of the Southern people or by an equitable partition of the Territories." The thirteenth contains a covert threat against Congress and denounces the compromise measures " as a plain violation of the Constitution of the United States."
As soon as the Southern Convention adjourned. the Democratic leaders were called on to face a storm in Ten- nessee. During its sessions, meetings had been held from one end of the State to the other indorsing the com- promise measures then pending in Congress. A. O. P. Nicholson and Aaron V. Brown, who had been prominent members of the convention, repudiated its action. Nichol-
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son attacked the address, Brown attacked the resolutions. Both were frightened. Both attacked the doctrines off nullification and secession with intense violence and fierce vituperation. The passage of the compromise measures was a merit of the Whigs; and though many Democrats had voted for them, the Democrats of Tennessee were in no condition to avail themselves of this fact. Trousdale was compelled to bear the odium which gathered against his party because of the Southern Convention, and this was inereased by a vote of sympathy for the South Caro- lina agitators in the convention that nominated him.
William B. Campbell was put forward as the man to redeem the banner from the hands of a candidate "whose culminating feat was swimming the Musele Shoals." He was descended from a line of distinguished Revolutionary heroes. He finished his education, which! was solid and liberal, under his uncle, Governor David Campbell of Virginia, and under whose supervision he studied law. He returned to Tennessee, and in 1829 was elected attorney-general. In 1836 he resigned his seat Es a member of the legislature, and as captain entered the Florida War, through which he fought with honor. I. 1833 he defeated General Trousdale for Congress, and again in 1839. In 1841 he was elected without opposition. He fought gallantly through the Mexican War as colone. of the First Regiment, whose desperate bravery won for i: the sobriquet of "The Bloody First." Campbell himself led the charge at Monterey, and his troops hoisted the first flag on the walls of the Mexican city. This was per- haps the most brilliant feat of arms accomplished during the war. The form of Campbell's command to charge - " Boys, follow me " - became historic and was also the favorite battle-ery of the Whigs during the campaign that elected him governor. In 1848 he was elected cireuit judge by the legislature, and in 1851 he was nominatedy by acclamation for governor by the Whigs.
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Trousdale and Campbell were cast in the same mould. Both were men of pure character, of high purpose, of stern integrity, possessing sound practical sense, without brilliancy of parts or fluency of tongue, and both were conservative and courageous. "Two gamer cocks," says one writer, " were never pitted against each other." The joint debates were not full of the stirring blows which drew crowds to hear the two Browns, and there was none of the sparkle, the skill in fence, the broad caricature, and the resounding laughter that distinguished the Polk-Jones canvasses. The two military candidates argued like marti- nets, and they who were the most headlong and stormy in battle were the most formal and punetilious in debate. Trousdale, who had defeated Neil S. Brown in 1849 by 1,390 votes, was now defeated by Campbell by 1,660 votes. In 1852 the National Democratic party was again thoroughly united and carried every State in the Union except four - Tennessee was one of the four. Scott, who Was objectionable to many of the Whigs, carried the State by a majority of 1.880 votes, in spite of the fact that M. P. Gentry, a Whig member of Congress, made a speech against him in the House of Representatives which was fleclared to have been one of the ablest ever delivered there. The Democrats had it printed in pamphlet form sind used it as a campaign document. This embittered the Tennessee Whigs. J. C. Jones, then in the Senate, supported Scott earnestly. The year following, the Jones faction nominated Gustavus A. Henry as their candidate for the governorship. Henry was popularly called " The Eagle Orator " and was noted for the Au- ney of his speech, the brilliancy of his faney, and the lignity of his declamation. The Democrats nominated Andrew Johnson, an East Tennessean who had served .everal terms in Congress, and who, beginning as a me- .hanic, had slowly risen to power and eminence by the strength of his character, the force of his intellect, and the
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aggressiveness of his political methods. Nearly every prominent Democrat in the State was opposed to him, but he was nominated almost without opposition. He ac- cepted the nomination with almost cavalier-like indiffer- ence and practically repudiated the platform which had been adopted. Johnson had certain theories upon nationa questions which, if not original, were certainly startling. This canvass and all subsequent ones were fought out upon questions of national policy. Johnson was elected. In 1855 the Whigs brought forward M. P. Gentry, but his part against Scott in 1852 had not been forgiven. More than this, the slavery question was becoming daily less political and more sectional, and Tennessee was a Southern State. In East Tennessee, where there were no slaves, sec- tionalism was less developed. Johnson was an earnest! Democrat, and stood with the Southern Democrats upony the questions of constitutional authority growing out off the Kansas-Nebraska embroglio and the compromise meat- ures. His popularity was overwhelming and his abilities as a stump-speaker were supereminent even in a school of which Jones, Henry, and Gentry were leading members. The last Whig victory in Tennessee was in 1852. The alliance with the Know-Nothing movement, its sympathie- with many of the measures of the new but rapidly grow- ing Republican party in the North, the sectional phase of the slavery question, were all instruments in the hands of Andrew Johnson through which he cemented the power of the Democratic party and utterly annihilated the Whigs in Tennessee. In 1856 Buchanan carried the State of Tennessee - the first time the National Dem. oerats had been successful since Jackson's second election .!
One of the electors for the State at large upon this Buchanan ticket was Isham G. Harris. By the universa concurrence of the Democratic papers he contributed more than any other individual to the success of the Democratic ticket. The year following, in 1857, he was nominated by
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the Democrats as their candidate for governor - the first who had ever been taken from West Tennessee. Against him the Whigs, or as it had now become, the opposition party, nominated Robert Hatton, a young politician who had made some reputation as a Fillmore elector the year before. His nomination was a cause of surprise to many, and of indignation to the friends of the wayward and brilliant Haskell, who addressed the nominating conven- tion in a speech full of eloquence and bitterness. Hatton possessed more than ordinary ability, was methodical and exact in his methods, and singularly high-minded and noble. But in Harris, who was put forward by the Dem- ocrats as a " matured statesman," he met more than his match. History as a science can deal worthily only with that which has been removed by the lapse of time and the onward sweep of the current of events from the influence of personal prejudice, partisan considerations, and the biased judgment which comes from the wrangling and jarring conflicts of political life. Those who have figured In scenes which are passed upon by the historian, and who till live in the activity of the present, are like those spirits of whom Virgil tells that they wander restlessly ipon the banks of the river Styx, unable to pass over intil their bodies in the earth above have received the last rites of sepulture. Isham G. Harris still lives, the senior senator from Tennessee. A man of strong feeling, the time has not come when his enemies can do full justice to his virtues or his friends view his faults with critical impartiality. In 1857 he aroused a degree of enthusiasm which could only have been aroused by a man strong of intellect and powerful in debate. He swept like a whirl- wind from one end of the State to the other, and literally buried his opponent beneath the weight of a majority greater than had been given any candidate in Tennessee since the Harrison campaign in 1840. He was renomi- nated in 1859 and made the canvass with John Netherland,
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