USA > Tennessee > Bradley County > History of the rebellion in Bradley County, East Tennessee > Part 2
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Georgetown is a small village located in the north-west part of the county, a portion of it being in Meigs.
Sulphur, coal, iron and leaden ore, exist in some parts of the county, and mines of the latter, containing a signifi- cant percentage of silver, were being worked in the east- ern portions of it at the commencement of the rebellion. Rich beds of copper have been discovered and opened in the mountains of Polk County, about forty miles from Cleveland. In 1861, an extensive copper foundry or roll- ing mill was erected in Cleveland by Southern capitalists, their concern being supplied with copper slabs from these Polk County mines.
Some time after the commencement of the Rebel"enter- prize, a foreigner, probably a Hungarian, an iron monger by. profession, and possessed of a good degree of skill in the work of infernalism, had, somewhere, manufactured a large quantity of infernal machines, or as they were famil- liarly called by the Union people of Cleveland, ".Rebel torpedoes." Without the knowledge of Union men, or at least without a general knowledge on their part, of the fact, this Rebel foreigner had brought these destructive missiles and concealed them in a small brick house in the heart of Cleveland.
Immediately after the battle of Missionary Ridge, Col- onel Long, with his cavalry, was sent to take possession of Cleveland, and to tear up and destroy the railroad in its vicinity, in order to prevent supplies coming to the rebel army which was then in the vicinity of Dalton. At the news that Long's men were approaching the place, this rebel Zulaski, with six or eight rebel workmen,
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IN BRADLEY COUNTY, EAST TENNESSEE.
engaged as his assistants in his peculiar craft, fled in great haste, leaving his black satanic monsters to take care of themselves. Simultaneous with the flight of Zulaski, a nominal rebel Colonel, by the name of Pete, one of the proprietors of the concern, and at that time its manager, threw his books and business documents into a wagon, and hastily fled for Dixie. Colonel Long's men, however, were close upon him, and, although he succeeded in mak- ing his own escape, his wagon load of books and papers were captured. Among these papers was found a written contract for the concern to furnish the Southern Confed- eracy with large quantities of sheet copper, preparatory to being worked into thin plates suitable for gun caps. Also were found among these papers extensive contracts for the concern to furnish the Rebel Government with other ordnance materials.
Acting, perhaps, under orders, and possibly knowing that it was not the intention of our authorities to make an effort then permanently to hold the place, as soon as he had completed the work of demolishing the railroad, Colonel Long, though against the entreaties of some Union men, burned this rebel establishment to the ground. Previously, however, to applying the torch, Colonel Long, at the suggestion of Union citizens, made search for the torpedoes left behind by the defunct Zulaski, and found them in the brick building already alluded to. With a view, doubtless, to destroy them, though possibly not knowing their exact nature, he caused these strange mis- siles to be placed in this rebel rolling mill, which was sit- uated in the edge of the village about half a mile from its center. This occurred just before the mill was fired. The torch having been applied, as soon as the flames reached the huge pile of these engines, they began to shoot them- selves off, leaping about the burning building and darting over the premises, while some went whirling and hissing through the air in the most dangerous and terrific manner conceivable. In the space of half an hour, upwards of sixteen hundred of these nameless, nondescript, rebel inventions burnt themselves loose from the fiery mass,
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going off with a successive, rattling, crashing noise, and with thundering, cannon-like explosions, enough to make the uninitiated in the vicinity think that a battle decisive of the great contest was being inaugurated in the little village of Cleveland.
These ugly looking projectiles, doubtless of foreign invention, and, in this case, probably, of foreign manu- facture also, are malleable cast-iron elongated shells of different sizes, from ten to eighteen inches in length, from two to four in diameter, and when charged and ready for use must weigh from ten to fifteen pounds.
Some days after this mill was destroyed, one of these torpedoes was found, torn to pieces with its own explosive force, full three-fourths of a mile from the mill, having passed nearly over the town. Another, at the time, went smashing through the roof of the dwelling of Mr. W. Cre- ver, at least a quarter of a mile distant.
In regard to the latter case, one is reminded that it might possibly have been a providential rebuke to Mr. Crever; for it is a fact, we believe, not only that his was the only dwelling injured by these shells, but that he was the only rebel inhabitant left in Cleveland who sustained any pecuniary relation whatever to this copperhead estab- lishment.
There is, however, still another circumstance connected with this torpedo affair, which reminds one that good sometimes comes out of evil, and which also indicates that Providence was determined that this violent torpedo dealing of the rebels, should, on the whole, be turned against themselves.
Colonel Long, after destroying the railroads, in obedi- ence to previous orders, was preparing to evacuate Cleve- land when he set fire to the mill, and accordingly, com- menced to leave while the mill was burning, being at the same time irresolutely attacked by a body of rebel cav- alry, assisted with two pieces of artillery. This cav- alry came from Charleston on the Hiwassee, consequently approached Cleveland from the east, while the burning mill stood in the south-west part of the town. When
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IN BRADLEY COUNTY, EAST TENNESSEE.
near to the place they saw the volumes of smoke ascend- ing from the mill; but as burning dwellings were scenes with which the war had already made both Federals and rebels perfectly familiar, they moved up without suspect- ing that this conflagration portended anything unusual, and proceeded to distribute and arrange their forces on the east and the south-east of the town, preparatory to an attack. It so happened, however, that by the time they were ready to charge into the place, the fire in the mill had reached the pile of torpedoes, and to the utter bewil- derment of the rebels, this torpedo eruption commenced vomiting itself into the sky, and letting off battery after battery in quick succession, so much so, that, not knowing what to make of the strange phenomenon, they came to a halt, held a parley, and as they could account for it in no other way, supposed that Long possibly had artillery and might be using it against some of their own forces unknown to themselves attacking him from the west. This delay of the rebels was time gained to Long, and he doubtless evacuated the place with less fighting and with less loss of life than he otherwise would have done.
Not entirely satisfied with their success, thus far, at tor- pedo fighting, the rebels of this vicinity concluded to make another attempt, which took place about the first of April, 1864. From a thorough investigation of the case by our military authorities in Cleveland, it appeared that some two or three rebel soldiers stole into the Federal lines, selecting a secesh neighborhood about four miles east of Cleveland as the locality of their operations, and succeeded in placing under the railroad track a torpedo of considerable dimensions, intending, no doubt, to des- troy the morning train from Chattanooga, which at that time generally went up heavily loaded with Federal sol- diers. Providence, however, again favoring the cause of the just, early the next morning, some two hours before the time for the Chattanooga train, a locomotive and tender ran out of Cleveland to go a few miles east for water. The locomotive passed the torpedo without injury, but the tender was thrown from the track. This, however, was
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about the extent of the accident, no harm to life or limbe occurring to any. A number of rebel citizens fell under suspicion, especially one Mr. Joseph McMillen, and were forthwith arrested, but the inquiry eliciting nothing posi- tive as to their guilt, they were all finally released.
Thus ended the history of rebel torpedoism, at least for a time, in the county of Bradley; and thus ended, in this region, rebel success in this line of warfare. Bringing to their aid the skill and ingenuity of Europe in concocting rebel schemes and in manufacturing infernal machines, with which to blow up Brother Jonathan, establish a ne- gro Confederacy, promising to pay their foreign help with King Cotton, they succeeded in frightening a miserable gang of their own cowards, and in lifting four wheels, loaded with wood, from the track of a Federal railroad.
The settlement of Bradley commenced as early as 1830, with emigrants from North Carolina and Upper East Ten- nessee. The Cherokee Indians were removed from this and adjoining counties in 1838. Many of the present in- habitants can remember the portly forms of Generals Scott and Wool in the accomplishment of that work.
At the opening of the rebellion Bradley contained about twelve hundred slaves, owned by about one hundred and seventy masters. The free blacks numbered a little more than fifty, and the total inhabitants about fifteen thou- sand.
The slave trade existed in Bradley to a limited extent. The notorious Wm. L. Brown, of whom we shall speak more hereafter, rebel Congressman Tibbs, John Osment, John Craigmiles, Jacob Tibbs, and Wm. B. Graddy, were, perhaps, the only persons in the county who made the traffic a regular business. Most of these would bring into the county from Richmond, Va., or from some other slave mart, ten or fifteen negroes in a gang, and sometimes more, and dispose of them in the vicinity to the highest bidders. Wm. H. Tibbs, serving in the rebel Congress at. Richmond, would avail himself of this opportunity and universally bring home & company of slaves as a matter of speculation.
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IN BRADLEY COUNTY, EAST TENNESSEE.
Any one who takes pains to inform himself of the facts and become acquainted with the people, will see at a glance that the unprecedented rebel brutalities which marked the rebellion throughout the country, never could have been the spontaneous outgrowth of a majority of its present inhabitants. The atrocities, in number and in enormity, committed by the rebels upon the Union peo- ple of Bradley, and upon those of other parts of East Ten- nessee, almost defy belief.' The better class of rebel citi- zens, though living in Bradley during the whole reign of this rebel terror, never fully realized the extent to which the Union people suffered. None but the most abandoned men on earth could have been guilty of the systematic barbarities practiced by the rebels, as a rule, upon the Union people of Bradley.
Judging from the citizens now here, it is impossible to account for the tyranny and heartless oppression that pre- vailed among them for nearly three years, only upon the supposition that the rebel cause soaked up nearly all the ruffianism of the county, thus compelling the majority to submit to the outlandish rule of the rabble. This rabble, headed and lead on by an upper strata of the same class, unprincipled politicians, and equally unprincipled slave trading, slave driving, money making and speculating characters, reinforced by others of the same sort from southern rebel districts, formed the element which inaug- urated and kept alive the rebellion in East Tennessee.
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CHAPTER II.
PRETENSIONS OF THE REBELS TO DIVINE FAVOR.
OUR introductory chapter closed with a brief allusion to the cruelties of the rebels in Bradley and other por- tions of East Tennessee.
The remarkable character of the rebellion in this res- pect, particularly in East Tennessee, forces upon us even in writing a part of its history, the question of its right or wrong as a national cause.
A history of events or periods of time which presents nothing positively extraordinary, may, with some pro- priety be superficial, and deal only with the events them- selves; but periods or events, the prevailing characteris- tics of which startle mankind and shock the world with horror, direct our attention to causes and to the investi- gation of principles for the elucidation of such anomalies, and as a means of obtaining that instruction which no people, especially those most interested, should fail to glean from them.
National as well as individual crimes are aggravated or mitigated by the circumstances under which they are committed, hence an accurate knowledge of all the cir- cumstances in any given case is indispensable to a correct estimate of the guilt of the parties involved; and the more remarkable or unususl the facts or circumstances, the greater becomes the general anxiety for a complete solution of the whole problem.
The truth of these statements has been very strikingly illustrated by our great rebellion, and especially by the rebellion in East Tennessee. This rebellion has been one of the most remarkable events in nature-one of the most astounding things in history, consequently it has awakened a deeper, a more intense feeling among mankind than any other national event of ancient or of modern times, and accordingly, more anxious, struggling inquiry, more intel- lectual toil and concentration of moral effort, have already
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IN BRADLEY COUNTY, EAST TENNESSEE.
been expended upon the profound problem it presents to the world, than was called forth in the same length of time, by any other event transpiring in history.
In presenting a narrative of the occurrences of this rebellion in Bradley County, East Tennessee, we shall attempt, though briefly, to place the tragedy as a whole, so before the public that no doubt ean exist as to the parties which were in the wrong at the beginning, upon which basis alone, as we have already seen, can we judge correctly of the guilt of the innocence that attaches to the different actors in the drama.
It is well known, and will not be denied from any quar- ter, that at the beginning, and as long as the rebels were to any extent able to defy the Government, they did not cease to trumpet abroad in the ears of the Christian world, the assumption that they were nationally and con- stitutionally, as well as divinely right in striking for the independence of the South.
History presents no other instance of so strong an effort of the kind, as was made by the rebels to convince them- selves and the rest of mankind of the justice of their cause. The church and the state, the priest and the politician, the journalist and the slave-driver, were one and insepa- rable in swaddling their young confederacy as the legiti- mate offspring of heaven. It was also the beau-ideal of national government, and the quintessence of social humanity. The most talented and influential, if not the most pious and godly, among the clergy of the South, never allowed themselves to doubt for a moment that the cause of the rebels was a child of special Providence, and consequently, embodying a reformation or revolution in the affairs of the world, which having God for its author and protector must be triumphant in the end.
The Southern States, in erecting themselves into an inde- pendent nation, had committed no error. They had been guilty of no wrong. They were only the passive instru- ments of an opening Providence, whose divinity the lea- ders of the great movement could not deny, dutifully and inoffensively toiling, as directed, to dispense the blessings
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of that Providence to the world; and as an evidence of their sincerity and their Christian spirit, all the favor they asked of their old connections, in relation to this great work was simply " to be let alone."
Now, all this is historical fact, and as such it is not only our privilege but our province to deal with it. Just here, therefore, we propose to join issue with the rebels. We join issue with them upon this point, their loud profes- sion of being in the Divine favor, to the Divine prejudice against the Northern cause, simply because in making a brief argument it is the best suited to the purpose.
Now, if a Southern Confederacy upon this continent, founded upon the institution of slavery, was plainly depicted in the Providential signs of the times, if it was unmistakably the voice of God as the rebels pretended, and if His hand was so plainly revealed in its inaugura- tion and in its support, even for years, how is it that the rebellion so signally failed? God being the author, the instigator, and the support of the rebellion for so long a time, upon what principle are we to account for the fact, that all at once it met with the most disgraceful overthrow of any revolutionary cause of which history gives us any knowledge ? Did the Almighty forsake his own cherished designs, or was he defeated by the mudsills of the North ? It is utterly impossible by any fair course of reasoning to reconcile the fact of the sudden and complete failure of the rebellion with the supposition that God was the insti- gator of it, or that He ever smiled upon the enterprise, or allowed it to exist and progress with any view to its final success.
"For if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it," is a passage of Scripture which all Southern theologians who have expatiated so sweepingly upon the Divine mis- sion of the rebellion, would do well not only to consider in a general sense, but they would do well to consider it particularly in connection with their melancholy reflec- tions upon the disastrous end of their beloved Confeder- acy.
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IN BRADLEY COUNTY, EAST TENNESSEE.
The simple failure, however, of the rebellion to accom- plish what it undertook, is not the only fact under this head that argues against the assumption in question.
The rebels were not only defeated-simple failure of their cause was not the only result, but they were utterly ruined. They not only did not gain anything that they proposed, but they lost everything that they could call their own when they began. Not one stone was left upon another of their old order of things. The result to the rebellion was not merely defeat, but it was annihilation- a visitation of swift destruction. Defeat, destruction, anni- hilation, and the total loss of all things, were the fruits of that Divine favor that attended them. As well might these political and theological Southern Doctors contend, that God was in the midst of the Cities of the Plain, to befriend and bless the people with His gracious presence, at the very moment when his wrath was causing the earth to open and to swallow them up for their abominable sins, as to contend that a cause with all its principles smitten to the earth and scattered to the four winds like the rebellion, was the cause of God. It is possible, how- ever, that Bishop Pierce and Doctor Palmer can prove that the Almighty was fighting at the head of His people from the walls of Jerusalem, and attempting to defend them against the Roman army, by whom they were finally overcome and destroyed.
The end of the rebellion was unlike the end of any just cause recorded in history. Truth always gains by contact with error, whatever may be the immediate and apparent victory against it. Revolutions never go backward. The Commonwealth of Cromwell partially failed at the time of its ostensible objects, but it was far from being a total failure. Its principles lived if they did not triumph at the time. It gained much also at the time. The point of its termination was infinitely in advance of the point of its setting out. As Mr. Goldwin Smith remarks, "The prin- ciples of Cromwell partially failed in England; but they crossed the Atlantic and perfectly succeeded in America." The principles of Cromwell produced the Americam Rev-
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olution, and fully developed themselves in the fact of our present American Republic. The rebellion, however, it appears, possessed no redeeming or self-sustaining quali- ties of this nature-qualities that live and grow in spite of defeat, qualities wresting victory from defeat itself; but was, in_all respects, a backward movement-a step to the rear, and so far to the rear that the point of its setting out was lost and irrecoverable, never to be seen again ; and in an utterly strange land, dying a very strange and singular death, the rebellion found its grave. Not one of its principles are now alive to defend its character or hal- low its memory.
The rebellion itself was a strange thing, and everything about it was strange in the extreme. It had strange statesmen, strange politics, a strange religion and strange gods. Strange gods indeed the rebels must have had that could so deceive and mislead them, and false proph- ets that the Lord did not send.
In viewing the infatuation of the South upon this sub- ject, and especially the infatuation of its Doctors of Divin- ity, one can hardly avoid being struck with the similarity of their condition with that of the prophets of Baal before Elijah; also, as Elijah did those prophets, one can hardly avoid mocking these Southern Divines by tauntingly enquiring, Why they did not call louder upon their god ? For he was a god, but was talking, or pursuing, or was on a journey, or fighting other battles, or peradventure he slept and must be awaked. Why did not more of these prophets leap upon the rebel altars that were made, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lan- cets, till the blood gushed out upon them, crying louder and still louder, O Baal, hear us ! for thou art a god and will deliver us ?
The failure of the Prophets of Baal to persuade their god to answer by fire and consume their sacrifice, and the complete success of Elijah in calling upon his God to come down and consume his offering, instantaneously put an end to all controversy among the people, as to which worshiped the true God. The Prophets of Baal were false
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prophets, self-condemned by their own failure, and the people slew them at the waters of Gishon.
This subject, however, has another phase which very strongly confirms the position, that Providence never favored the rebellion with any view to its final success.
As a purely worldly scheme, and a purely worldly scheme it was, the one great thing which ruined it, the rebellion did possess all the elements of success. This fact is so manifest that its total failure can be accounted for upon no other principle than that Providence was against it. There was not a moment from the bombard- ment of Sumter to the fall of Lee, when the preponder- ance of worldly sentiment and worldly policy not only in our own nation, but in all other ruling nations of Christen- dom, with one or two exceptions, were not in sympathy with the rebels. Our national triumph is the greatest moral victory ever achieved in so short a time, against such worldly odds. In regard to ourselves, the rebels at heart in the whole country were in the majority a little more than six millions. The Government, therefore, in the con- test, was reduced to the ratio of two against three during the war. In other words, the whole country, North and South, contained eighteen millions of rebels, and twelve millions of loyal people; and thus it stood on an average until the end of the contest. Disintegration of the rebel elements was all in a worldly point of view that saved us. Had the rebels in the entire nation been one in locality, as they were one in sentiment, or had rebels in the North been able to combine and organize in the North, as the rebels were able to do in the South, the Government would have been swept with the besom of destruction. The rebel- lion possessed the numbers, but it lacked in one locality the power of concentration and organization.
In territory also, confining our estimate to the States, at the beginning, the Government was inferior to the Southern Confederacy. Leaving the border slave States out of the question, and allowing their conflicting forces to ballance each other, the seceded territory exceeded that left to the Government, about sixty thousand square
3
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miles, an area equal to that of the great State of Vir- ginia. In numbers and in territory this was the dispro- portion in favor of the rebels at home.
Abroad, at the beginning, as well as for two years after- wards, the prospects of the rebels were quite as bright, and ours quite as dark, as they were within our own bor- ders. With one exception, that of Russia, the leading European governments, if not their people, were strongly in sympathy with the rebellion. Fifteen days only elapsed after the dispatch of Lord Lyons announcing to his Gov- ernment the fall of Sumter, before his Queen issued her proclamation recognizing the rebels as belligerents. France was equally precipitate and ungenerous, and why, contrary to all this, and the eager haste in which it was done, the rebels were ever after disappointed in their expectations of full recognition as an independent nation, . is, to-day, upon any principle of their worldly policy alone, as indefinable by the one party as by the other. While the rebels were exhausting every art of diplomacy to hasten the event, these governments were at work with equal industry to get themselves ready, or in other words, to get themselves into a safe position to grant the request, yet, some invisible power retarded every step and myste- riously held back the coveted boon, till an EVENT at the White House; no noise of war in it either, shook the continent, if not the earth, and knelled among European thrones, that the hour of Southern recognition had passed.
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