Page:Disunion and restoration in Tennessee (IA disunionrestorat00neal).pdf/22

 CHAPTER II

RESPONSIBILITY FOR SEPARATION

Just as radical differences of opinion have existed as to the parties responsible for the whole secession movement, so the action of Tennessee has been variously interpreted. A number of writers have contended that the majority of her citizens were never in favor of secession, and it was only a coup d' état of Governor Harris that carried the State into the Confederacy. This view is a survival of the opinion once so widely prevalent in the North that the Civil War was the result of a conspiracy of a few ambitious Southern politicians, who tricked the mass of the Southern people into a war which never had their genuine approval.

It must be confessed that at first view the mode of Tennessee's withdrawal gives some countenance to this theory. In February, 1861, she had placed her disapproval upon secession by voting down a proposition to call a convention. Instead of yielding to this mandate of the people, Governor Harris and the Legislature had entered into a military league with the Confederate authorities, and having thus surrendered the real control of the State, they again went through the form of appealing to a plebiscite for approval of their action. Nevertheless, we are confident that an unprejudiced examination of these events will show that Tennessee, with the exception of the eastern part of the State, joined the Confederacy as willingly as South Carolina or Mississippi.

In the first place, these writers have made the mistake of classing Tennessee among the border States. Mr. Wilson in his History of the Slave Power says: "Exactly why