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 CHAPTER III

LOYALTY OF EAST TENNESSEE

While we have attempted to show the untenable position of those who maintain that the majority of the people of Tennessee were opposed to separation and it was only a coup d'état of Governor Harris that carried the State into the Confederacy, it is, however, true that a great number of her inhabitants did resist withdrawal and remain openly loyal. This was especially the case with East Tennessee. Her persistent loyalty is a striking illustration of the physical conditions and causes which lay behind the Civil War. Tennessee had been settled by a common stock of pioneers from North Carolina. Many of these, attracted by the beautiful scenery and genial climate, had found homes east of the Cumberland Mountains, while others had crossed the mountains and taken possession of the rich tablelands and the alluvial bottoms of Middle and West Tennessee. When the State was admitted into the Union, in 1796, her population was homogeneous. The institution of slavery existed in all sections of the State.

In West and Middle Tennessee, where the soil and climate were suitable for raising cotton, slave labor was very profitable. In East Tennessee, the poor upland farms scarcely yielded a return to white labor. As the result of this difference in natural conditions, slavery flourished in West and Middle Tennessee, but in East Tennessee, by 1860, it had become almost extinct, except upon the rich plantations that bordered the Tennessee River. The efforts to form a Confederacy based upon slavery found, therefore, no support among the inhabitants of East Tennessee. Their interests