Reconstruction in Tennessee

Tennessee historically holds the reputation for being a moderate Southern state. This characteristic evidently upholds its reputation upon inspection of the state’s experiences during the War Between the States and Reconstruction. However, that caricature in some instances carries no weight, as was seen in the state’s contribution of troops to the Confederate cause. The developments which Tennessee undertook during Reconstruction, at times, refuted the idea of a fence sitting state. This essay will detail and analyze the events surrounding the economic, political, and social circumstances of Tennessee during Reconstruction.

Many Tennesseans already lived in poverty prior to the War. Appalachia’s history tells a dark tale of nomadic vagabonds, poverty, and malicious opposition to the Landed Gentry of the Lowland South. Within the Volunteer State, the condition of Appalachian poverty in the eastern third of the state remained relatively unhindered. They were poverty stricken at the outset of the War and remained so afterwards, albeit including the ravages of military invasion.

Many across the state returned home to destroyed houses and property as well as displaced, starving, or dead families. The amount of battles fought within the region was staggering and left much of the handful of populated areas in ruin. Memphis and Nashville had both been hotbeds of secessionist sentiment and influenced their respective regions by endorsing Anglo-influenced chattel slavery. Though those places had suffered, many of the most prominent of former aristocratic families still held mass swathes of land while the yeomen farmers, typically of Appalachian origin, held little. This characteristic would continue for several more generations and lead to intense fracturing of the Democratic Party and allow for significant Republican influence in the latter parts of the 19th century.

Politically, Tennessee’s experiences remained Radically dominated and uncomplicated for the entirety of Reconstruction. Ironically, this allowed it to shed its Radical regime a bit more quickly than other former Confederate constituents. Stated bluntly, it was the first state to be Redeemed following the implementation of Republican control.

The situation occurred specifically because of the election of the Radical East Tennessean William Gannaway Brownlow to the governorship in 1865. Handily winning the election due to the total disfranchisement of ex-Confederates, Brownlow ruled with a malicious fervor typical of the Radical caricature. Quickly ratifying the 13th Amendment and the 14th Amendment after its requirement by Congress, the Volunteer state became the first state readmitted to the Union and the only one in 1866. In addition to his immediate restrictions on former Confederates’ right to vote and excepting the already tyrannical Ironclad Oath, Brownlow stripped the right from former Confederates for five years and any Confederate leadership for 15, adding insult to injury. He later went so far as to require Whites to “prove” they had supported the Union in order to vote.

In 1867, Black males gained the rights of full suffrage and exercised those rights accordingly, at the behest of Brownlow who sought to continue the expansion of the GOP within the state. In response, violent racial activity spread throughout the state. Whether coincidental or not, the reports of malignant activity, regardless of veracity, also increased the more involved Blacks were within the political sphere and the more aggressive they became in the affairs of White men. In response to the “Kuklux disturbances,” which abruptly spiked in number following the full suffrage of Black males, Brownlow declared total martial law and dispatched state militias accordingly. The Tennessee State Guard came to being as a result of Brownlow’s crackdown of such civil unrest. He went as far as to declare total martial law in nine counties.

Hoping to replace David T. Patterson in the U.S. Senate, Brownlow resigned from the governorship near the end of his second term in 1869. While he would go on to continue his Radical impulses in Congress, particularly in regards to the Enforcement Acts, Dewitt Clinton Senter, the then Speaker of the Senate, assumed the vacant office. Initially appearing as an ardent Radical to appeal to his base, Senter quickly disbanded multiple militias, which had grown abusive and unpopular, and governed as a moderate. Having been thrust into an upcoming gubernatorial election due to Brownlow entering the Senate so late in his term, Senter quickly removed and replaced around 75% of the county election commissioners, many of whom held Confederate sympathies. This resulted in high White turnout which handily reelected Senter to a full term. Presiding over a new state constitutional convention in 1870, he allowed for the establishment of early forms of Jim Crow legislation in Tennessee. His policies effectively handed over power to the Democrats in the next election in 1871.

The most noteworthy aspect of Tennessee’s Reconstruction resides not in the economic or political circumstances but the social situations which unfolded. The aforementioned economic and political affairs as well as bitterness over the loss of the War penetrated deeply into the hearts of the population. Pouring salt on an open wound, fanatical, bigoted Radicals dominated the state and harassed the locals unceasingly, particularly via the militias which arose in response to the violence of the late 1860s.

One of the single most important moments in Southern, as well as American, history occurred early in the state’s Reconstruction. On Christmas Eve, 1865 in Pulaski, six former Confederate officers convened to establish a secret society for the purpose of allowing Confederate veterans the means of maintaining fraternity with one another. Primarily wishing to simply have fun utilizing bizarre rituals and harmless jokes, the Confederates knew little of what would become of the group which would soon escape their grasp and wildly terrorize rural areas across Dixie. The infamous Ku Klux Klan was born.

Without delving into the Klan’s history post-Reconstruction, the loose affiliation of local chapters established for itself a name which permanently entrenched into the American historiography long before its peak in the 1920s. Growing quickly after its founding, the initial chapters had convened to create a constitution of rituals and a fraternal hierarchy and had established Nathan Bedford Forrest as its first Grand Wizard by 1867. By 1867, the Radicals had forcibly passed the Reconstruction Acts against the will of President Andrew Johnson; however, Tennesseans already understood the oppression of Radical rule. Union Leagues also found widespread establishment across the suppressed former Confederacy in 1867 with the intent of organizing freedmen to vote. The Union Leagues quickly devolved into militant organizations through which freedmen would terrorize local communities if not given the opportunity to do so via militias.

These circumstances in 1867 caused mass expansion of “Kuklux organizations,” primarily within rural areas. By 1869, the moniker had become totally co-opted by violent individuals and criminals because it had been decentralized and difficult to control the nature of the organization. With Forrest renouncing the group and calling for its dissolution, the remaining members of quality character grew disgusted with the bestial tendencies of the belligerent infiltrators and left the Kuklux fraternity as well. Violence grew to the extreme to such an extent that politicians were killed, some states had whole counties placed under martial law, and a small-scale war even took place in North Carolina, called the Kirk-Holden War. Though not impacting Reconstruction in much of a significance overall, the birth of the Klan remains its primary affect of the era.

A pivotal location during the War Between the States, Tennesseans battled between its staunch Unionist sentiments and its Confederate loyalties during Reconstruction. An analysis of the economic, political, and social circumstance enhance this view. Unique among Southern states bearing Radical Reconstruction from the end of the War until its Redemption, Tennessee became the first state in the region to be Redeemed. Though its moderate position would endear well into the Jim Crow Era, the Volunteer State still participated firmly in the voting patterns of the soon to come Solid South. Suffering greatly during the War and Reconstruction, the influence Tennesseans had on Reconstruction appears lacking in comparison to most others; however, its quick rejection of Radicalism and production of the early Klan cements the state firmly in the annals of Southern Reconstruction.