When the Volunteer State found itself on the brink of secession in 1861, East Tennesseans voted overwhelmingly to remain loyal to the Union. And Scott Countians voted against secession more than any other county in East Tennessee – or in the state, rejection separation by a vote of 541-19.
That was the strongest manifestation of Scott County’s Revolutionary War heritage. As historian Esther Sharp Sanderson later explained: “In the face of mounting sentiment that was drawing West and Middle Tennessee in to the ranks of the Confederacy, East Tennessee stood their grounds. They proved to the overwhelming majority of Tennesseans their loyalty to the Union. East Tennesseans had played important roles in helping to make the United States; they were not going to be a party to its destruction – no never!”
Not everyone who descended from a Revolutionary War veteran felt the same as Scott Countians and East Tennesseans. There was a competing school of thought, subscribed to by men like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, that America was important but that their first loyalty lay with their state. This viewpoint also had roots in the Revolution. Men like Lee and Davis saw the Civil War as a second Revolution, with states resisting a tyrannical central government much like the colonies had done nearly a century earlier.
But in Scott County and East Tennessee, direct descendants of Revolutionary War veterans believed just the opposite: a great price had been paid to build the United States, and it was important not to let the Union be torn apart. When East Tennessee’s petition for statehood was rejected after secession, Scott Countians went a step further and staked their independence from Tennessee, declaring themselves the Free and Independent State of Scott.
As Sanderson wrote, “Scott Countians can point with pride to the fact that they gave the largest proportionate vote to the Union of any county in the state of Tennessee. Their supreme sacrifice helped to keep intact an indestructible union of indestructible states, where the Great American Dream still flourishes in the spirit of a free people. United they have stood, where divided they would have perished.”
It seems odd to think of Scott County as having a strong Revolutionary War heritage. This place did not formally exist until 1849, more than 65 years after the war ended. And the lands that would eventually become Scott County were not permanently settled until after the Revolutionary War was over.
And, yet, an overwhelming majority of Scott Countians in 1861 were directly descended from at least one Revolutionary War veteran, and many were descended from more than one. That’s because the earliest settlers of the area that would become Scott County were among a group of pioneers made up almost entirely of men who fought for America’s independence.
The reason war veterans from places like Virginia and North Carolina moved to the Cumberland Plateau were varied. Some received bounty lands for their service in the war. Some may have envisioned economic opportunity. Most, though, simply desired a fresh start — away from the political and social pressures of the East and the remaining effects of the war.
Slavery may also have played a role. Sanderson wrote, “The first settlers of Scott and adjoining counties had come to this mountainous retreat to escape the snobbery of slaveholders in the Piedmont and the coastal plains. Non-slaveholders were deprived of work by the system of slave labor. The slaves did the carpentering, blacksmithing, and farming for the big plantation owners, making unemployment a problem for those who owned small farms without slave labor. Another important factor was that in escaping the tyrannical practices of some of the Colonial Governors, the over mountain men had turned their backs upon the reigning monarchs of England and had built up a strong nationalistic settlement.”
In the West was wide-open land and endless opportunity. As late as the 1790s, the Cumberland Plateau remained Indian land, off-limits to permanent white settlement. Once the Cherokee ceded ownership of those lands to the federal government in the Tellico Treaties of the 1790s and 1800s, lands that had been explored by veterans before the war on longhunting expeditions were opened to settlement. And many took advantage.
Not all of the earliest settlers here were Revolutionary War veterans. On Smokey Creek, Mikel Low and Drewry Carroll settled, their families intermarried, and their descendants claimed no close ties to the war. On the Big South Fork River, Richard Harve Slaven settled, and his descendants likewise had no close ties to the war.
But at least 15 of Scott County’s earliest settlers were Revolutionary War veterans — now memorialized at the new memorial at John John Yancey Park in Huntsville, which will be dedicated in a ceremony Saturday morning, on America’s 250th birthday. Many of these men had children who intermarried, had children, and developed a strong Union sentiment that persisted through the secession crisis and the Civil War.
Among them were Abraham Goad, who settled on New River; Tobias Phillips, who did not move to Scott County himself but had two sons who did make the move and marry into the Goad and Lawson families; the Lawson brothers — David, John, Randolph and Robert — who all fought in the war and later settled places like the mouth of Paint Rock Creek and Buffalo; Joseph Griffith, who settled on Brimstone Creek; James Chitwood, who settled at Winfield; Dennis Trammell, who settled at Winfield; John Reed, who settled near New River; Timothy Sexton, who settled near Brimstone; William Chambers, who settled on Buffalo; and others — Daniel Blevins, Joseph Hatfield, James McDonald, Joseph McPeters, and Abel Peak.
Many of those families intermarried. Joseph Griffith’s daughter (Rhoda) married Timothy Sexton’s son (William). Joseph Griffith’s granddaughter (Matilda) married Abel Peak’s son (Luke). William Chambers’ son (Thomas) married a daughter of Randolph Lawson (Katie). Katie’s sister (Millie) married one of the Phillips boys (Joseph). Joseph Hatfield had a daughter (Phariba Rachel) who married the son of John Reed (Isaac).
By the time of secession, the Chambers, Chitwoods, Goads, Griffiths, Hatfields, Lawsons, Reeds, Sextons, and Trammells were very populous in Scott County, and almost all of them sided with the Union.
The 1860 census found 49 Chambers, 99 Chitwoods, 33 Goads, 61 Griffiths, 48 Hatfields, 19 Lawsons, 62 Reeds, 74 Sextons, 55 Trammells, and 111 Phillips living in Scott County.
That’s more than 600 out of roughly 3,500 people living in Scott County at the time — every one of them descended from a Revolutionary War veteran or married to someone who did. And that doesn’t include the other surnames who were descended from war veterans — their daughters who married sons of men who didn’t fight in the war, for example — which would drive that number significantly higher.
The Revolutionary War heritage was strong here, indeed. And these people were nationalists who, as Sanderson said, weren’t about to see the United States broken apart — “no never!”
