The Testimony of a Refugee from East Tennessee, by Hermann Bokum

Published: Philadelphia, Printed for gratuitous distribution, 1863

Note: Author fled the South during the Civil War

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                               THE TESTIMONY
                                    OF
                      A Refugee from East Tennessee 
                                    BY

                     HERMANN BOKUM, Chaplain U. S. A.
                               PHILADELPHIA:
                PRINTED FOR GRATUITOUS DISTRIBUTION. 1863. 




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A REFUGEE'S TESTIMONY.

   IT may seem bold and self-confident, indeed, that in the face of the 
multitude of pamphlets, addresses, essays and treatises, which this war 
has called forth, I should add one or more to the number. And yet there 
are some facts connected with my past history and my present position, 
which may sufficiently account for my appearing before the public just at 
this time. Born and educated in Germany, I arrived in this country in my 
twenty-first year, and after having spent twenty-eight years in the North, 
under circumstances which were especially calculated to endear to me the 
historic life, and the institutions of the country I had adopted, I lived 
in East Tennessee till treason there overthrew, for a time at least, the 
Government of the United States. My attachment to the Union compelled me 
to leave my home and my family to avoid a dungeon. It was then, when for 
more than a year I had had to witness the effects of a military despotism, 
which exalted falsehood, fraud and robbery to the rank of virtues, and 
rode rough-shod over every one that was unwilling to adopt this creed, 
that I prayed God that the time might come when I, in some humble way, 
might bear witness to the fearfulness of the crime, which, by means the 
most foul, had in that region of country at least, placed at the mercy of 
villains, the most abandoned, the noble and devoted men of the country. 
Similar prayers have risen from other lips, but their testimony will only 
be heard in the day of judgment, for they have sealed their faithfulness 
with their death. Yet it is not only recollections like these which now 
impel me to write. When after having fled from my home I at last had 
reached the lines of our troops which were then stationed near Cumberland 
Gap, I saw myself surrounded by hundreds of men with whom for years I had 
mingled at their altars and their firesides, and who like myself had been 
compelled to leave their 

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homes and families. Impressed with the fact, that my past life would give 
me an influence in the North, which they could not have, they asked me to 
do all in my power to induce the men of the North to come to their relief, 
that they might be enabled with their swords to make their way back to 
their homes. I promised it, and now while I am about to fulfil this 
promise, I pray God that He may prepare for my words a ready access to the 
hearts of my readers. To all this I may add that I am once more standing 
upon the ground on which first I stepped when I came to this country, that 
not a few of those with whom I became acquainted in early life are now, 
when far advanced in years, my honored friends, and that they have 
expressed a conviction that my extensive acquaintance in Pennsylvania, 
where for years I have labored as a preacher and a teacher, might enable 
me to impart information concerning the first workings and the gradual 
progress of treason in the South. Right or wrong I have acceded to their 
request, and I would have acceded sooner if my duties as chaplain of a 
hospital had not been of such a character as to claim the whole of my time.

   East Tennessee, which late events have brought into such general 
notice, is a portion of that elevated region of country which embraces 
Southern Kentucky, Northern Alabama, Northern Georgia and Western North 
Carolina. The Cumberland Mountains in East Tennessee reach occasionally 
the height of 2,000 feet, they are rich in minerals, from their sides leap 
innumerable springs, flowing through productive valleys and emptying 
finally into the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, the climate is 
magnificent, the scenery grand and picturesque, the population of an 
agricultural character, having comparatively few slaves. To this region of 
country I had moved in 1855, I had purchased a farm, planted vineyards and 
had gathered a small congregation. I had indulged the hope that in the 
same measure as I was endeavoring to make this home beautiful and 
productive, my children would resist the temptation to change, and this 
farm would be an heirloom in my family for many years to come. Beyond my 
spiritual sphere and these agricultural labors my ambition did not extend, 
and with but a trifling 

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change I could adopt with regard to myself and my family the beautiful 
lines of Barry Cornwall:

Touch us gently, Time! 
Let us glide adown thy stream, 
Gently as we sometimes glide 
Through a quiet dream. 

Humble voyagers are we, 
Husband, wife and children three - 
Two are lost - two angels fled 
To the azure overhead. 

   These humble hopes, however, were not to be realized. It is now two 
years ago when I no longer could resist the conviction that we were 
standing on the very threshold of a treasonable attempt to break up the 
Union. At that time I happened to be in the house of one of my neighbors. 
In the course of the conversation the Union was mentioned by me. "The 
Union," said he, with a contemptuous smile, "the Union is gone!" I could 
hardly trust my ears. Here stood a man before me, who was not like myself 
an adopted citizen, but a native of this country, yet who was ready to 
obliterate from the family of nations the land which for more than thirty 
years I had learnt to regard as my own, and which had conferred on me 
innumerable blessings. "Hear me," said I to him, there was a time when the 
disciples of the Lord had called blessings upon Him; - the Pharisees asked 
him to stop his disciples, but the Lord told them that if his disciples 
were to be silent, the very stones would cry out. "You," added I, "were 
born in this country, you have Washington and his time handed down to you 
as a direct inheritance, I am but an adopted citizen, I am but as one of 
the stones, but as one of the stones I cry out against you." It was at 
that time that a great Union meeting was held in the vicinity of 
Knoxville. Horace Maynard was occupied in another part of the State, but 
Andrew Johnson and other leading Union men were there, and the question 
was seriously debated whether East Tennessee should take up arms and 
destroy the bridges in order to prevent the sending of rebel troops from 
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to Virginia. Less extreme measures 
prevailed, the bridges were not burnt, the troops from the Southern States 
rushed into East Tennessee, and the Union men of East Tennessee were 
singly overpowered and disarmed. In the meantime Fort Sumter had fallen 
and some of the secessionists 

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came to me and asked me to join the Southern Confederacy. "You remind me," 
said I, "of a good old bishop, when he was led to the stake he was advised 
to abjure the Savior and save his life. "Eighty and five years, was the 
answer of the bishop, has my Savior graciously protected me, and should I 
now forswear him?' So say I to you; thirty and five years has the flag of 
the Union with the help of God nobly protected me, and should I now 
forswear it?" The secessionists, however, became so violent in their 
measures that I found it necessary to go to Washington in order to consult 
the Hon. Andrew Johnson, who by that time had succeeded in taking his 
place in Congress, and to find out whether we soon would obtain help or 
whether I would be compelled to move with my family to the North. When I 
went to Washington, Tennessee was still in the Union, when I returned it 
had been taken out by force and by fraud, and I was compelled to find my 
way through the Cumberland Mountains as best I might. Governor Harris had 
in vain endeavored to get a convention sanctioned by the people, by the 
means of which he had hoped to carry the State out of the Union. He had 
then called an extra session of the Legislature, and that body in 
violation of the express will of the people had declared an ordinance of 
separation on the 6th of May, submitting the question of Separation from 
the Federal Government and of Representation in the Richmond Congress to 
be voted on by the people on the 8th day of June. Against Separation from 
the Federal Government and Representation in Richmond, East Tennessee gave 
a majority of 18,300. It would have been much larger if the votes of rebel 
troops had not been counted, though under the constitution they had no 
authority to vote at any election. In this way however the State was 
forced out of the Union when a majority of her people were utterly averse 
to any such separation.

   Having arrived at home after having past through many trying scenes, I 
found that my journey to the North had excited attention, and that threats 
had been made of hanging me as soon as I should return. I, however, had to 
visit Knoxville. When I entered the court house in that city, I 

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found Judge Humphreys occupied in judging men, who had committed no crime, 
but in various ways had expressed their partiality for the Union. This is 
the same Judge Humphreys against whom others as well as myself were cited 
to bear testimony in Washington a few months ago, and who in consequence 
of that testimony was deposed from his office. When I had left the court 
house a friend took me aside, himself a secessionist, and told me that I 
would do well to leave the city, since in case the soldiers were to learn 
that I had just come from the North, I in a few minutes might be a dead 
man. Then came a time of darkness and oppression. The battle of Manassas 
had taken place, and for four months we were kept in the dark with regard 
to almost everything, which could have a favorable bearing on the 
preservation or restoration of the Union. It was during this time that 
Judge Humphreys held court again in Knoxville, and that he himself told 
the State's Attorney that he had no right to send Union men to Tuscaloosa 
unless they were taken with arms in their hands. The State's Attorney, a 
wretched drunkard, replied that they had only been sent to Tuscaloosa in 
order to make of them good Southern men. Shortly before this time some of 
the Union men had secretly combined and had burned certain bridges, in 
order to put a stop to the thousands of soldiers who were every day 
passing on to Virginia. Mr. Pickens who is now a Major in the U. S. Army, 
had taken part in this enterprise and had escaped. In consequence of it, 
his father, a Senator in the State's Legislature, had been seized and 
taken to Tuscaloosa. One of my neighbors returned at that time from 
Tuscaloosa, where he had been imprisoned, sick in body and in mind. He 
told me that he had left the aged Pickens in good health, but that he 
could not live, since he was confined with twenty- seven others in a small 
room, and in the night they were not permitted to open the windows. 
Pickens died. His wife when she heard it, lost her reason and died ; a 
daughter being thus suddenly deprived of her parents also cried of a 
broken heart! It was in this way that the State's Attorney in Knoxville 
made of Union men Good Southern Men! An acquaintance of mine, the Rev. Mr. 
Duggan, a highly respectable 

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clergyman, was compelled on a hot day to walk twenty miles as a prisoner 
to Knoxville, because long before the State had been carried out of the 
Union he had prayed for the President of the United States. His horse was 
led behind him, and he, though old and very corpulent, was not permitted 
to mount it. When he had arrived in Knoxville, he was declared free, and 
free he soon was, for God took him to himself. That journey on foot had 
become the cause of his death. A man named Haun had been taken to prison, 
because he had taken part in the burning of the bridges. The names of the 
persons who tried him have never been made public. Not until he had 
arrived at the place of execution did the public learn why he was to be 
executed. He was asked whether he was sorry for what he had done, he 
replied, that if placed in similar circumstances he would do it again, and 
that he was prepared to die. Others beside him were hung, still others 
were shot down or otherwise murdered. Nor did this spirit of oppression 
extend to Union men alone. Shortly before I left East Tennessee, a wealthy 
secessionist named Jarnagan, who lived in my vicinity did not rest, till 
two companies were quartered in that town, in order to keep down the Union 
men. Three months afterwards he left his residence, because, as he himself 
declared, his own friends had robbed him of property worth $3,000, and 
would take his life if he would not give up all. It was as still worse 
with Daniel Yarnall, another secessionist, and also one of my neighbors. 
He had complained concerning the conduct of some soldiers in the 
Confederate army, and these soldiers had been punished; in consequence of 
it they went to his house and stripped him. He himself counted forty 
lashes, and then could count no more. When the workings of this treason 
first commenced, and I on my missionary tours was passing through the 
fruitful valleys and over the pleasant hill sides of East Tennessee, and 
beheld the fields ready for the harvests, and the industrious men and 
women engaged in their daily round of duties, I asked myself, whether 
indeed it was possible, that the mad ambition of men would go so far as to 
desolate these scenes of beauty. It has proved possible indeed! Where but 
two 

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years ago there were all the elements calculated to make a community 
prosperous, there is now misery and wretchedness the most fearful, and the 
rule of an armed mob bent upon indiscriminate plunder. Do you see yonder 
wretch? He has been a drunkard and a vagabond all his life-time, yet he 
has thousands of dollars in his pocket now, and he rides the most 
beautiful horse in that whole region of country. I could take you to the 
industrious farmer from whom he took the horse, and whom he robbed of his 
money, and who now, together with his wife and children are left in 
penury! Do you see yonder girl? How beautiful she would be, if it were not 
for the loss of that eye! That eye she lost in successfully defending her 
honor against the assault of a Confederate soldier, until her father could 
come to her aid and slay him. Ah, my reader, you who live here so 
comfortable and so undisturbed, have little knowledge of what is going on 
but a few hundred miles from here. I have seen the man of eighty, the 
oldest and the wealthiest man of a loyal district, who at his age had 
joined the Home Guards, raise his trembling hands to heaven, and ask God 
whether there was no curse in store for deeds so cruel. I have heard the 
gentle woman exclaim that she must have the blood of one of these men, her 
spirit being maddened to desperation because they had fired a hundred 
shots at her husband. Who could remain cold at the sight of enormities 
like these? I have often been asked whether the representations made by 
Brownlow and others can be relied on. Neither Brownlow nor myself, nor 
any, nor all of us can give a full record of cruelties which have been 
perpetrated and are now being perpetrated in the recesses of the mountains 
and valleys of East Tennessee, or of the sufferings and the deaths through 
which East Tennesseeans have to pass in the prisons of the South from want 
of food, from filth, from absence of ventilation and from degrading work.

   After the defeat of the rebels near Mill Spring had taken place, I had 
to go secretly to Kentucky in order to attend to some private affairs of 
mine. After my return the battle of Pittsburg Landing had occurred, and 
Fort Henry, Fort Donelson and Nashville had fallen into the hands of the 
Federal 

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troops. In consequence of these reverses the conscription law was enacted. 
There was a place of mustering near my house, where in former times 
generally some 800 men had mustered; that day only about 50 appeared. Two 
nights after, almost all the men able to bear arms disappeared, went to 
Kentucky, and entered the United Army. Then Churchwell, the Provost 
Marshal of Last Tennessee, a man who has since been called to the Judgment 
bar of God, issued a proclamation and declared that if these men would 
come back they should be permitted peacefully to pursue their avocations; 
at the same time, however, he attempted to seize some of the most 
influential Union men who had yet staid behind. I was to be one of the 
victims; by a most Providential combination of circumstances I received 
early notice of the fact that five men were sent out to apprehend me. I 
had made up my mind to go to prison. I could not bear the thought of 
leaving the atmosphere where my wife and my children were breathing, but 
my wife prevailed on me to go to our friends in the North. Her last words 
were: "Fear not for me, I trust in God;" I begged her to kiss our 
children, and I turned into the mountains. Never I trust, shall I cease to 
be thankful for the gracious manner in which I was shielded from harm in 
that perilous journey. Six months later my wife and my children arrived in 
Cincinnati, having crossed the Cumberland Mountains in the rear of the two 
contending armies, and having made more than 300 miles in an open buggy. 
We have since removed to this city, where I have been appointed Chaplain 
of the Turner's Lane Hospital.

   Now, after having made these statements, which in a great measure refer 
to myself, I wish to draw the attention of the reader to certain subjects 
which are of vital importance to all of us, and on which my past 
experience, such as I have just described it, may enable me to shed some 
light. In the first place, then, let me advise every one who reads these 
pages to turn away from the man, who attempts to persuade himself and 
others, that the South has been driven into her treasonable course in 
consequence of the wrong inflicted on her by the North. This, indeed, is 
one of the falsehoods by 

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which the men of the South have attempted to excuse their treason, but it 
was not the cause of it. Do you think, I believed them, when they came to 
me about that time and told me that the men of the North were a set of 
cowards who would not fight, and that one Southerner could whip five of 
them at any time? Do you think I believed them when they spoke of drawing 
the line between the North and the South along the Ohio river, and of 
erecting an immense fortress opposite Cincinnati, and of battering down 
that city, whenever the North interfered with slavery? Or do you think I 
believed them, when they advised me to join the South, because, if the 
South succeeded, East Tennessee would be a great manufacturing country, 
and my little property would increase a hundred-fold in value? Of course I 
did not believe them. I knew too much about my friends in the North to 
doubt their bravery, and I had seen too much of the want of manufacturing 
enterprize in the South to indulge the hope that my property would be 
worth any thing, if the South should gain the ascendency. Just as little 
did I believe it, when they came to me and told me that they were 
compelled to rise in rebellion, because the North was resolved to rob the 
South of their slaves. Had not I listened to the Rev. Dr. Ross and many of 
the other leaders of the movement? Washington and Jefferson and the men of 
their time had, indeed, regarded slavery as an evil which would gradually 
give way under the influence of christianity; but not so these apostles of 
our own time or of the immediate past. According to them, slavery is the 
very foundation, on which christianity is resting, take it away and 
christianity crumbles to pieces; according to them on the existence of 
slavery depends the cause of freedom, touch that institution and freedom 
as well as christianity are crushed. Strange doctrines these, you say, yet 
these are the doctrines which have been taught in the South by divine and 
layman for more than twenty-five years, and taught for the very purpose, 
which they now attempt to realize by their treasonable movement, and into 
which they have been drawn for reasons very different from those which 
they have made public. It was indeed not abolition nor 

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any other imaginary wrong inflicted on them by the North, which influenced 
their action, but a conviction of a very different character. With all 
their boasts concerning the divine character of the institution of 
slavery, and the spiritual and temporal blessings which resulted from it, 
they could not conceal from themselves, that in its practical workings 
slavery in many respects looked very much like a curse. Why was it that 
these vast multitudes of emigrants were peopling the North, while they 
kept away from the South? Why, that manufactures and commerce selected the 
North for their favored home? How did it happen that if you started from 
Pittsburg on your way to St. Louis, you would see on the right hand side 
of the Ohio river, flourishing towns and cultivated fields without number, 
while on the left, nature reigned beautiful but unproductive? It was 
slavery which was the cause of it, and the time was fast approaching when 
the South compared to the North would be in a lamentable minority and 
would lose that influence over the General Government which it had so long 
enjoyed. Hence the criminal resolve of breaking the Union to pieces, and 
of founding an aristocratic empire with slavery for its basis, and the 
prospect of having untold wealth, pouring into its bosom by re-opening the 
African slave trade. Ah what anguish have we Union men of the South 
suffered when one and another of these diabolical plans was developed to 
our view. How vain the hope of being benefitted by the resolutions of 
Crittenden, or by any other resolutions, when we had learnt that the Union 
was to be broken to pieces at every cost. Many an appeal reached the South 
at that time from the great conservative body of the people in the North, 
calling upon them to be but patient for a few days and they should receive 
every security for their rights which they possibly could desire. There 
were many hearts, which bounded with joy and with hope at these appeals, 
but they met no response in those Southern Senators, who had it in their 
power to pass the Crittenden resolutions, but who refused to vote, that 
they might break up the Union. Abolition no doubt has to answer for many 
things, but it never will have to answer for having brought about this 

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rebellion. The power was rapidly escaping from the hands which had wielded 
it so long, and that power was to be preserved, though the country should 
be deluged in blood, and the recollections of a glorious past be given to 
the winds. Yet there are still those amongst us, who are sympathizing with 
the South, on account of the wrongs it has suffered at the hands of the 
North. I assure you that the slaveholders of East Tennessee, who are Union 
men, do not feel that they need such sympathy. They never have complained 
that they have lost any of their rights, and they look with utter 
abhorrence upon this attempt to obliterate from the family of nations, a 
country which surpassed every other in a spirit of justice and humanity. 
They are most decidedly of opinion that God would be altogether just, if 
He should sweep away the institution of slavery, which these men intend to 
make the foundation of their empire, and if they also in consequence of it 
have to suffer loss they are prepared for it. It is by the preservation of 
the Union alone, that they can have security not only for the property 
which may be left them, but for liberty and life. Shortly before I left 
East Tennessee, I was in the house of a wealthy slave owner, a devoted 
friend of the Union. He spoke with tears of this attempt to break up the 
Union, adding that there was a report that the Government of the United 
States intended to confiscate the slaves. He did not believe, he said, 
that the Government would deprive loyal slaveholders of their property, 
but in case it should be necessary, in order to preserve the Union, he 
would gladly give up the slaves. Another slaveholder, also one of my 
acquaintances, who had been robbed of a large portion of his property, and 
who had been in prison for months, at last reached his home again. "The 
last dollar," he said to his wife, "the last slave, if but the Union be 
preserved, and joyfully we will start anew in life." "Think you," said 
another distinguished slaveholder, a gee from East Tennessee,(*) the other 
day in the city of New York, in the same spirit, "that for the pleasure of 
enjoying the company of my wife and my babes whom I have not seen for the 
last two years, I would not have willingly given all 

(* The Rev. Mr. Carter.)

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that my negroes are worth, or all that they ever will be worth to me?" Yet 
though the Union men of the South thank them so little for their sympathy, 
the sympathizers here are still going on in the same strain. "Pray, sir," 
said one of them to me but a few days ago, how would you like it, if you 
had owned two hundred negroes and they had been taken away from you?" "I 
would certainly feel satisfied," was my reply, "if at that price I had 
obtained security for the property I might still have, but most of all for 
my liberty and my life. I have not lost two hunderd slaves, but I have 
lost all the property I owned, and which I valued at six thousand dollars. 
Yet by giving it up and escaping to the North, I again enjoy the benefits 
resulting from the Union, and the means of supporting my family."

   By facts like these I am readily reminded of others, which it may be as 
well to mention in this connection. I have very frequently heard of late 
the assertion, that this is not a war for the Union but for the freeing of 
the negroes, and gentlemen have told me, that they, indeed, are as much 
for the Union as ever, but that they are constrained to oppose the 
administration, because it has now raised issues which are altogether 
foreign to the original objects of the war. Now in order to meet this 
objection in a satisfactory manner, I beg the reader to look at the 
beginning of this war. When the South was going on in taking one 
aggressive step after the other, and the United States Government still 
bore it patiently, a gentleman, who is now prominent in the ranks of 
secession, but who at that time had not made up his mind which way he 
would turn, expressed great astonishment at this conduct. "The United 
States," he said, "are a powerful nation, but even for a nation so 
powerful it seems strange to be so slow in punishing treason:" Ignorant as 
I then was of the extent of this treason, I gloried in this forbearance of 
the United States because it was so much in keeping with the spirit it had 
ever manifested to leave room for the loyalty that might still exist in 
the South to make itself felt. At a later period, however, the necessity 
of an energetic movement had become evident, and government and people 
unanimously declared that they were fighting, and would fight 

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on for the Union and the Constitution. I became well acquainted with this 
state of feeling, for I was then in the North. But then, again, there came 
another phase of the struggle. The Federal arms had been sufficiently 
successful in taking possession of large portions of slave territory, and 
they had to meet the question, what they should do with the negroes of 
disloyal slaveholders. The question was finally solved by the proclamation 
of the President, a document, which is the result of the circumstances in 
which the disloyalists of the South have placed themselves by their 
treasonable course. Thus it has happened that thousands, and let me add, I 
am of the number, while they have at all times opposed abolitionism, and 
have been in favor of securing the South in all their rights, have now 
come to feel, that treason has no rights whatever, and that the negroes, 
if they furnish to traitors the means of support, and of carrying on this 
war against the Union, should be deprived of these means wherever an 
opportunity offers, and that they ought to sustain the Government to the 
utmost in their power, because it is acting in accordance with these 
views. To illustrate this subject from what may be called the common sense 
view of it, I beg leave to relate an incident related to me by a 
clergyman, whose name I shall be happy to give, as soon as he will permit 
me to do so. He had been invited to deliver a patriotic address in a 
neighborhood, which was not celebrated on account of its patriotism, and 
hints had been dropped, that if he did go there he might expect to be 
handled somewhat roughly. The clergyman however did go. He proposed to 
stop at the house of an acquaintance who was quite an excitable character. 
Before entering the house, he heard that one of the agitators on the other 
side of the question had been there in the morning. He of course then 
expected a scene of a good deal of excitement, and he was by no means 
disappointed. Hardly had he entered when his friend rushed up to him, and 
exclaimed: "Well, sir, it is all over now!" "What is over." "There is 
going to be a draft." "Well, what of that?" "We will not go !" "But you 
will be made to go." "What, make fifty thousand men go?" "Ah remember my 
friend, it is not every 

Page 16

one thinks this way. It is only a little corner here of Pennsylvania." 
"But," exclaimed the other with great vehemence, "I will not fight for the 
nigger!" "Not fight for the nigger," said my friend. "Well, now, listen to 
me. Suppose I were a general of the Secessionists, and had fifty thousand 
troops under my command, and I were standing here, and you were a general 
of the Union troops, and you had fifty thousand men under your command, 
and you were standing over there. And now suppose that you had learnt that 
here back of my right wing I had stored a vast deal of ammunition, and 
that you knew a way how to get round there and take it away from me, you 
also knowing that if you did take it, I would have no powder to fire at 
you, would you take it?" "Certainly!" "And then suppose that you had 
learnt that back of my left wing I had stored a considerable amount of 
provisions, and that you had an opportunity of getting hold of it, you 
knowing that if you succeeded in taking it, I would have to do with half 
rations and might be very much disposed to give up the fight; would you go 
and take it?" "Surely I would!" "And then again suppose, that far in the 
rear of me, there were five thousand negroes constantly at work in order 
to supply me with the provisions I needed, and that you knew a way how to 
catch them, and that you knew that if you did catch them, I was sure to 
give up, for I would have nothing whatever to eat. Would you go and catch 
them?" "Surely I would." "Well, that is all the Government proposes to 
do." "Is that all?" "Yes." "Well I am for that!" So it is, my reader, 
those who declare that the Government is no longer fighting for the Union 
and the Constitution are far from the truth. We have to accustom ourselves 
to the thought, that as matters now stand in the South, traitors have no 
right under the Constitution, and that the safety and the perpetuity of 
the Union, demand that they should be deprived of every means by which 
they are aided in their treasonable course. He who opposes the Government 
in this respect, is aiding and abetting treason, and to arrest such and 
punish them is the duty which the Government owes to the safety of its 
loyal citizens and to itself.

Page 17

   And this brings me to another branch of my subject. I have been often 
asked, what is likely to be the final result of all this loss of treasure 
and of blood. A similar question, I understand, one of my friends 
addressed the other day to a prominent individual in Washington. The 
person thus addressed was silent for a time, and then said with deep 
earnestness: "Our prophets are dead and I cannot tell." By the prophets he 
meant those great statesmen Jefferson, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew 
Jackson, Clay, Webster and others, who in times gone by have been our 
political teachers, and who have pointed out to us the course we must take 
in order to enjoy peace and prosperity. But however interesting and 
touching this answer may appear, he could have given a better one. He 
could have said: "Our prophets are dead, and yet they speak." They speak 
by their example, and by the writings which they have bequeathed to us. 
Jefferson when he had been elected President said in his inaugural 
address: "We have called those who are our brothers, and who hold the same 
principles with ourselves by different names," referring thus mildly to 
the spirit of party which had been manifested previous to the election. 
Monroe when he had been President for four years, had so acted in the 
spirit of the words of Jefferson, that when his re-election was to take 
place, there was none to oppose him; the whole people formed a great 
American Union party. When Jackson, the democrat, had to contend against 
the doctrine of separation as promulgated by South Carolina, there stood 
by his side, Daniel Webster, the whig, and proved, particularly in his 
celebrated speech against Colonel Hayne of South Carolina, that the 
Constitution does not confer the right upon a single State, to cut loose 
from the Union at its pleasure. And when, on another occasion, again the 
safety of the Union was imperilled, it was Henry Clay, the whig, who 
expressed his gratitude to certain democratic members, because in the hour 
of danger they had set aside all considerations of party, and had aided 
him in preserving the Union. Nor would I forget John Quincy Adams, who, 
when he entered upon his presidential career, declared that no man who 
bore a good character and 

Page 18

was fit for the office he held, should be deprived of it from 
considerations of party, and who acted in accordance with this 
declaration. Though dead, they speak. They tell us that now as in time of 
Jefferson there are those, who, though they are called by different names, 
are yet our brethren, who are holding the same principles with us; they 
admonish us, that when the existence of the Union is at stake, we for a 
time at least ought to keep up our party lines less strictly, taking for 
our platform the Union as our forefathers have done; they speak to those 
in power and tell them that in the choice of the men they employ, they 
ought to be guided by merit and not by party considerations, and they 
speak to those who hold responsible positions under the Government, and 
remind them that they are bound to carry out the policy of the Government, 
independent of the fact that their associations of party would lead them 
in a different direction. It is this ground which the Union men of East 
Tennessee desire to occupy. When one of our wealthy slaveholders, after 
months of imprisonment, had returned, he was one day near his house, 
sitting upon a fence. Some Confederate soldiers were passing by, and one 
of them called to him to shout for Jefferson Davis. My friend refused to 
do so. "Are you for Lincoln?" asked the other. "I am for the Union," 
answered my friend, "and if Lincoln is for the Union, then am I for 
Lincoln." The soldiers threatened to kill him, but at that time did not do 
it. The Union is with the Union men of East Tennessee the paramount 
question. Every other is secondary. They are willing to lose sight of all 
party distinctions for a time, if the safety of the Union should require 
it. In this connection, however, I must once more allude to the subject of 
slavery. As I have already had an opportunity of showing, they are willing 
to put up with slavery, if that should be most conducive to the welfare of 
the Union, and they are willing to do without it, if the good of the Union 
should require it. It was sentiments like these which I expressed the 
other day in a large Democratic meeting. "Ah," said one of my hearers, 
"then that is just as Mr. Lincoln says: 'The Union with slavery, if that 
be best, the Union partly with 

Page 19

and partly without slavery if that be best, the Union without slavery, if 
that be best; the Union any way.'" And they all approved of the doctrine. 
I hope the time will come when sentiments like these, which were uttered 
by loyal men in Montgomery county in this State will be generally 
entertained, and when we all shall feel the importance of that spirit of 
forbearance, which in past times has guided us safely through so many 
dangers.

   Among the many means which are used to mislead and deceive men, few 
have been found more efficient than the declaration, which we hear so 
often repeated, that we want "the Constitution as it is, and the Union as 
it was." When these words are pronounced by certain individuals they are 
exceedingly significant. They mean nothing less than that this 
administration is an abolition administration, that it is the cause of the 
war, that from the beginning it has carried on the war to subjugate the 
South and to set the negroes free, that it is a tyrannical administration 
subverting the Constitution, and that there is no hope for this country 
unless this administration can be overturned, the war be stopped and the 
rights of the South be acknowledged. By it they mean to say that they look 
with approval upon every measure of the Southern leaders, while they have 
nothing but abuse for the administration and those who sustain it, that 
they deeply sympathize with Jefferson Davis and his followers, while the 
men who have been driven from their homes, they regard as traitors to the 
sacred cause of the South, upon whom they mean to heap public and private 
insults whenever an opportunity shall offer. Such is the meaning of the 
words: "The Constitution as it is and the Union as it was," when these 
words come from certain lips. It is the very essence of treason, busily 
engaged in stirring up civil war in the North, openly or secretly. When 
uttered by others it is done more thoughtlessly, and the principal idea 
connected with them seems the conviction, that we ought to make peace and 
go on as we did in former times. It would be well, however, if men who 
make use of these words would fairly determine what they ought to mean. I 
also say: Give me the Union as it was. "Give it to me, to 

Page 20

use the language of a distinguished East Tennesseans,(*) as it was, when 
Washington to suppress rebellion, sent into Western Pennsylvania fifteen 
thousand men under the command of his neighbor and friend General Lee..... 
When Webster and Clay rallied to the support of Andrew Jackson, and sent 
treason whipped and abashed to its lair. When Millard Fillmore, called to 
account for the disposition of his fleets in the harbor of Charleston, 
replied, that he was not responsible for his official conduct to the 
Governor of South Carolina." Such "as it was" is the Union I desire. Do 
not speak to me of a Union, such as it was, when James Buchanan connived 
at the treason which the members of his Cabinet were plotting, or when 
John C. Breckinridge poured forth treason in the Senate of the United 
States. If it even were possible to restore such a Union, it would be 
utterly wanting in the elements necessary for its perpetuity. One of the 
leaders of Secession in East Tennessee, a young man full of self-conceit 
and a captain in the rebel army, visited the house of one of our aged 
Union men, a descendant of one of the revolutionary heroes. "Ah," said the 
military fop, strutting up and down the room, "you old men may indeed talk 
of Washington and of his time as you do, but we who are younger have been 
brought up under different influences, and we follow different teachers." 
It is even so, and it would be in vain to think of forming a Union with 
men, who utterly repudiate what to the American patriot are sentiments the 
most sacred and the most true. The South has to be taught that the 
falsehoods on which they attempt to erect their slavery empire are not 
strong enough to serve their purpose, and whenever they have been taught 
it, we may have a Union, as it was in the days of this country's glory, a 
Union, better fitted to bless the world than it ever has been before, 
because chastened and purified.

   And there is still another representation made by designing men, in 
order to mislead those who are little acquainted with the condition of 
affairs in the South. It is said that if in consequence of the war the 
negroes are set free they will

(* Speech of tile Hon. Horace Maynard of Tennessee, delivered in the House 
of Representatives, January 31, 1863.)

Page 21

come to the North and will bring down the free labor of the North to a 
ruinous extent. I have lived but six years in the South, and I have seen 
slavery but in Tennessee, in Georgia and in portions of South Carolina, 
Virginia and Alabama. As far as my knowledge extends I am fully persuaded 
that statements such as the one referred to are utterly void of 
foundation. Let me say to my readers emphatically, that the impressions 
which many have here in the North concerning the slaves of the South are 
extremely erroneous. The negroes are attached to the South by many bonds 
which are not easily broken. The South they regard as their home, they 
greatly prefer its climate; there many of them have families to whom they 
are attached, and church relations which they highly value; there they 
have an opportunity of making a good living, with but little labor, and 
though many desire to be free and daily pray for the success of the 
Northern arms, yet there is not one of them, I believe, who would think of 
coming North after he has obtained his freedom, and is placed in 
circumstances which will permit him quietly to enjoy it. "I care little," 
said a wealthy slaveholder to me, shortly before I left East Tennessee, 
"whether my slaves are set free or not. If they were set free they would 
not leave me. I would pay them what is right, and they would continue to 
work my plantation."

   Before concluding I may be permitted to make another brief reference to 
myself. I need not say that Germany is dear to me; in Germany rest the 
bones of my fathers; there have I lived the beautiful days of my childhood 
and early youth. In Germany there are now living those who are bound to me 
not only by the ties of blood, but by ties which reach far beyond the 
grave. Yet while Germany is dear to me, I have also learnt to love this 
country during the thirty-five years I have lived here. I love it because 
it has invited millions like myself to its hospitable shores; I love it 
because it has extended its protection not only in distant lands or on 
distant seas, but also in every humble valley and on every retired 
hillside. There the industrious farmer could quietly attend to his daily 
avocation, and in the evening return to the circle of his family, as I 
have done for years, 

Page 22

and there under his own vine and fig-tree he could look forward to the 
time when he would peacefully close his life. When it seemed to be placed 
beyond a doubt that the Union had ceased to exist, the friends of the 
South came to me once more, and told me that I could have now no objection 
to unite with them. I replied, that when I came to this country, I swore 
allegiance to the Union, that in case the Union had indeed ceased to 
exist, I did not own allegiance either to the South or to the North, that 
I would return to my native land and there perhaps after many years, when 
far advanced in life, I would take my children's children upon my knees, 
and with streaming eyes I would tell them of a noble land, a powerful 
Union, of which at one time I was a citizen. Since I have come North and 
have once more met with old friends, who with the fire of youth are ready 
to battle for the Union, which has protected them for so many years, and 
since I have been brought in contact with so many youthful spirits who go 
to the field of battle with the same spirit which filled the heroes of the 
past, I am strongly impressed with the fact that this Union is by no means 
so near its dissolution as some of my Southern friends seemed to think it 
was, and with John Adams I am ready to say, "Sink or swim, live or die, 
survive or perish, the fortunes of this country shall be my fortunes!" I 
stood the other day on the spot where Melchoir Mühlenburg, the founder of 
the Lutheran church in the United States, had labored for many years. 
There at the time of the revolution and on a certain Sabbath he had stood 
in his pulpit and had preached Christ and Him crucified; he descends from 
the pulpit, he puts off his gown, and he stands there before his 
astonished congregation in full military costume. There is a time for 
preaching, he says, and there is a time for fighting, and my time for 
fighting has come." Many clergymen are now following his example. I know 
not what may be in store for me, but I am certain that I am in the path of 
duty in addressing these words of solemn warning to such as may choose to 
read them. In what I have written I have briefly traced the 
misrepresentations by which the leaders of the South have succeeded in 
deceiving the great mass of the 

Page 23

people and the misery which has been the result of it. If the same spirit 
of deception should be successful here as it has been in the South, then 
the picture I have drawn of East Tennessee will be reflected in the 
valleys and on the hillsides of Pennsylvania, we shall have here indeed 
the constitution as it is, but as it is in the South with its armed mobs, 
its spirit of indiscriminate plunder and its deeds of violence, and we 
shall no longer worry about the danger of having the slaves coming North, 
for we shall be all slaves, ruled with an iron rod by our Southern 
masters, and by those few Northern sympathizers and demagogues whom 
anarchy will make masters instead of slaves.

   And now, in conclusion, I shall be permitted to make another brief 
reference to one of our "prophets." It is Daniel Webster, who in closing 
the speech, in which he proves that the constitution is not a compact 
between sovereign States, dwells in a strain of touching sadness on the 
possible future of the United States if the friends of nullification 
should be able to give practical effect to their opinions. "They would 
prove themselves in his judgment, the most skilful architects of ruin, the 
most effectual extinguishers of high raised expectations, the greatest 
blasters of human hopes that any age has produced. They would stand forth 
to proclaim in tones which would pierce the ears of half the human race, 
that the last experiment of representative government had failed .... 
Millions of eyes, of those who now feed their inherent love of liberty on 
the success of the American example, would turn away on beholding our 
dismemberment, and find no place on earth whereon to rest their gratified 
sight. Amidst the incantations and orgies of nullification, secession, 
disunion and revolution would be celebrated the funeral rites of 
constitutional and republican liberty!" I am thankful that it is not my 
task to trace in detail how much of the ruin which Daniel Webster thus 
anticipated has actually come to pass. Mine is a more cheerful task. 
However heart-rending the struggle may be through which we are passing, it 
is not a hopeless struggle to him who looks higher than the earth for a 
solution of it. If we see many things passing away which long familiarity 

Page 24

has endeared to us, it is that they may be supplanted by higher and better 
ones. When the city of Geneva, threatened by the Duke of Savoy, the Pope 
and the Emperor, was reduced to the greatest weakness, its inhabitants 
still remained undismayed. "Geneva," they said, "is in danger of being 
destroyed, but God watches over us; better have war and liberty than peace 
and servitude; we do not put our trust in princes, and to God alone be the 
honor and glory!" How important the lesson which Geneva then was learning, 
and how well for us if we prove equally teachable, if we also learn to put 
our trust more fully in God than we have been disposed to do, fearful as 
the trials may be through which we may have to pass, we shall not be left 
without help. But in this respect also our prophets are our teachers. The 
sentiments with which Daniel Webster closed the speech, I have referred 
to, and which are conceived in this spirit we are fearlessly to put into 
action. "With my whole heart I pray for the continuance of the domestic 
peace and quiet of the country. I desire, most ardently, the restoration 
of affection and harmony to all its parts. I desire that every citizen of 
the whole country may look to this government with no other sentiments 
than those of grateful respect and attachment, but I cannot yield even to 
kind feelings the cause of the constitution, the true glory of the 
country, and the great trust which we hold in our hands for succeeding 
ages. If the constitution cannot be maintained without meeting these 
scenes of commotion and contest however unwelcome, they must come. We 
cannot, we must not, we dare not omit to do that which in our judgment, 
the safety of the Union requires.... I am ready to perform my own 
appropriate part, whenever and wherever the occasion may call on me, and 
to take my chance among those upon whom blows may fall first and fall 
thickest. I shall exert every faculty I possess in aiding to prevent the 
constitution from being nullified, destroyed or impaired; and even should 
I see it fall, I will still with a voice feeble, perhaps, but earnest as 
ever issued from human lips, and with fidelity and zeal which nothing 
shall extinguish, call on the PEOPLE to come to its rescue."