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This chapter concentrates on the treatment of civilians in Knoxville during the period between Tennessee's secession in June 1861 and the banishment of William G. Brownlow from the Confederacy for treason in March 1862. Brownlow and other Unionists remained outspoken in their opposition to secession long after Tennessee seceded, and although local Confederates lobbied for a crackdown on civil liberties, Confederate authorities at Nashville and Richmond tolerated local Unionists' dissent until a series of infamous bridge burnings in November 1861 convinced them that their leniency had been counterproductive. Knoxville became the scene of four executions, and hundreds of political prisoners from all across East Tennessee were incarcerated there throughout the winter. The most famous inmate was Brownlow himself, who after three months in jail was escorted across the lines to the Union.

This chapter focuses on the presidential election of 1860 in Knoxville. It opens with a vignette of a famous encounter between William G. Brownlow and Alabama “Fire Eater” William Lowndes Yancey, a US Senator and one of the leading proponents of Southern secession should a Republican president be elected. Their encounter offers a framework for addressing the Second Party System as it functioned in Knoxville, and for exploring two themes utterly central to the way in which the townspeople contemplated the impending election: speculation as to the fate of slavery, and debate concerning the fate of white men. Developing these themes, the chapter explores East Tennessee's modest antislavery heritage and the evidence of class stratification in Knoxville and its environs. It argues that these factors rendered the proslavery argument that Parson Brownlow modeled during the secession crisis inherently unstable.

This chapter analyzes the behavior of Knoxville Unionists under Confederate military occupation (May 1861-August 1863) against the backdrop of the speeches of William G. Brownlow, who undertook a triumphal speaking tour in 1863 and became, for his adoring northern audiences, the very personification of Southern Unionism. Drawing on extensive evidence from Confederate and Union civil and military records, the chapter constructs a collective profile of Unionist and Confederate sympathizers that includes nearly 450 individuals from 323 households. Mining these and other contemporary sources (diaries, memoirs, correspondence), it sketches the range of responses among Unionists to Confederate occupation. Whereas Brownlow was lecturing Northern audiences about defiant, “unconditional” Southern Unionists willing to sacrifice their all in defense of the Stars and Stripes, Knoxville's Unionist leaders were in fact adopting a range of accommodation strategies that defined loyalty to the Union as anything short of active, enthusiastic support for the Confederacy.

This chapter begins with a brief sketch of the early career of William G. Brownlow and of his decision to locate in Knoxville in 1849. It then presents a snapshot of the town at mid-century, creating a sense both of the physical space and of the people who lived there. The chapter examines socioeconomic patterns of wealth, occupation, race, and ethnicity; assesses the vital importance of railroads to the town's development; and introduces several of the key figures who will play important roles in the drama soon to unfold. In the backdrop are two attendant themes: the emergence of Knoxville as the commercial hub of East Tennessee, and East Tennessee's decided sense of inferiority relative to the wealthier areas of Middle and West Tennessee.