History
East Tennessee Volunteers
"That the Legislature of the State, without having first obtained the consent of the people, had no authority to enter into a 'military league' with the Confederate States against the general government, and by so doing to put the State of Tennessee in hostile array against the government of which it was, and still is, a member. Such legislation in advance of t
he expressed will for the people to change their governmental relation was an act of usurpation and should be visited with the severest condemnation of the people. Resolved, further: That the action of our Sate Legislature in passing the so-called 'Declaration of Independence,' and in forming the military league with the Confederate States, and in adopting other acts looking to a separation of the State of Tennessee from the government of the United States, is unconstitutional and illegal, and therefore no binding upon us as loyal citizens." In every war since Tennessee became a state we find her sons ready and willing to go forth and die if need be for the old flag...The inhabitants of East Tennessee were direct descendants of the brave men who fought at and destroyed Furgeson's army at King's Mountain, and Packenham at New Orleans, and it was not unnatural that they should be aroused by this great insult to their country's flag...They sprang to the 'call to arms' like their forefathers and poured out their blood for the preservation of the Union." "The people of East Tennessee are determine to maintain the Union by force of arms against any movement from the South throughout their region of country to assail the government at Washington with violence, and that the Secessionists of the cotton States, in attempting to carry out their nefarious designs to destroy the Republic, would have to march over my dead body and the dead bodies of thousands of East Tennessee mountaineers slain in battle."
"In no part of the country had the people been more loyal than here in East Tennessee. Rev. N.G. Taylor, Knoxville, TN, 1860
