Thomas Francis Haile (Jan.7,
1816-Jan. 9, 1865) was partner
in the store in Flynn's Lick on the Cumberland. He had married Elizabeth Gipson,
whose
family still lives there. She lies just
off the
road south of town, looking out over a deep valley to the mountains
beyond. Her husband remains in
the prison ground at
Camp Chase in
Columbus Ohio, where he succumbed to pneumonia, his grave marked with a
Federal stone to "Tom Hale."
The
story goes that the local resistance
in the Cumberland Valley had supplies from Tom's
store. Federal soldiers
are said to have come to his home and
taken him away in
chains. This story is credible, as Camp Chase was originally used
for political prisoners only (Tom was well into his forties before the outbreak of hostilities). Before long every
prison was crowded with all sorts, and by war's end they had become
unspeakably fetid, filthy and
disease-ridden. Few survived. Tom's son, who
carved the family name on
his father's coffin, recalled his father's last words to
him: "Always tell the
truth, Tom, to a hair's breadth."
The following scraps
from the Jones & Haile store incorporate a typical
formula
for making payments at a time when gold was legal tender (prior to
the
fiat
currencies issued by the Confederacy in 1861, and the Union
"greenbacks" after 1862). The first
note reads:
$125. One day after date I promise to pay Thomas
Hale One Hundred and Twenty five Dollars One half of the debt the Bank
of Tennessee had against Charles Hopkins. for valueRecd.
this April 4th 1859
Thomas F. Jones
The second reads:
$16.00
One day after date I promis to
pay Thomas F. Jones sixteen dollars for value Recd. this note
which
is be credited on his Blacksmith acct with me [?] in the [?] Year [?]
1858
of this Febr 22 1860
Thomas Haile (seal)
Joshua Haile Jr
The note above reads:
Flynns Lick Ten.
Sept 28 / 59
Twelve monts
from the 25 of December next I promis to pay Jones &
Haile Six hundred dollars for val. recd of him this
Sept
28 / 59
Thos Haile
(seal)
That is about all we know of
Tom: that he was a storekeeper in the village of Flynns Lick who
died in Ohio at a Federal prison among political detainees and, soon,
mainly for Confederate soldiers. The conditions in the
prison probably caused his death in April of 1865.
Tom's store seems to have sustained his widow after his death. His father, Amon,
on the other hand had lost everything to the War. In debt, in need of
immediate money, Amon sold a parcel
of land to his daughter-in-law in May of 1867. He took partial
payment in gold, part with Elizabeth's sorrel mare, and she gave him
her note for
the balance. Amon and
Elizabeth recorded their transaction before a witness, but deferred drawing up
title until her son, resp.
Amon's grandson--the lawyer Joshua--should return from his practice in a neighboring county. In
September, before young Joshua arrived, Amon was reported killed by a
falling tree.
That Elizabeth eventually had to go to court to obtain title to her
land provides us with some useful records, but may also tell us something about attitudes and conditions in Tennessee at the time. She had lost several members of her family, including her husband and at
least
one son. Another son, Lafayette, came home an emotional cripple. Several of her other children left
Tennessee for good. Her generation
might have felt even more devastated by war than did the generation of
my own parents by that horror which began with the "Holocaust" and ended in
"Armageddon," killing
some 407,316
American boys in Europe and in the Pacific theater.
Deaths in the War
In the invasion of
the American South, the Federal Army
itself lost
nearly that number from its own ranks:
359,528. The Federals killed an additional 198,524 boys from the defending armies. Merely counting
up the fallen on either side does not of course reflect proportionate losses, because the northern states had more than double
the population of the Confederacy. To place
the numbers in context, therefore, we would have to compare the males of
military age, estimated at 4,070,000 for the North and 1,140,000 in the
Confederacy.* That would mean
eighty-eight boys of every thousand were sacrificed to the invasion of
the South, while more than twice that many died defending their homes: a hundred seventy-four per thousand.
*by
Shelby Foote, The Civil War (Random
House, 1986), I, 61, who excludes slave youths.
And the numbers
only begin to tell the story, for this became a war against the
population.
Mr. Lincoln's was the first modern military to renew the ancient terror
practiced by the hosts of Hannibal, Marius, Sulla and
Julius Caesar, commanders who laid waste their enemy's means
of subsistence and routinely put families to the sword. The
United States generals' self
proclaimed program of pillage, rape and arson was a throwback all the
way to those legendary words of Alexander the Great as he publicly cast his sword
upon the conquered scales of justice: vae
victis, "woe unto the defeated!"
The slow triumph of Christendom
over many centuries at last led to disavowal of that
savage doctrine. By
the time of the founding of the United States the sanctity of
civilian populations
had at last become firmly ingrained in the military mind and
culture. The young British Colonel George Washington was
mortified by an accusation that
he had not honored the surrender of French troops after a battle on the Ohio River
in 1756. In
any case, Washington's later
conduct of the Continental Army exemplified the
Enlightenment
insistence upon honorable treatment of prisoners and humanitarian
protection of civilians. During this same struggle
for
American independence, Thomas Jefferson is said to have played violin
duets with
English officers, and to have allowed that "even the great cause which
divides our countries must not lead to individual animosities." Another example of the
humane tradition
shows
up in Sam Houston's solicitous care for Mexican camp followers after
Santa Anna's defeat in1836. A Christian view of war
seems finally to have emerged. It called upon belligerants to set
aside notions of "justice" or "revenge" in the treatment of
noncombatants. Lincoln's policy
(as current Lincoln scholars agree) was more in line with the dictum of Carl
von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian general who theorized that war
is a mere continuation of policy, by other
means.
The Laws of War
Perhaps Lincoln had not
read Clausewitz, but Lincoln did hear of the series of public lectures being held
at Columbia University in the fall semester of 1861 on "the civilized
laws and usages of war" by the Swiss scholar
Francis Lieber. Lieber had in the previous summer been dispatched
to
Washington to award the President an honorary degree. The two men
at that
time spent about a half hour in conversation. Lieber was of
course quite
familiar with Clausewitz, from whom he drew the conviction that virtually all "other means" are legitimate for
bringing war to a rapid and successful conclusion,
including starvation, siege of cities, etc. Lincoln comissioned Professor Lieber to
prepare a comprehensive summation
of the "laws of war." Lieber moved to Washington so as to begin the
assigned
task
immediately. He divided his opus
into 10 sections with 157
articles in all. Lincoln issued it in
April of 1863, as GENERAL
ORDERS NO. 100. It was as if Lincoln were taking the opportunity
to
authorize
Sherman's frightful depredations a year in advance. See John
Fabian Witt, Lincoln's
Code. The Laws of War in American History (Free Press,
2012).
By this time,
Lincoln's own understanding of warfare had matured. Already
in the previous December, at the same time Lieber was working through
the nights on Lincoln's GENERAL ORDERS NO. 100,
the Confederacy had followed bloody Sharpsburg with decisive
victory at the Battle of Fredricksburg. Recognizing
that his enemy was commanded by superior generals, Lincoln had at
last removed McClellan
from command of the Army of the Potomac and cast about for
commanders less queasy about combat with their fellow Americans. The
president was forced to recognize that the people
in the South
sincerely desired separation from the North, and in emulation of the Minutemen of old
were skirmishing in resistance to the invaders. This was called
at that time "guerilla," or "little war." It proved to be a
phenomenon with a life of its own.
Not only was Lincoln's understanding of
the Southern opposition developing. The Union's declared
purpose for the invasion had become different, too. In his Inaugural Address Lincoln had disavowed any intention to tamper with the institution of
slavery. He declared that his sole purpose was to preserve the
Union.
I do but quote from one of [my] speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere
with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I
believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do
so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that
I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted
them.
This was on March 4th, 1861.
By the subsequent spring, Lincoln
was contemplating a proclamation freeing those slaves behind Confederate lines, and discussing it with his cabinet.
He
said such a proclamation lay
within his war powers as commander-in-chief, i.e., was a matter of
tactics legal in wartime. But at some
point
Lincoln's sentiments did shift from those of a Kentucky
boy who accepted slavery, to those of an abolitionist who espoused
Emancipation as a worthy cause. These sentiments were internalized as a
sacred mission. Lincoln now looked upon fellow southerners as the
enemy, a people whom he must defeat at
war. Emancipation thus evolved from just a military
tactic, into an exalted goal. As such, it obviated traditional constraints. More
than that: mere defeat of the Confederacy could not now end the War. Mere preservation of
the Union, as declared in the First Inaugural, was now merely a first step on the way to the higher mission.
We may
read with tears
today the exchange at Appomatox between
Generals Lee and Grant. Both men write so longingly of
peace. But when it comes to stipulating a proposed conference,
the Union general must
limit protocol to acceptance of surrender from the Army
of
Northern Virginia (albeit on startlingly generous terms). For the War
was by no means over. Wartime powers and martial law had to remain in force. Southern states were to be occupied for
another
dozen
years, and the
former Confederate states
were to continue without representation until the 13th and 14th Amendments had
fundamentally altered the legal relationship of states to the Union.
Amon and Lockey
are buried at Brown's Cemetery, just on down the road
from where Elizabeth lies. Elizabeth's
fortunate family has not yet again been
scourged by war,
nor has a mother lost a son to war since Lockey's Tom died
in
Federal prison. For any reader who may be equally innocent, I
offer
a remark of the already cited Francis Baily, who toured Tennessee
while Amon was still a small boy there. Commenting on the
American
secession from the English crown, Baily was so
indignant at British destruction of the
Princeton library that he compared his own fellow Englishmen to the
Goths and the
Vandals, then went on to generalize on the horrors of any invasion:
"The
conduct of the Goths and Vandals is generally held up as an example of
the
bad effects and unbounded devastation of an unprincipled banditti; but
we
shall find that in most countries, when a state has been overrun by an
invading
enemy, the conquering soldiers . . . are generally made up of the
dregs
of society . . . and in modern times we have too many instances of both
falling
sacrifices to their unprincipled habits and inveterate fury." Elsewhere, Baily refers to the American War of
Independence as a "fratricidious war." I think Baily's was a
better
term for the terrible onslaught which historians now call
the American Civil War, for the vanquished were not mere losers, but were notorious miscreants.
Vae
victis! remained the watchword for so long as the South was administered under martial law by
an occupation army , i.e., until the 1877 Compromise whereby the
disputed election (Tilden v. Hayes) was settled by granting Rutherford
B. Hayes the presidency in return for the withdrawal of Federal troops
from the South. Vae
victis! may indeed still in the 21st century motivate Federal measures on voting rights in the Southern States.
STATE OF TN VS. JOHNSON, JOHN T. CIRCUIT. 1873. Deposition
taken:
12 Jan. 1876. DEPOSITION: CATHERINE MCMILLIN, JR. I am the
widow of Landon R. McMillin, for the killing of whom defendant John Tom
Johnson and others are indicted and for which defendant is now on
trial. The homicide took place early in the morning of the 26th April
1865 . . . Early in the morning I went out to feed some
chickens . . . I saw three men riding up fast. I turned and walked
toward the house and when I got behind some shrubbery I ran. I got to
the door, and when I got to the door in the hall, the three men were at
the gate, and had their pistols cocked and pointed right at me. They
said come here, come here quickly, who are you talking to there? They
asked me several times, and asked who I was talking to, and who was in
there. I knew one of them, to wit, James A. Dixon. He did the talking.
All had their pistols cocked and had them pointed at me. They came in
at the gate. As they were moving around me, Dixon asked me if Landon
McMillin was in there. They had (unreadable) me, and I got nearly to
the gate before they got in. Said if he was, would you hurt him. He
said no; all he wanted is his pistol. Said I, stop then, I have it and
will go and get it. We were then hurrying into the house and by that
time had got into the porch. Landon was in the room south of the hall.
There was a door into the hall and one opening into the porch west.
There was a door entering the north room from the hall. I turned
towards the latter, to go and get the pistol. They stopped now and told
me to tell him (Landon) to come out, they wanted to talk with him. I
then went to the south room and to the door opening on the porch west.
I tapped on the door. He opened it, I told him it was Dixon and two
other men, and they said all they wanted was his pistol. He said go get
it, and give it to them. I turned to the north door in the hall again.
They said tell him to come out, we want to talk with him. I looked at
each in the face, to see if I could trust them. Then I said to Dixon,
will you give your word of honor that you will not hurt him? He said
yes, I have already said it. I went to the door and tapped on it.
Landon opened it. I went in and told him they said come out, they
wanted to talk to him and gave their word of honor that they would not
hurt him. He said here, they will want this, and handed me his pocket
book. He then pointed to Frank Goodbar's pistol, sticking in pillow
slip, with some cotton in it. It was on the floor under the foot of the
bed, that is the pillow slip. He and I walked out of the west door
together. They were all standing together. Dixon said to me, get that
pistol and get it quick. I then went into the north room and upstairs
and got the pistol and came down. Mother, Catherine McMillin Senr. was
sitting by the fire. I told her Landon was out there and some soldiers
with him. She rose and went out with me. They were all standing at the
same place and (unreadable) was together. I handed the pistol to Dixon.
He said where is the ammunition. I told him there was none that I knew
of. He looked at Landon and said where is your cavalry saddle? As
Landon commenced speaking, Dixon shot him, rather in the left side of
breast. Landon threw his hand to his side and turned to go into the
west door, from which he came. I jumped between and threw Dixon back as
far as I could send him. The other two immediately caught me and jerked
me out of the way. Then Dixon shot again, and still fired the third
shot before Landon reached the door. Landon fell in the door, or rather
across it, with his feet pointing north and his head south. There was
blood on the door and the casing, as if he had attempted to catch it in
falling. Dixon followed him in. I was screaming and struggling to
get loose. Mother came up to help me and got me loose. I told her to go
to Landon, that they would not let me. She went and squatted down by
him. There was one of them who wore long hair which I now recognize as
defendant Johnson. I am sure he is the man. He and the other was still
holding me. They gripped me so hard that my wrists were black next day
and were paralyzed. Defendant Johnson let loose his hold at that time
and went to the door and shot in twice. His upper lip, that is Landon's
upper lip, was cut with a bullet, and two bullet holes went in the
floor in a slanting direction and just beyond his head, where he lay.
Papa came out in his night clothes. He was old and feeble--not able to
dress himself. He said what are you robbing her for. I said Papa, they
are not robbing me, they have killed Landon. He said men, you have done
wrong and if my boys were here they would kill you. Dixon had been in
the room, in which Landon was, all that time. Dixon stepped towards
Pappa and talked some to him. He then started towards the gate, and
said hold her. The other was still holding me. They got half way to the
gate, then the other let loose. I then sprang into the house, ran to
Frank Goodbar's pistol, and got it. As I raise up with it, Vickers had
his cocked and put it against me and said if I cocked it, he would blow
my brains out. I said I would kill you if I could, you have killed my
husband. He said I never shot. I know that but you held me till the
others did it. Said I would kill you if I could. He had me by the arm
with the pistol against me and I had him by the sleeve. Mother came up
then and shook him and said look at me, for God's sake don't kill her,
for her sake don't kill her. My hand was so deadened that I could not
cock the pistol, could scarcely hold it in my hands. Then Dixon and
Johnson ran back and reached me and ran the pistol out of my hand. All
then turned and started out. I followed them to the porch door. I said
Dixon, why did you kill him. He said he would have killed me. I said he
would not, he would have murdered no man. I remarked that I wished God
would strike them with lightning, that I would kill them if I could.
They galloped off, up the lane, towards where Milton McMillin lived.
Tom's younger brother,
Dudley Brown Haile, serves as a reminder to us that the American
frontier was deeply religious. Back in Virginia, the Browns, the Littons, the
Hailes--all descended from the Church of England--had met up with Presbyterians, like the
McClures. These were people of Calvinist backgound, much interested in
doctrine, and sometimes even
querulous. Take the seven sacraments of the Roman Church as an example. Already in England they had been reduced to just two: Holy
Eucharist
and Baptism. The Eucharist itself
had been hotly contested for a generation or so. While Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer brought over by the settlers still defended
the"true presence" of Christ, it conceced the ceremonyto be just an
"outward sign." By early colonial times, focus had shifted to the
other remaining
sacrament, Baptism.
The Reverend John Smyth (d. 1612) insisted that this outward rite had to occur as an inward
transformation
of the self so profound as actually to constitute a rebirth.
These so called Baptists would abide only one
book and accept no model other than the original Apostles. They hewed
to total immersion, just as in the third
chapter of
Matthew.
A Pennsylvania Presbyterian about Amon's age, Alexander
Campbell
(1788-1866),
even rejected infant baptism, holding that becoming a Christian must be a
considered act. One of Amon's sons was drawn up
into
the Campbellite
movement, sometimes called the Restoration.
a
Although Dudley was a full-time farmer and made his entire living from the soil, he was celebrated in
Tennessee for preaching the Campbell doctrine. Dudley's religious
commitment was not unusual among backwoods families. His great
grandfather had founded a Baptist church in the Watauga valley. His great,
great grandfather had been that strong supporter of St. Paul's in
Baltimore whom I call Nicholas of Bedford because he had joined the Quakers
and followed them to Virginia.
These "overmountain" generations bring out a quality on the frontier not yet noted by Francis Bailey when
he compared the Carolinians with their British contemporaries. The Hailes are now born again Evangelicals who set up
independent churches. For more than two centuries, Evangelicism and
independence remained pronounced in America. --Now I am generalizing,
like an historian. These backwoods people have to count on goodness,
honor, and natural morality in their neighbors. This necessity
affects their religion and their outlook. As a consequence, they begin
to find government--beyond its office of policing vagrants,crooks, and
newcomers--dispensable.
T
In conclusion, I revert back to the beginning of this section: Who is Joshua Haile
jr., that cosigner of
Tom's draft inserted above from the Jones-Haile store? I would guess that he is Tom's
older brother, but he might be a paternal uncle,
or even Tom's
cousin or a nephew. Filial piety toward
that Joshua who fell in the
War
of 1812 initiated another naming tradition in the family. The
attorney from Livingston, Tennessee who represented Elizabeth in court
was her own son Joshua Haile jr. Another
lawyer's name, Joshua F.
Haile,
appears on the auction record of Lockey's
household displayed above. He
is the
son of
Tom's sister
Nancy née Haile (who married a Haile cousin). In short, attorneys named Joshua Haile filed a lot of Jackson County
court records. A good number
are by Tom's brother Joshua, who was also a planter. After the War, much
of this Joshua's landed property was foreclosed. He spent two years out in
Texas, then came home and made a living selling Kentucky and Tennessee
horses "in the
south." In 1873, he was required to make a deposition
declaring
his net worth, which would
amount to a couple million in our vastly inflated
21st-century currency:
I was worth at the time I purchased the
land [before the War] one
hundred thousand dollars or more, consisting of land, Negroes and
personal property and my wife was worth at that time fifteen or twenty
thousand dollars that I had the control of, consisting of land and
money. At a moderate calculation, I think I am [now] worth
seventy five
thousand dollars.
My tracing this particular attorney turned up articles
published in the Smithsonian
Institution Annual Report of the Board of Regents,
in 1874 and 1881
(vols. 29 & 34). They describe Indian graves near Flynn's
Lick, as well
as other antiquities found there. The author of the
1874 article
signs himself Joshua Haile Sr.,
from Gainsborough, and finds the
artifacts
at "my place," on nearby Flynn's Lick (if the author is Tom's older brother
he
was sixty at this date). The second article is
by a
Reverend
Joshua Haile from Jackson County.
Both contributions could stem from one individual's pen, or also
from an older and
a younger man (but "jr." and"sr." were not
yet restricted to "son" and "father", so it could be
that the Joshua Haile who signed himself "jr." in 1858 is the same as the
"sr." of 1874). If he is
indeed Tom's older brother then he was forty-four
years old in the first instance and sixty-seven when his second article
appeared at
the Smithsonian. The essays are written in a pleasingly literate style, and may today
be less valuable for their archeological content than for their
depiction of the postbellum Cumberland River Valley. This
amateur archeologist from the last quarter of the century seems
in comfortable enough circumstances.
Neither Joshua nor Tom
made any contribution comparable to their family's support of the
establishment church in the seventeenth century. But it can be
said for them that they did cling to their dissident church through a
materially and morally devastated time--and of course Dudley achieved
some distinction in it.
One other fellow
I found in the records is no known relative (despite diligent research
on my part). He was probably at best a
"kissing cousin," i.e., at least far enough removed to be
eligible, as in the case of that Nicholas P. Haile who married Amon's daughter Nancy. Still, I do want to offer a letter
from
the black sheep James Madison Haile, because it points up several qualities of his lost
generation, too. It is written in pencil.
Indian Nation, Apr
5. 1875
Mr Henry Jackson Dear Sir
I drop you
a few lines this leaves me
tolably well. Hoping may find
you all well, well Henry
I thought I would let you al
know
that I do Not intend to live
with
Agahta, mlvina [Agatha
Melvina]. any more; though
she is a very nise,
woman; but I
can Not bee satisfied.
with her,
it looked like she was alwaies
doing something that she ought
Not
I know when I was living abouve
town she got drunk so that she
could not walk.from morning
till night, & I never could
see
how She could drink a
hole pint
of whisky in less than an hour
her
self; I never have said
any
thing a ganst her, in that
country yet
her people thinks it is my folt
and I am wiling for them to
think it
as a man has a gratueel better
chance
than a woman,
|
[reverse]
Apr. 5. 1875
So she can get a divorse if
she wsus[?]. or she can do
as she pleases, it would bee
know truble for her to marry
again; & I think she would
bee
better satisfied a married life;
so she need not depend opon
me; for I do not intend to
live with her any longer,
I like this country very well,
it is a beautyful country;
inhabited by indians, I came to
Hotsprings
and stade a while the waters
ther are Not near as good as
they
are Recomended to bee;
[signed]
J. M. Haile;
by my saying for her to get a
divorse; you may think I want
to marry again; if I did I am
out of the united states
but I write this for her on good
not to keep her waiting for me
|