A Patriot's Voice continued . . .
But for national prominence, Maynard has few peers among men and women associated
with the institution. Consider his record: a Tennessee congressman for 14
years; a close associate of one U.S. president (Andrew Johnson), appointed
to a diplomatic post by another president (U.S. Grant), and a cabinet member
of a third president (Rutherford B. Hayes); a strong supporter of the Union
during the Civil War; a UT trustee for 17 years; the father of a UT trustee,
Civil War colonel, and hero of the Spanish-American War; and maybe the only
UT professor to have a Tennessee town bear his name.
Born in Massachusetts, Maynard came to Knoxville in 1838, shortly after
graduating first in his class at Amherst College in Vermont. He rode into
Knoxville on horseback and took a job as tutor at East Tennessee College,
as UT was called in those days.
Maynard likely was drawn to Knoxville and ETC by Joseph Estabrook, a former
Amherst professor and then president of UT's predecessor. The journey from
Maynard's New England home took almost four weeks, traveling by stagecoach,
river boat, railroad, and horseback.
Maynard found a small campus at Knoxville. Six modest buildings clustered
atop a hill west of town, accommodating 85 students, 30 of them in the preparatory
department he soon would head as principal.
In his second year, the state gave the college university status, and it
became known as East Tennessee University. By 1842 Maynard had left the
preparatory department to teach ancient and modern languages. Before leaving
ETU, he was promoted to professor of mathematics, rhetoric, and belles-lettres.
The young New Englander cut an imposing figure, being well above average
height at six feet, two inches. He had a deep, strong voice, suitable for
classroom lecture, courtroom debate, the political campaign trail, and the
halls of Congress. He wore his black hair down to his shoulders; and his
dark coloring suggested Indian blood and earned him the nickname "The
Narragansett."
Tennessee history books include frequent references to the life and deeds
of Horace Maynard. And the voluminous Maynard papers in the UT Knoxville
Special Collections Library fill many gaps in printed works. Donated by
Mrs. Robert Lindsay 30 years ago, the collection contains more than 1,000
letters dated 1828 to 1882, plus copies of speeches and other Maynard memorabilia.
On his 26th birthday, August 30, 1840, Maynard married Laura Ann Washburn
of Royalton, Vermont, a small, delicate woman, a year his senior. They acquired
a house near the campus and made it their home for more than 40 years. They
filled it with six young ones, some of whom lived to adulthood and prominence
of their own.
A man of several talents, Maynard had a knack for writing. He wrote articles
for the short-lived ETU student publication, The University Magazine.
For a time he contributed a satirical column to the Knoxville Times,
signed "Zadock Jones." His printed remarks would prove costly
in his first campaign for Congress.
He aspired to the practice of law. Early in his teaching career, he began
reading law in Judge Ebenezer Alexander's office.
By the time his second son, Washburn Maynard, was born in 1844, he had quit
the classroom and was practicing law.
In his Bench and Bar of Tennessee, Joshua W. Caldwell, 1875 graduate
and for 17 years president of UT's alumni association, tells a story of
May-nard's early law practice. He and several Knoxville lawyers were going
to court in nearby Clinton but found the Clinch River flooded. Only Maynard
dared cross. When he reached the other shore, his companions called to him
to attend to their cases and went home. Their cases were so well argued
that the clients thereafter took their legal problems to Maynard, Cald-well
wrote.
In 1850 a northern part of Knox County was formed into the new county of
Union. Knox Countians opposed this action and the matter went to court.
Maynard represented Union County and won the case. Out of gratitude, Union
Countians named their county seat Maynardville.
In 1853 Maynard lost his first race for Congress to incumbent William Churchwell,
who had been his student in ETC's preparatory department. The race was a
bitter one. Churchwell used Maynard's 1839 "Zadock Jones" columns
to attack his challenger. In one article, Maynard referred to the masses
of people as "the common herd," a phrase Churchwell used effectively.
Maynard insisted that his caustic columns were merely satires and did not
convey his true sentiments.
Temperance was the burning issue of the time, and each candidate accused
the other of taking an occasional drink. Maynard, a Presbyterian elder,
was accused of attending a dance--and actually dancing! Tempers flared at
a joint appearance in a neighboring county, and Churchwell struck his opponent
with a stick. Supported by William G. Brownlow's Knoxville Whig,
Churchwell was re-elected by 1,500 votes.
In 1857, when Churchwell quit Congress for a business venture, Maynard again
ran for the second district seat as a Whig and won. Thus he began his first
two-year term of the 14 years he spent in Congress. (The family hadn't seen
the last of Churchwell; he would plague them again during the Civil War.)
When Maynard made his first journey to Washington, he left a growing family
in Knoxville. Washburn was 13, just three years from his freshman year at
ETU. James, who would be a UT student and later a trustee, was four. A daughter,
Ann Mary, was two. There was a small adopted daughter, Wilhemina. Two others,
Eleanor and Ephraim, had died in infancy. The oldest, Edward, at age 14
was with his grandparents in Massachusetts, attending school. He would graduate
from Amherst, his father's alma mater.
A strong Union supporter, Maynard became a leading opponent of secession
as the issue intensified throughout the South in the late 1850s. At times
he spoke out despite threats against his well-being.
Once, when trying to speak in Overton County, there were threats to "riddle
his hide," and he was "hissed to silence" by a hostile crowd.
The next day he spoke in another Overton County town eight miles away without
trouble. "Wherever his patriot's voice has been heard, the people are
loyal," an observer wrote.
When Tennesseans voted on the secession question on June 8, 1860, East Tennessee,
where Maynard's voice had been raised most often, was the only section of
the state to vote against leaving the Union.
On the eve of the Civil War, Maynard helped to organize an East Tennessee
Convention in Knoxville to protest the General Assembly's secessionist legislation;
and he was a prominent figure at a Greeneville convention where plans for
forming a separate state of East Tennessee were discussed.
On December 28, 1859, as Maynard was beginning his second term, his stature
as a House leader was enhanced by being nominated for speaker. Supported
mainly by Southern congressmen, he remained a leading candidate through
24 ballots before withdrawing from the race.
In the 1860 presidential race, Maynard supported Tennessee's John Bell,
candidate of the Constitutional Party, formed that year by an assortment
of party members--Know Nothing, American, Whig, and Opposition. Its aim
was to support the Constitution and preserve the Union. Maynard was wary
of the Republican Party candidate, Abraham Lincoln. In a House floor speech
after Lincoln's election, Maynard said the Illinois railsplitter's honesty
was not enough to qualify him for the office. Furthermore, Maynard asserted,
Lincoln was not letting the country know what he would do. "I imagine
he keeps silence for the good and sufficient reason that he has nothing
to say," Maynard concluded.
Although the new Republican Party was an amalgam of several political parties,
like the Constitutional Party whose candidate he had supported for president,
Maynard had reservations about the GOP makeup. "Old Whigs and Democrats . . . Know
Nothings, Americans, foreigners, Catholics . . . all
bedded together, heads to heels," he declared. "Such is the dapple
hue of the party that has inaugurated itself to the head of public affairs,
and is about to take the government into control."
But after the war, Maynard embraced the party of Lincoln and won four more
congressional terms under the Republican banner.
On the eve of war, Washburn enrolled at ETU for a time cut short by military
operations. The Confederate army's occupation of Knoxville in 1862 closed
the University for four years. Washburn went North with his family and attended
the Naval Academy. His 40-year naval career was distinguished by deeds of
valor in the Spanish-American War.
On March 7, 1861, three days after Lincoln was inaugurated, Maynard and
T.A.R. Nelson, representing Tennessee's First District, visited the president
to discuss how war might be avoided. Although a Southern Confederacy had
been formed, the Tennessee congressmen believed a compromise could be reached.
They left the White House optimistic, but only for a short time. Hostilities
erupted at Fort Sumter a month later.
When the state administration sought to elect members to the Con-federate
Congress in August, Maynard, Nelson, and George Bridges took the opportunity
to run in the three East Tennessee districts for the U.S. Congress. Threatened
with arrest if elected, the trio left separately for Kentucky to await election
results. Nelson was arrested before crossing the state line and taken to
Richmond, where he was paroled after agreeing not to oppose Tennessee's
Confederate government by word or deed. He was sent home to Jonesboro, where
he spent his congressional term keeping a low profile. Maynard and Bridges,
meanwhile, reached Washington safely.
After the outbreak of war, Maynard visited or petitioned Lincoln and his
generals repeatedly on behalf of the loyal residents of East Tennessee,
suffering under Confederate occupation. His pleas for federal military intervention
finally were answered in 1863 when Gen. Ambrose Burnside's army marched
into Knoxville.
Meanwhile Maynard's family had suffered exile. On April 21, 1862, Laura
Maynard was handed a message from her husband's former political opponent,
W.M. Churchwell, Con-federate colonel and Knoxville's provost marshal: "Madam:
By order of Maj. Gen. E. Kirby Smith I am directed respectfully to require
that yourself and family pass beyond the C.S. line in thirty-six hours."
Similar letters went to other persona non grata in the Confederate south--the
families of W.G. Brownlow and Andrew Johnson.
Four days later Laura and her three small children left Knoxville, accompanied
by a Confederate army lieutenant, to "pass out of the Confederate States
by way of Norfolk, Va." With them were Mrs. Brownlow and her children.
Laura took the children to the Maynard home in Westboro, Massachusetts.
Washburn made his way northward and joined his father. That fall the entire
family, except Edward, a Union army officer, was together in Massachusetts.
Maynard appointed his second son to the Naval Academy, and in October he
saw Washburn enrolled as a midshipman at Newport, Rhode Island, where the
Academy had been moved from Annapolis for the war's duration.
Edward had enrolled in the federal army's First Tennessee Volunteer Infantry
in August 1861. He soon was promoted to lieutenant-colonel of the Sixth
Tennessee Infantry, attached to the Twenty-Third Army Corps. Also in that
corps was Edward's future brother-in-law, Felix A. Reeve.
A Knoxville lawyer, Reeve had gone north with the exodus of Unionists early
in the war. He gained permission to raise a regiment of East Tennesseans
and became colonel of the Eighth Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. His regiment
was in the fighting around Atlanta and took heavy casualties in the Battle
of Resaca. After the war, Colonel Reeve would marry Wilhemina, the Maynards'
adopted daughter.
Maynardville in Union County
is named for Horace Maynard.
Edward's regiment was at the Battle of Murfreesboro, engaged the enemy near
Lost Mountain, Georgia, in June 1844, and took part in the Battle of Nashville.
Edward escaped unscathed and was mustered out in March 1865.
The war brought together two political opponents--Horace Maynard and Andrew
Johnson. Several times the pair had been elected to Congress on opposing
tickets, Maynard as a Whig, Johnson as a Democrat; Maynard to the House,
Johnson to the Senate. After serving in the House and as Tennessee's governor,
Johnson was first elected to the Senate in 1857, the year Maynard won his
first House seat.
After the Union army had swept into Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee
early in 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor. Several times
he asked Maynard to approach the president or his generals regarding military
needs in Tennessee. Although busy with Ways and Means Committee duties and
pleading with Lincoln for military intervention in East Tennessee, Maynard
found time to help Johnson with his problems.
Johnson took a hard line toward Tennessee public officials who had deserted
the Union. One was a federal judge who had accepted a similar po-sition
in the Confederacy without resigning his federal job. Maynard took the lead
in Washington to impeach the judge. He introduced a House resolution to
investigate the matter and then helped gather evidence to use against the
judge. Both House and Senate voted unanimously to remove him from office.
When his House term ended in 1863 and Maynard could return to Tennessee,
Governor Johnson appointed him state attorney-general. In September, as
Burnside's army moved into East Tennessee, the Maynard family was reunited
in Knoxville.
En route home from New England, Laura and the children joined the exiled
Brownlows at Cincinnati for the final leg to Knoxville. Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton authorized their transportation from Cincinnati "in General
Burnside's train."
Laura's letter to Washburn at the Naval Academy, dated October 18, 1863,
described conditions she found on arriving home. "We spent a night
at Tazewell and another at Maynard-ville," she wrote of the journey
from Cincinnati, "and then after a four-hour ride we were in Knoxville.
It rained hard and the streets were very muddy, and we were taken by the
cavalry escort through Gay Street as far as Cumberland, and thence to Mrs.
Brownlow's . . . Our house is occupied by a Federal
officer, Gen. Gilbert, and is in a wretched condition. I have not been to
look at it. Your father has been all through it. Your father is still here
with me and very well."
On visiting the premises later, Laura was distressed to find that Confederate
soldiers had stabled horses in the greenhouses, the furniture was abused
and broken, and Horace's library was desecrated.
Edward visited his parents on an army furlough, and for a few days the family
reunion was complete, except for Washburn.
As the summer of 1864 approached, and the Union forces under General U.S.
Grant began turning the tide of war in the North's favor, Maynard helped
to open the eyes of political leaders to the value of Tennessee's loyal
workers in a vineyard full of secessionists. In so doing he helped to boost
Johnson to the position of Lincoln's running mate.
Maynard was among a delegation of 10 Tennesseans sent to the National Union
(Republican) Convention opening in Baltimore on June 7. Convention leaders
questioned the seating of a delegation from a seceded state. Maynard made
an impassioned plea for recognition: "For you who drink the cool breezes
of the Northern air, it is easy to rally to the flag--but we represent those
who have met treason eye to eye and face to face, and fought from the beginning
for the support of the flag and the honor of our country."
The next day the Tennesseans were seated. They supported the nomination
of a Lincoln-Johnson ticket, and Maynard seconded Johnson's nomination for
vice president.
Following their ticket's election, Tennessee Unionists met in Nashville
on January 9, 1865, to restore civil government. They repudiated secession,
devised a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery in the state, and
called for the election of a governor and legislators on March 4, the day
Lincoln and Johnson would be inaugurated. W.G. Brownlow was elected governor
and sworn in a month later.
Andrew Johnson, while military governor of
Tennessee, appointed Horace Maynard state attorney-general. The two
later had a parting of ways.
His job as attorney-general ended, Maynard considered his next move. An
expected offer of a federal post failing to occur, he ran for one of Tennessee's
U.S. Senate seats. The bonds that had kept Johnson and Maynard in the same
harness during the war were starting to loosen. The parting of ways would
grow wider after April 15, the day Johnson became president, three days
after Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater.
Maynard plunged into the contest for the Senate seat, a long battle in the
newly elected legislature, which chose U.S. senators in those times. Despite
Brownlow's support, Maynard was defeated by David T. Patterson, President
Johnson's son-in-law. Undaunted, Maynard then entered the race for his old
House seat and won it handily.
Maynard's return to Washington in December 1865 ended in disappointment.
Knowing Southern congressmen would outnumber them if seated, the Radical
Republicans, who favored harsh treatment of the defeated South, decided
to ignore representatives of seceded states. Johnson believed that Maynard,
who had served in the House in 1861-63 after Tennessee seceded, at least
would be seated.
But when Congress met on December 4, the House clerk passed over Maynard's
name. He arose to protest but was not recognized. Thaddeus Stevens of Vermont,
Radical Republican leader, ruled that no one from a state still out of the
Union would be seated.
Disgusted, Maynard went home. For the next six months he worked for Tennessee's
readmission to the Union.
The Maynard saga will continue in the next Tennessee Alumnus
online.
