In 1874, something new for the Union Dead
by Jack Neely
If you walk into the old National Cemetery on Tyson Street on any given day, chances are you'll be the only one there. White marble stones planted in concentric circles are inscribed with the names of dead soldiers from at least six wars; hundreds of them, especially from the Civil War, are marked UNKNOWN.
This park was one of the nation's first national cemeteries, founded under General Burnside's Union occupation to bury the Union dead from the East Tennessee campaigns of 1863. The cemetery may also be historic for something that happened there, 125 years ago this weekend.
That May, something weird was going on up in the mountains. From deep within Bald Mountain, near Asheville, came noises that struck some observers as "heavy cannonading," almost like subterranean echoes of the war. There were even reports of smoking pits, giving rise to rumors a Smoky Mountain volcano was about to burst.
A Knoxville scientist inspected Bald Mountain and poo-poo'd the volcano speculation. He explained that the planet was cooling and shrinking. The thunderous noise, Bradley said, comes from the shrinking.
Okay, folks in Knoxville said, and went back to preparing for Decoration Day, the day the patriotic turned out to decorate soldiers' graves with flowers. "In East Tennessee it is the day of the year and will continue to be," declared the Knoxville Chronicle. Barely nine years in the past, the Civil War was still a raw wound. Allegedly over nine years ago, the old War sometimes still drew blood. To some partisans on both sides, living in Knoxville in 1874 was something like living in a city populated in large part by the Islamic Jihad.
President Grant proclaimed that Decoration Day should revere both the Union and Confederate dead. Both sides were skeptical about whether that would ever happen. In any case, the Federals seized full control of the Knoxville festivities. The Decoration Day Committee requested that Knoxville businesses close from noon to 5 p.m., just so everyone could come to the ceremony.
People came from all directions. On foot, on horseback, in wagons, men, women, and children streamed into town by the thousands. Trains arrived at the station laden with people and tons of flowers, especially the train from Blount County. By noon, they had jammed Gay Street all the way from the wooden bridge over the river to the depot.
Starting at the old courthouse, the procession moved slowly north as the Mechanics' Cornet Band played patriotic anthems. Next came the fire department, the flower wagons, the Ladies' Decoration Committee carriages, followed by veterans marching on foot. Conspicuously absent was Sen. William Brownlow, the Fightin' Parson and former reconstruction governor. He was laid up with "a violent attack of the flux."
The celebrity of the day rode an elaborate horse-drawn phaeton. At 66, former president Andrew Johnson was contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate. Not six years before, many former Unionists, including some locals, had tried to throw President Johnson out of office; he was here to mend fences. Sharing his coach were other men who likely raised eyebrows, among them George Branner, who was then implicated in a complicated utility-fraud scandal; and the wily, often violent Joe Mabry, who a couple of years earlier had shot and wounded a prominent attorney. A decade ago, Mabry had been a strong Confederate sympathizer. But he was also a businessman.
Some were less forgiving. A rowdy gang at Church Avenue attempted to block the parade. When a policeman attempted to arrest the ringleader, quarryman Isaac Wright, the man's friends knocked the officer to the ground and beat him. The firemen in the parade helped to disperse the mob, and the ceremonies proceeded.
The parade made a left at Union, right at Walnut. Left at Asylum, right at Broadway. The parade went on for a good mile, and delivered everybody to the 10-year-old National Cemetery. There, Capt. A.J. Ricks—a Union veteran now a Knoxville attorney who happened to be a law partner of the man Joe Mabry had shot—gave a lengthy oration about "the unnumbered heroes sleeping in these silent graves." He dedicated parts of it to "the Women of America" usually ignored on Decoration Day—adding special emphasis to the Unknowns: "Let us drop our sweetest flowers today over the graves of the Unknown dead."
President Johnson stood up and spoke briefly, boosting the Constitution and declaring himself "no partisan, no fanatic." Then they distributed the flowers.
As the parade wound its way back downtown, several rowdy girls in a carriage also offended some former Confederates at the corner of Gay and Union by loudly singing an old Union army song, "We'll hang Jeff Davis In a Sour Apple Tree." The anti-Reconstruction Daily Press & Herald reported "The rude song so loudly sung gave a shock of unpleasant surprise to all who heard it."
There's another story about that day in Knoxville, told decades later in the Washington National Tribune. Originally from Massachusetts, Laura Richardson had come to Knoxville about 25 years previously. Now a widow prominent in the Union veterans' auxiliary, Mrs. Richardson was unsatisfied with the sparse flower crop that year; she pondered alternatives. In a downtown shop window, she spotted bundles of toy American flags, and bought them all.
After the flowers had been placed upon the graves, Laura Richardson walked around Knoxville's National Cemetery 125 years ago this weekend, planting her toy American flags. The idea caught on.
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