The Centenary in the 
 South West. 
 
 Commemorating the admission of Tennessee 
 into the Union. ... . . .^ 
 
 Edward J. Me Pp?mott. 
 
 
 
 *^
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 8061 '12 NVr 'IVd 
 DUJ '-sojg pjO[Aej)
 
 THE CENTENARY 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SOUTH-WEST 
 
 OF TE^ESSEE 
 
 THE 
 
 EDWARD J.'McDERMOTT
 
 M /// 
 
 LAKE KATHERINE, AT THE NASHVILLE CENTENNIAL. 
 
 THE CENTENARY IN THE SOUTH-WEST. 
 
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 09 
 
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 ROM the appearance of Uncle Toms Cabin until 
 after the war the people of the North and of 
 England derived most of their knowledge of the 
 South from that novel, from the poems of Whit- 
 tier, and from the passionate speeches of Wen- 
 dell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and Henry Ward Bcecher. Very 
 few Northern or European travellers penetrated into that in- 
 teresting country. The soldiers and statesmen of the South 
 excited admiration for their abilities everywhere, but the most 
 civilized part of the world condemned slavery, and the South 
 had to bear the odium. For years after the war the South was 
 poor, uninviting to new-comers with or without money, misrep- 
 resented, almost friendless. In late years a gradual but great 
 change has been wrought. Nobody now can dispute the enter- 
 prise or the unprecedented recuperation of the South. The 
 Expositions at New Orleans and Atlanta were most admirable 
 and most interesting ; and the Centennial, which is to commem- 
 orate the admission of Tennessee into the Union in 1796, will 
 be a golden opportunity for outsiders to see what a typical 
 Southern community is how the people appear in their fields, 
 shops, and homes ; how they use their resources in creating 
 wealth, and what the extent of their culture is. 
 
 460041
 
 The benefit of this celebration of Tennessee's progress dur- 
 ing a century of freedom and the incidental commemoration of 
 her illustrious men in the past will be great. The Greeks, 
 especially the Athenians, in their palmy days, understood this 
 well ; hence their elaborate and gorgeous festivals and exqui- 
 sitely beautiful public buildings ; their wreaths and trophies and 
 statues to the victors in literary or athletic contests and in 
 war; their honors to those who died bravely in battle. 
 " The love of honor," said Pericles in his funeral oration 
 in Athens over the soldiers that had died in defence of the 
 city, " is the only feeling that never grows old ; and, in the 
 helplessness of age, it is not the acquisition of gain, as some 
 assert, that gives greatest pleasure, but the enjoyment of honor. 
 ^ , . Where the greatest prizes for virtue are given, there 
 also the most virtuous men are found among the citizens." 
 
 Tennessee and Kentucky resemble each other as much as 
 twin-sisters, though they are in fact first-cousins, for the former 
 was the child of North Carolina, while Kentucky was the well- 
 beloved daughter of Virginia. From these two States came the 
 hardy pioneers who at first sought hunting-grounds and then 
 homes west of the Appalachian Mountains, and who there found 
 lands as rich and as beautiful as any on the wide globe. Daniel 
 Boone was the typical pioneer of Kentucky, though he was born 
 in Pennsylvania and was raised in North Carolina. John Sevier 
 was the typical pioneer of Tennessee, though born in Virginia. 
 The first settlers in Tennessee came from Virginia through Cum- 
 berland Gap ; but most of those who followed came from North 
 Carolina; and the streams of immigration long continued to 
 flow from the same sources. Few foreigners have entered into 
 the population of Tennessee ; not more than one-fourth of 
 the population of Kentucky has come from foreign-born immi- 
 grants, and nearly all of such foreigners and their descendants 
 have remained in the cities on the Ohio River. The people of 
 those two States are, therefore, nearly akin in origin, of nearly 
 equal social condition, alike in tastes and belief, with almost 
 the same laws and political institutions, and very similar to 
 Virginia in everything. 
 
 Tennessee slopes from the Cumberland Mountains on its 
 eastern side to the Mississippi River, its western boundary. 
 In the eastern third of the State there are great deposits of 
 coal and iron, good building stone and beautiful marbles, prime- 
 val forests of valuable timber. The middle third of the State, 
 while having rich minerals and much useful timber, is note-
 
 THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING. 
 
 worthy mainly for its rich soil and serviceable streams, its beau- 
 tiful rolling meadows of blue-grass, its multifarious, valuable 
 agricultural products, its almost universal thrift and comfort. 
 The level western third is warmer and more tropical, but fertile 
 and populous to an extreme degree. Cotton, corn, tobacco, 
 and early vegetables thrive there prodigiously. The chief city 
 of that section is Memphis, which, from its imposing, command- 
 ing bluff, overlooks the broad, majestic Mississippi and the low- 
 lands of Arkansas beyond. For awhile Memphis withered and 
 drooped under the scourge of yellow fever in 1878 and 1879 ; 
 but, after her citizens realized their danger, the remedy, and 
 their duty, they cleansed and purified the city, provided it with 
 good sewerage, and thus stopped, probably for ever, the rav- 
 ages of their dreaded enemy. 
 
 Hardly any State in the Union can surpass Tennessee in 
 variety of crops, minerals, navigable streams, in beauty of 
 scenery, or in historical interest. Its growth in wealth has 
 been rapid, and almost every foot of its soil has been enriched 
 by the blood of brave men in battle. Here the rigorous, numb- 
 i;-ig winters of the North, and the torrid, enervating summers of
 
 the more distant South, are unknown. Men can work and the 
 fruits of the earth can grow without intermission for ten months 
 in the year. While the husbandman of Massachusetts or Michi- 
 gan is driving his cattle over the frozen earth to their folds for 
 food, the farmer of Tennessee is working with comfort in the 
 balmy spring air and his young lambs are romping in rolling 
 meadows of rich blue-grass. The heat of a Tennessee summer 
 is not so great as that of New York or Boston, but the sum- 
 mer season in Tennessee lasts about twice as long. 
 
 Tennessee is, primarily, an agricultural State. Of its two 
 million people less than twenty per cent, live in towns and 
 villages. The only cities of large size are Nashville and 
 Memphis. The census of 1890 says that the population of the 
 former was 76,168, nearly double what it was in 1880; that the 
 population of Memphis was 64,495, practically double what it 
 was in 1880. The native-born population of Tennessee in 1890 
 was 1,747,489; its foreign-born population, 20,029. The colored 
 population in 1870 was 322,331 ; in 1880, 4O3> I 5 I 5 in l8 9> 43<V 
 
 IN THE "AUDITORIUM" ALL THE FESTIVALS AND CONGRESSES WILL BE HELD. 
 
 678. The white population in 1870 was 936,119; in 1880, was 
 1,138,831; in 1890, was 1,336,637. In other words, the white 
 population in twenty years has increased 42 per cent., while 
 the negro population has increased about 33 per cent. Hence 
 the whites are steadily gaining on the blacks. This is, no doubt, 
 largely due to the fact that the colored people have been flock- 
 ing to the villages, towns, and cities, and have not thriven, as
 
 might have been expected. Besides, the negroes of Tennessee 
 and Kentucky have been scattering into all parts of the Union. 
 But it is not in the ways of Mammon alone that the "Vol- 
 unteer State " has gained just fame. It spends annually in its 
 
 THE COMMERCE BUILDING is ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING OF ALL THE EXHIBITION 
 
 STRUCTURES. 
 
 public schools $2,500,000 for white and for black children, dis- 
 tributed according to school attendance of the two races, 
 which is 538,621 white children and 182,302 colored children. 
 In addition to these common schools there are many private 
 schools, Catholic and Protestant, and also colleges for men and 
 women. At Sewanee, on the mountains in the east, is the Uni- 
 versity of the South, which has 400 students, and which, for the 
 benefit of Southern boys, is open in the winter and has its 
 vacation in the summer months. At Nashville is Vanderbilt 
 University, which has a large faculty of able professors and 
 about 700 students, handsome buildings, a beautiful campus, and 
 the usual equipments of such an institution. In another part 
 of the city is the University of Nashville, which has 1,500 stu- 
 dents. At Memphis the Christian Brothers have a fine high- 
 school for boys. Virginia and Tennessee, among the Southern 
 States, deserve especial praise for their efforts in behalf of a 
 general diffusion of elementary, collegiate, and university edu- 
 cation among the people. 
 
 From the first settlement in Tennessee, about 1754, to the 
 time of its admission into the Union in 1796, its history is 
 made up of a record of important and stirring events. The
 
 8 
 
 pioneers, pouring in from Virginia and North Carolina through 
 Cumberland Gap, followed the courses of the Tennessee and 
 the Cumberland rivers ; waged bloody and incessant warfare 
 with the fierce Cherokees until the latter were driven away; 
 and finally, in August, 1784,^3 North Carolina and the federal 
 government hesitated and vacillated in considering the request 
 of the settlers for the right to form a new commonwealth, 
 those hardy men impatiently set up the independent State of 
 Franklin; but on March I, 1788, after their leader and gover- 
 nor, John Sevier, was tried for high treason and was saved only 
 by a daring rescue, they returned to their allegiance to North 
 Carolina, which in 1790 ceded the territory in dispute to the 
 federal government, and in 1792 the northern part of the State 
 of Franklin, which embraced the territory of Kentucky, but had 
 never been recognized by the Kentuckians, was received into 
 the Union as the State of Kentucky, and in 1796 the southern 
 part entered the Union as the State of Tennessee. Those dar- 
 ing men were impatient of control ; they were quick to attack 
 any authority or power that obstructed their rights or wishes. 
 It did not seem to make much difference to them whether they 
 were opposing the Indians, the English king, or the American 
 Union. Here was the first sign of that impatient, indomitable, 
 
 THE PRODUCTS OF THE FIELD ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF A NATION'S WEALTH. 
 
 unyielding spirit to which we may ascribe the Resolutions of 
 1798 and the Rebellion of 1861. It is an interesting fact that 
 slavery never throve in the mountainous parts of Tennessee or
 
 THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING is REMARKABLE FOR POETIC SIMPLICITY. 
 
 Kentucky, which lay along the borders of Virginia and North 
 Carolina. The white people of those upland regions, though 
 not as prosperous or progressive as the white people of the 
 lowlands, sympathized with the Union, and furnished a large 
 quota of loyal troops to the armies of the North. As slaves 
 were profitable only in the rich agricultural districts where 
 large plantations were owned, there were very few slaves in 
 the eastern part of Tennessee and Kentucky, and, therefore, 
 slavery had few ardent champions there, and consequently 
 secession was not popular. 
 
 The early period of Tennessee's history is typified in the 
 lives of those eminent and well-known frontiersmen, John 
 Sevier, Andrew Jackson, and David Crockett. Sevier, a colonel 
 in the Revolutionary War, the first governor of the short-lived 
 State of Franklin and later the first governor of the State of 
 Tennessee, was a handsome athlete, an Indian fighter of re- 
 nown, and an able, picturesque executive of a pioneer common- 
 wealth. Andrew Jackson, born in North Carolina in 1767 of 
 Irish parents, was a soldier in the Revolutionary army before 
 he was fifteen years old and began to practise law in Tennessee 
 before he was twenty. He settled in Nashville in 1790, and 
 soon married the charming grass-widow who was ever after the 
 chief object of his love. He was the first representative of 
 Tennessee in Congress and was several times her senator. His 
 career as a soldier, not only in his campaign against the Southern 
 Indians, but also against the Spaniards and the English, is well
 
 IO 
 
 known. His victory at the battle of New Orleans on the morn- 
 ing of January 8, 1815, two weeks after peace had been agreed 
 on in Ghent, but before it was known in America, made his 
 fame secure. On that day the Tennessee and Kentucky rifles 
 were his mainstay. His races for the presidency with Henry 
 Clay, the idol of Kentucky, and his memorable controversy 
 with Calhoun over nullification in South Carolina, and over 
 the charter of the Bank of the United States, then before Con- 
 gress, are important events in the history of our country, and 
 will make many visitors to Tennessee seek, with great interest 
 and respect, the Hermitage where the old hero spent the best 
 years of his life, and where he now lies buried. 
 
 Davy Crockett, " the crack shot of the wilderness," was a 
 gallant soldier in the War of 1812, under Jackson; a generous, 
 witty, bold frontiersman, and a unique member of Congress 
 who, at fifty, was killed at the storming of the Alamo, at Bexar, 
 while fighting for the independence of Texas. 
 
 President Polk was born in North Carolina in 1795, but be- 
 came an adopted son of Tennessee when he was eleven years 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A PEOPLE INSPIRES PATRIOTISM. 
 
 old, and, though he was not a brilliant man, he was a valuable 
 representative in Congress for ten years, twice speaker of the 
 House, governor of Tennessee, twice an unsuccessful candi- 
 date for re-election to that office, and at last, in 1845, was 
 elected President of the United States. 
 
 In later days Andrew Johnson, the tailor, who was taught
 
 II 
 
 to read by his wife when he was twenty-six, and who became 
 senator, governor, vice-president, and, by Lincoln's assassination, 
 President of the United States, was a notable son of Tennessee ; 
 
 THE WOMAN'S BUILDING is MODELLED SOMEWHAT AFTER " THE HERMITAGE." 
 
 and so was the brave Union admiral, David Farragut, and 
 so too was the dashing rebel general, Nathan B. Forrest. The 
 greater part of the fame of the brilliant Felix Grundy was 
 made as a lawyer, a senator, and a cabinet officer of Ten- 
 nessee, though he was born in Virginia in 1777 and removed 
 to Kentucky in 1780, and remained there till he settled in 
 Nashville in 1808. The boundaries between Virginia and the 
 Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee, have ever been shadowy. 
 We are bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh. 
 
 Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born in 
 Kentucky, which strove at the beginning of the Civil War to 
 be neutral, and thus for awhile acted as a buffer for Tennes- 
 see ; but, before long, Kentucky was compelled to take sides 
 with the Union, and then the southern part of the State and 
 the whole of Tennessee became a grand theatre of war where, 
 for about three years, there were hostile marches and counter- 
 marches, innumerable skirmishes, and great pitched battles of 
 vast forces. Tennessee furnished to the Union 34,000 soldiers ; 
 to the Confederacy 115,000 men, one-sixth of its forces; and 
 in her borders were fought the memorable battles of Fort 
 Donelson, Shiloh, Lookout Mountain, Chickamauga, and Mis- 
 sionary Ridge. Nearly one-fifth of all the men buried in
 
 12 
 
 national cemeteries are buried beneath the soil of Tennessee. 
 When the armies of the South were compelled to retire from 
 her borders, and the Mississippi was opened to federal gun- 
 boats, the Confederacy was doomed. In fact, when Albert 
 Sidney Johnston, that modest, refined gentleman, that gallant, 
 brilliant leader of armies, fell at Shiloh on April 6, 1862, and 
 the unyielding Grant was saved by the timely arrival of rein- 
 forcements, the star of the Confederacy began plainly to fade 
 away and Southern hope grew faint ; but the indomitable peo- 
 ple of Tennessee never faltered in their course till borne down 
 by overwhelming forces. 
 
 From the close of the war in 1865 to the adoption of 
 new constitution in 1870, Tennessee passed through the terrible 
 ordeal of Reconstruction. The leading men of the State were 
 disfranchised ; United States military officers and State militia 
 officers, under the orders of Brownlow, dominated elections ; 
 the enfranchised blacks, not yet prepared for self-government, 
 were put in control of the ballot-box; the corrupt "Alden 
 Ring" saddled a debt of nearly a million dollars on the small 
 town of Nashville, which had about thirty-five thousand inhabi- 
 tants ; the colored people, in their secret, oath-bound Union 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE STATE ERECTED THEIR OWN BUILDING. 
 
 League of America, and some foolish whites, in the night- 
 riding Ku-klux-klan, sought for mastery by underhanded means 
 which rendered party discussions of little consequence and gave 
 power to unworthy leaders; the State debt was increased to
 
 nearly seventeen millions by the issue of bonds which were 
 sold at prices ranging from 17 to 40 cents in greenbacks, then 
 greatly below par ; and the whole course of public affairs was 
 disastrous and terrifying in the extreme ; but since 1870 the 
 
 THE PARTHENON, EXACTLY REPRODUCED. 
 
 recuperation has been marvellous in speed and wonderful in 
 results. 
 
 Classic taste runs high in the South, and therefore it is no 
 wonder that in the buildings of the Centennial we find splendid 
 specimens of the best art of Athens in her days of glory. It 
 was a happy thought to reproduce exactly for us the Parthenon, 
 that our eyes might see what our imagination has long striven 
 in vain to body forth. In modern Athens the noble ruins of the 
 Parthenon, which was dedicated 435 years before the birth of 
 Christ, now stand upon the Acropolis; only the scholar of vivid 
 imagination can picture it to himself as it really was ; but in 
 Nashville this monument of the genius and the imperishable 
 fame of the architect Ictinus and of the sculptor Phidias is to 
 be seen as the Greeks beheld it from all parts of Athens. The 
 exterior is a perfect copy ; even the dimensions are identical; 
 and the interior, which is to be used for the art exhibit, is 
 sufficiently like the original to make us understand its majestic 
 beauty. Pericles, who inspired this dream of art, Phidias and 
 Ictinus, who gave it being, and Demosthenes, who gloried in it 
 as a proof that his countrymen loved honor and beauty more 
 than money all those immortal men excite our gratitude anew 
 
 460041
 
 14 
 
 as, under the porticoes of this re-created temple of Minerva, 
 goddess of needle-work, wisdom and peace, we stand entranced 
 and gaze with unfailing delight on the fountains, flowers, and 
 beautiful, imposings buildings wherein Tennessee has gathered 
 together the wonders of modern commerce and Christian civil- 
 ization. When Byron renewed the ancient glory of Greece 
 by his splendid bursts of poetic eloquence, and popularized 
 the aspirations of her patriotic sons for independence; when 
 seventy-three years ago he gave up his life in a vain effort to 
 hasten the dawn of a new day over the mountains and valleys 
 of Ilium, he would have died in some sense satisfied if he could 
 have foreseen that, toward the close of the century, the people 
 of the United States would be reproducing, for their edifica- 
 tion and delight, the Parthenon, while all Greece, united and 
 respected, was proving itself worthy of its ancient fame, was 
 not only growing in strength, riches, and refinement, but in war- 
 like spirit, and was able to strike a manly blow for its kindred 
 in "the Isles of Greece" against the hated Moslem foe. 
 
 To the intelligent visitor no part of the Centennial will at- 
 tract more attention than the building in which will be dis- 
 played the progress of the negro from degradation in Africa to 
 servitude, and then freedom, in America. Though slavery is 
 wrong, it must be said that, but for the presence of the negroes 
 in the South and their improving environment there ; but for 
 the enlightenment which they received from their Southern 
 masters, who were generally intelligent and humane, they could 
 not, in any reasonable degree, have been prepared in a few 
 generations for the rights and privileges of citizenship in the 
 highest type of government on the globe. Much has been done, 
 but much remains to be done in the upward movement of the 
 race. In an address by a most intelligent negro, Edward Reed, 
 of Detroit, in behalf of the National Catholic Industrial School 
 for colored youths, he lately said : 
 
 " The race is paying taxes on $370,000 worth of property. 
 -We have 57 college presidents, 30,000 school teachers, 25,000 
 Protestant ministers who have studied theology, 100 authors on 
 different subjects, 1,000 lawyers, 800 doctors, 250 newspapers, 2 
 dailies, 4 magazines, 4 banks, and several 'building and loan 
 associations.' . . . The colored Catholics of the United States 
 number 250,000, 2 priests and 30 young men studying for the 
 priesthood, 3 convents, 200 sisters of various orders, and a num- 
 ber of orphan asylums." 
 
 The colored people now have equal rights in the courts and
 
 15 
 
 at the ballot-box. If they use those rights as intelligent, thrifty, 
 atriotic citizens, the South's future will be marvellously bright ; 
 |f they neglect or abuse those rights, her future must be full 
 of disappointment and bitterness. They may handicap her in 
 the race for eminence, but their own chances of success must 
 be best in her domain. 
 
 When the people who visit the Centennial see the Parthe- 
 
 A TYPE OF ROMAN-DORIC ORDER OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 non they will, no doubt, admire its simple grandeur, and pro- 
 bably wonder at the high state of civilization reached by the 
 pagan Greeks four hundred years before the birth of Christ ; 
 but that eloquent monument of the past should also inspire 
 other thoughts. It should teach us that a nation of many 
 sterling virtues and happy opportunities may rise to greatness 
 and enjoy freedom in glory for a hundred years, and then de- 
 cay, fall into slavery, and, for centuries afterward, be utterly 
 wretched and despised. 
 As Byron wrote : 
 
 " There is the moral of all human tales ; 
 
 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past : 
 First freedom, and then glory. When that fails, 
 Wealth, vice, corruption barbarism at last."
 
 
 The foregoing article is republished from 
 the leading Catholic publication of the country, 
 
 ZTbe Catbolic 1KHorR> Marine, 
 
 edited by the Paulist Fathers, 120 West 6oth 
 Street, New York. $3 a year.
 
 The centenary 
 in the South-west. 
 
 F436 
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 The centenary 
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