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It must be confessed that at first view the mode of Tennessee’s withdrawal gives some countenance to this theory. In February, 1861, she had placed her disapproval upon secession by voting down a proposition to call a convention. Instead of yielding to this mandate of the people, Governor Harris and the Legislature had entered into a military league with the Confederate authorities, and having thus surrendered the real control of the State, they again went through the form of appealing to a plebiscite for approval of their action. Nevertheless, we are confident that an unprejudiced examination of these events will show that Tennessee, with the exception of the eastern part of the State, joined the Confederacy as willingly as South Carolina or Mississippi.

In the first place, these writers have made the mistake of classing Tennessee among the border States. Mr. Wilson in his History of the Slave Power says: “Exactly why Tennessee should have been taken out of the Union, while Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were prevented from going, no man is wise enough to say. At least, none but general reasons can be given. Exactly why the conspirators were foiled in one case and not in the other, exactly by whom the current of treason was checked and turned in the one and not in the other, the wisest can only conjecture.”