ISHAM
GREEN
HARRIS, Tennessee’s
Governor (1857-1862) and United States Senator, and the only “Confederate” Tennessee Governor (1861-1862).
Isham G. Harris, as he was known,
was born 10 February 1818, son of Isham Green and Lucy (Davidson) Harris, in Franklin County Tennessee, near
Tullahoma. He attended the “common schools” and Winchester Academy, Franklin County. At age of
fourteen, “with the
consent and blessing of his father,” moved to Paris, Henry County, Tennessee
to become a store clerk; studied law; was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Paris, Tennessee in 1841.
Married 6 July 1843, to Martha Maria Travis, of Henry County, a native of Virginia, daughter of Edward Travis; eight
children Eugene T., Edward K., James H., Charles H., Isham Green, III, Harris and three whose names are not yet found.
A Democrat, he served in the Senate, 27th Tennessee General Assembly, 1847-49;
representing Henry, Obion, and Weakley
counties. While still at Paris, in addition to term in the General Assembly, was presidential elector, 1848,
on Democratic ticket of Lewis Cass and William 0. Butler; elected to U.S. House of Representatives of
31st and 32nd
Congresses, 4 March 1849-3 March 1853. He served on the Committee on Invalid Pensions,
32nd Congress.
He
declined the nomination for
33rd Congress because of his plans to resume practice
of law at Memphis, Shelby County; he moved to Memphis in 1853. Although highly successful in law practice, Senator
Harris devoted a large portion of his life to public affairs. He again was presidential elector for state-at large,
1856, on Democratic ticket of James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge.
He was elected Governor of Tennessee, 1857, and reelected 1859 and 1861; served from November 3, 1857 to 1862.
Governor Harris was regarded as the leader in Tennessee of those who favored separation from the United States after
the election of President Lincoln in 1860.
On 24 December,
1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. Governor
Harris’s message to the Tennessee General Assembly on 7
January 1861 amply displays his sentiments toward the Union, and the possibility
of a “homogeneous Confederacy of Southern States.”
On 9 February, 1861, the Tennessee electorate voted against secession. A law provided that the voters
were to cast their
ballots For Convention or No Convention Tennessee voted 57,789 For
Convention, 69,675 No Convention. There would be Convention, but even
if there had been one the vote for the Delegates, 88,803 for Union Delegates,
24,749 for Disunion delegates, assured that Tennessee would not secede from the Union.
After the fall of Fort
Sumter, April 4, 1861, President Lincoln called for troops from the states, including Tennessee; on 17 April 1861, Governor Harris
replied to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War,
“Tennessee will not furnish a single man for the purpose of coercion, but 50,000 if necessary for the defense of our rights
and those of our Southern brothers” [text of letter]. On 25 April
1861, Harris sent another message to the Tennessee General Assmebly, in
which he again elucidates and endorses the Southern cause. In the election on the subject of withdrawal from the Union, June 8, 1861, the vote for
separation was 102,172 and against separation 47,238; on June 24, following, Harris issued a proclamation declaring ... “all
connections by the State of Tennessee with the Federal Union dissolved, and that Tennessee is a free, independent government,
free from all obligations to or connection with the Federal Government of the United States of America.” In the period between
the fall of Fort Sumter and the election of June 8, Governor Harris took the lead in preparing the state for eventual hostilities.
Harris was instrumental in the formation of the Provisional Army of Tennessee, forerunner
of the C.S.A. Army of Tennessee.
On May 6 the legislature adopted “An Ordinance for the Adoption of the Constitution of the Provisional Government of
the Confederate States of America,” subject was for the Tennessee electorate to vote on June 8 1861 and
the Governor appointed commissioners to
enter into a Military League with the authorities of the Confederate States. So it was that Tennessee became a state in
the Southern Confederacy. In the state election in August following, Harris was reelected governor by a majority of more
than 31,000 votes.
The General Assembly was in session at Nashville when Fort Donelson fell on February 16, 1862, and Federal
occupation of Nashville was soon to follow; on February 16, 1862, Governor Harris issued a call for the legislature to
assemble at Memphis on the 20th following, and the executive office was moved to
that city. On February 20, Governor Harris sent a message to
the Tennessee General Assembly about the the current precarious position in which Tennessee found itself.
By March 20, the legislature adjourned sine die, and the Union
forces took possession of Memphis on June 6, 1862. In the meantime
President Lincoln had appointed Andrew Johnson Military Governor of Tennessee, March 3, 1862, and he took
possession of the Executive Offices in the Capitol at Nashville. Of course, the C.S.A. Army of Tennessee fought
bravely on until the war ended.
Harris was still nominally governor but driven from the state
by the enemy, he became a voluntary member of the staffs of Confederate Generals Albert Sidney Johnston,
Braxton Bragg, and Joseph E. Johnston.
From Pisgah History :
“Isham G. Harris was born at Winchester and came to this County [Giles
County Tennessee] when a young man and lived awhile
with his brother, James T. Harris, who lived on Bradshaw Creek. James T. Harris was a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army.
At the Battle of Shiloh, General A. S. Johnston fell mortally wounded and died in the arms of Isham G. Harris.
Pink Harris, a son of James T., rode up during this scene and said: ‘Uncle Isham, Father has just been killed’. Isham
G. Harris, in speaking of this sad incident to Dr. Jesse Mayes, of this place, afterward said, ‘I learned just there, there was a wide
difference between war on paper and war on the field.’ ”
After the war ended, with a reward of $5,000 for his apprehension, Harris
fled to Mexico and later to England. He returned to Memphis in 1867 and resumed the practice of law.
He was elected as a Democrat to the
United States Senate in 1877; reelected in 1883, 1889, and 1895 and served from March 4, 1877, until his death. He
served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Fifty-third Congress; chairman, Committee on
District of Columbia (Forty-sixth and Fifty-third Congresses), Committee on Epidemic Diseases (Forty-ninth
through Fifty-second Congresses), Committee on Private Land Claims (Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Congresses). He
died in Washington, D.C., 8 July 8 1897; following the funeral service in the Senate Chamber on July 10, his remains were
sent to Nashville to lie in state for one day in the Hall of Tennessee’s House of Representatives; on to Memphis to lie in state in
the First Methodist Church of that city, where final services were conducted; buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis. He was a
member of Free and Accepted Masons, having been elected Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of Tennessee in 1851 and again in
1868. Brother-in-law of James R. McMeans, Joseph H. Travis, and William E. Travis, sometime members Tennessee General
Assembly.
Bibliography
Sources: American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses.
55th Cong., 2nd sess., 1897-1898. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1898; Watters, George W. Isham
Green Harris, Civil War Governor and Senator from Tennessee, 1818-1897. Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State
University, 1977; White, Messages of the Governors of Tennessee, V, 1-8, 438-39; Snodgrass, Freemasonry in
Tennessee, 402; Tennessee House Journal, 34th (Confederate) General Assembly, 476-79; Memphis Commercial
Appeal, January 21, 1897; July 9, 11, 1897; Nashville American, July 9, 1897;
Connelly, Thomas Lawrence, Army of the Heartland, The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862, pp. 30-38.
Note : The flag at the top of the page is the Army of Tennessee battle flag, also called the Naval Jack.
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