XXII

The man they called The Melungeon was a short, wiry ruffian. His skin was a leathery brown, and his long walrus mustache curled around his sunken dimples. He was one of William G. Brownlow's men, the Radical Republican governor of Tennessee. They nicknamed the governor "The Parson." Born Simon Mise, he fought as a staunch Unionist in the guerilla war that swept East Tennessee during the rebellion. He and his band ranged up and down the Cumberland Plateau from the Nickajack to the Cumberland Gap burning bridges and ambushing Confederate patrols. Towards the end of the war Bill Brownlow, probably the most hated man in the Confederacy besides Mr. Lincoln, was swept into the governorship of Tennessee. Ex-Confederates were barred from voting, so only Tennessee Unionists were polled. He replaced his political rival, the military governor and Unionist Democrat Andrew Johnson, who in three months would became President upon Mr. Lincoln's assassination.

When The Parson moved into the governor's mansion in Nashville, disenfranchised whites who fought for the Confederacy were appalled. They were unable to vote without taking the "Ironclad Oat,h" avowing they had never voluntarily aided the rebellion. They were horror stricken when The Parson began to agitate for the black suffrage, saying a "loyal negro was more deserving that a disloyal white man." That's when the Ku Klux Klan was born and exploded across war-torn Tennessee with the celebrity of that devil Nathan Bedford Forrest in its ranks. Bill Brownlow had another insurgency on his hands, albeit one against his own power. For this irascible Radical Republican governor, vengeance against disloyal didn't end at Appomattox. He welcomed the insurgency to destroy his political foes in the Democratic party, whether they had been Unionist or not.

So The Melungeon earned his reputation of busting heads at the Tennessee ballot boxes for the Republican Party, and crashing Klan rallies with a pistol whip and shillelagh. He was part of the Brownlow patronage system that dominated post-war Tennessee. But a love of Union didn't prevent this Republican from lining his own pockets in the pursuit of vendetta. The L&N Railroad, while under Yankee occupation for much of the war, was under the influence of a cabal of old Whigs investors. They all had pre-war connections between both North and South dating back to the Fillmore administration, James Withers Sloss being notable among them.

The Parson's rub was that the thousands of negroes he held in thrall with the voting franchise could not find enough opportunity in war-ravaged Tennessee. They crowded into freedman camps where they worked pitiable wages on annual plantation contracts negotiated by corrupt Republican authorities. But down south in Limestone County they'd heard up the grapevine that a place called Strangetown was bursting at the seams with work and opportunity. So they started packing up and train hopping their way south towards the Nickajack where they found work on Jimmy Sloss's railroad to Birmingham. Bill Brownlow was bleeding the black vote his party's power depended on as it migrated South to help close the last frontier of Alabama. And the Melungeon followed in their wake, chasing freedman who fled their plantation contracts in Tennessee. It landed he and his gang, the Crab Orchard Boys, in Limestone County where one of America's forgotten post-war frontiers was throbbing with opportunity, and riches. It was an irresistible temptation to the Melungeon.