In contrast to the attention given to East Tennessee Unionism by historians, the Unionists west of the Tennessee River have been largely ignored or maligned. The Unionist majority in West Tennessee, which was demonstrated in the February, 1861 election, collapsed by mid-April after the events at Fort Sumpter. In Memphis the secessionists took charge, driving out some 3,000 Northern-born residents from the city while converting the large foreign-born population to their cause. Unanimity became the watchword of the secessionists after the state legislature declared Tennessee independent of the United States in May of 1861. A cluster of relatively poor counties in the eastern, hilly section of West Tennessee withstood the campaign for conformity prior to the June referendum. Although Union newspapers had been banned and Union speakers denied the podium, a majority of the voters in five counties of West Tennessee opted to oppose separation on June 8, 1861. The dissenting counties, both Whig and Democratic, held out despite their isolated position amid a sea of secession. Where election details are available within these counties, the poorer civil districts, those with the fewest slaves, generally voiced the strongest resistance to secession. Whig political traditions coupled with low economic indicators practically guaranteed staunch Unionism in any district. Intimidation, although prevalent in West Tennessee before and during the election of June 8, did not radically alter the outcome in West Tennessee or across the state. The Unionists lost the election in the first three months of 1861 when the secessionists persistently heightened the scope of their arguments as the Union men retreated and adopted tentative positions. Their feeble argumentation proved to be inadequate in the face of crisis. By denying the Federal government the right to use coercion against the seceded states, many Unionists played into the hands of their secessionist opponents who utilized the crisis to shift the debate away from the constitutionality of secession to a sectional confrontation, pitting the North against the South. If more Unionists had taken the stand of Emerson Etheridge of Weakley county in West Tennessee and answered the secessionist rhetoric on every point, the opposition would have been much greater. Despite some economic and political factors, West Tennessee was not preordained to embrace secession during the crisis of 1861.
