The men who remained at home were compelled by public sentiment to take
sides, and the bitterest of feeling was engendered. The raids of passing
soldiers was the excuse for the organization, by both sides, of bands
who claimed they were "Home Guards"--the Federals under "Tinker" Beaty,
and the Confederates under Champ Ferguson. These bands, each striving
for the mastery, soon developed into guerrillas of the worst type the
war produced, and anarchy prevailed.
Churches were closed, for religious services were invaded that the
bushwackers could get the men they sought. Homes were burned. Civil
courts suspended. Post-offices and post-roads were abandoned. No stores
were kept open and the merchandise they formerly held was concealed, and
there became a great scarcity of the necessaries of life. Many homes
were deserted by entire families and their land turned out as common
ground. There was waste and ruin on every hand, and no man's life was
safe.
Each deed of cruelty was met with an act of revenge, until men were
killed in retaliation, the only charge brought against them being, "a
Northern sympathizer," or "a Southern sympathizer." There is not a road
in the county not marked with the blood of some soldier or
non-combatant.
No section of the great Civil War suffered so enduringly as that which
was the boundary line between the sections, and no part of the boundary
suffered more from devastations of war in the passing to and fro of
armed forces and from the raids of marauding bands, steel-heartened in
quest of revenge, than did Fentress county.
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