Although many Confederate dispatchs were exchanged during the month of December, 1861, between East Tennessee and Richmond, there is no mention in any of those communications concerning the executions of JACOB HARMON and his son HENRY HARMON, who were hanged on December 17th. We must depend on the account given by William G. "Parson" Browlow, who was imprisoned in Knoxville at the time. Browniow was a rabid Unionist, and his description of the hanging of those two men is so horrible as to be almost unbelieveable. Perhaps that is the reason that no report of it was made to Richmond.

The descriptions left by some eyewitnesses who told of the rope breaking while young Henry Harmon was being hanged...with his father forced to watch....making it necessary to hang his half-lifeless body the second time, may have been a little too much for even Colonel Leadbetter and Secretary Benjamin.

On November 25, 1861, the members of the Confederate general court-martial were appointed at Knoxville. They were ordered to begin meeting "on the 28th day of November or as soon thereafter as practicable for the trial of such prisoners as may be brought before it." From information found in the Official Records, it appears that the court-martial met for the second time on December 11, 1861, for the trial of Jacob and Henry Harmon, and Harrison Self. The first court-martial had tried C. A. Haun.

As there are no records of the Harmon trial contained in the Official Records, one can only guess at what transpired, but whatever it was...it was short. The Harmons were hanged the same day that their trial began, and the trial of Harrison Self proceeded. The trial of Harrison Self took a little longer. Some delay was granted to the counsel for the defendant, in order to secure the presence of Alexander Lowe, who was considered to be a material witnessses for the defendant. At 10 o'clock a.m. on December 21, 1861. Harrison Self too was found guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to hang on December 27th.......six days away.

During that six day period, many appeals were made to spare the life of Harrison Self, but none were successful. The execution was scheduled to take place at 4 o'clock p.m. Finally, in a last desperate attempt, Elizabeth Self, the daughter of Harrison Self, sent a telegraph message directly to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Through the intervention of President Davis, Harrison Self escaped the hangman, with only hours to spare, but five men had already died. "Pottertown" had paid dearly.

Jacob Myers was captured in Lee County, Virginia, in the spring of 1862, as he tried to escape to Kentucky. Daniel Smith had been captured earlier. Both men were charged with "being accessories to bridge-burning." Captain David Fry too, " was captured within our lines in citizen's dress and was sent to Knoxville charged as a citizen of East Tennessee with bridge-burning" according to a report from Confederate Major-General E. KIRBY SMITH, to Union Army Brigadier General S. P. Carter.

All of those men escaped the gallows. In the few months that had passed since the bridges had been burned in November of 1861, some slight moderation in the earlier strong feeling, had taken place. The fact that no Federal invasion had occured as expected, left the Confederate high command a little more comfortable among the pro-Union population of East Tennessee.

A review of Union army dispatches transmitted during the fall of 1861, just after the attempt to burn the East Tennessee railroad bridges, sheds considerable light on the desperate plight of those who had taken part in the plan.

Union army Brigadier General S. P. CARTER, one of the organizers of the bridge-burning plot, sent the following message to Brigadier General George H. Thomas in Danville, Kentucky, on November 24, 1861: "We have arrivals every day from East Tennessee. The condition of affairs there is sad beyond description and if the Ioyal people who love and cling to the Government are not soon relieved they will be lost. "


Union army Major General GEORGE B. MC CLELLAN pointedly tried to prod Brigadier General D. C. Buell into moving into East Tennessee, to fulfill the committment that had been made. On November 27, 1861, McClellan sent the following dispatch to Buell:
"GENERAL:        What is the reason for concentration of troops at Louisville? I urge movement at once on Eastern Tennessee unless it is impossible. No letter from you for several days. Reply. I still trust to your judgement though urging my own views. "

On November 29th, MC CLELLAN again contacted Buell in another dispatch which read:
" I think we owe it to our Union friends in Eastern Tennessee to protect them at all hazards. First secure that; then if you possess the means carry Nashville."


Again, on December 3rd, MC CLELLAN writes Buell: "If you gain and retain possession of Eastern Tennessee you will have won brighter laurels than any I hope to gain."


On December 7th, ANDREW JOHNSON and HORACE MAYNARD sent a joint communication to General Buell, which implored: "Our people are oppressd and pursued as beasts of the forest. The Government must come to their relief. We are looking to you with anxious solicitude to move in that direction. "

A communication sent from BUELL to General McClellan on December 10th, shows that all the previous dispatchs sent to Buell had fallen on deaf ears. Buell wrote the following to McClellan: " I have no means been unmindful of your wishes in regard to East Tennessee and I think I can both appreciate and unite in your sympathy for a people who have shown so much constancy. That constancy will sustain them until the hour of deliverance. I have no fear of their being crushed. The allegiance of such people to hated rulers even if it could be enforced for the moment will only make them the more determined and ready to resist when the hour of rescue comes."


Even after one hundred and thirty-five years, it is still sad to realize that the Union men of Pottertown had literally laid their life on the line and then ended up being at the mercy of such bureaucratic bungling, as is illustrated in this reply.

Even President Abraham Lincoln seems to have been powerless in dealing with Buell's stupidity...and ...or arrogance, as will be seen in the following exchanges.

WASHINGTON, January 4, 1862

General BUELL:
Have arms gone forward for East Tennessee? Please tell me the progress and condition of the movement in that direction. ANSWER.
        A. LINCOLN


The following reply from BUELL to Lincoln, and LINCOLN'S return communication to Buell, probably illustrates about as well as it is possible to do so........... the absolute futility which the East Tennesse bridge-burners were faced with from the beginning.........only they were not aware of it!!

LOUISVILLE, Ky., January 5, 1862

To the PRESIDENT:
Arms can only go forward for East Tennessee under the protection of an army. My organization of the troops has had in view two columns with reference to that movement: a division to move from Lebanon, and a brigade to operate offensively or defensively according to circumstances on the Cumberland Gap route. *    *   *   While my preparations have had this movement constantly in view I will confess to your excellency that I have been bound to it more by sympathy for the people of East Tennessee and the anxiety with which you and the general-in-chief have desired it than by my opinion of its wisdom as an unconditional measure. As earnestly as I wish to accompolish it my judgement has from the first been decidedly against it if it should render at all doubtful the success of a movement against the great power of the rebellion in the West which is mainly arrayed on the line from Columbus to Bowling Green and can speedily be concentrated at any point of that line which is attacked singly.

D. C. BUELL

LINCOLN'S reply:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, January 6, 1862

Brigadier-General BUELL:
MY DEAR SIR: Your dispatch of yesterday has been received and it disappoints and distresses me. *    *   *   My distress is that our friends in East Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair and even now I fear are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection. In this we lose the most valuable stake we have in the South. My dispatch to which yours is an answer was sent with the knowledge of Senator Johnson and Representative Maynard of East Tennessee and they will be upon me to know the answer which I cannot safely show them. They would despair; possibly resign to go and save their families somehow or die with them.
I do not intend this to be an order in any sense but merely as intimated before to show you the grounds of my anxiety.
        Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

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