The 1861 election of T.A.R. Nelson and Joseph B. Heiskell

   Politics always makes strange bedfellows, and the August 1861 contest in District 1 in east Tennessee might make one of the most interesting contestss of the war. It pitted Tennessee state senator Joseph B. Heiskell against US Congressman T.A.R. Nelson. Both Heiskell and Nelson were from east Tennessee and both were pre-war Whigs. Heiskell is described as being a “staunch Union Whig in politics.” However, after the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops, he “cast his lot with the Confederacy.”[1]   

    Once Tennessee left the Union and joined the Southern Confederacy, the state was allowed to elect representatives in the Confederate House and Senate. Heiskell ran for Confederate House. Strangely enough, Nelson was also running. Except, Nelson was running for the same district in the US House: two men, from the same area, running for the same designated seat, but in two different bodies politic. The remaining sources are somewhat silent on the actual campaign, although one post-war scribe told of a secession meeting held in Elizabethton in May 1861. Nelson, with US Senator Andrew Johnson, spoke one week, while Heiskell, with former US Congressman William Cocke, spoke the following week. For the Congressional seats, it appears that they ran pretty much unopposed.[2]

   Of course, both men won. Had they been contending for the same seat, Nelson would have steamrolled Heiskell. The numbers looked like this: Johnston County - Nelson, 1129, Heiskell, 109; Carter County – Nelson 1229, Heiskell 81; Greene County – Nelson, 2352, Heiskell, 831; Jefferson County, Nelson 1509, Heiskell, 727. The only two counties that Heiskell won were Washington County – Nelson 979, Heiskell, 1061 and, Hawkins County – Nelson, 841 and Heiskell, 957.[3]

   Heiskell would soon make his way to Richmond. Nelson would head to Washington, D.C., but wound up in Richmond as well. He was arrested in Wise County, Virginia, on August 5, 1861, and jailed in Richmond. Nelson wrote Jefferson Davis, asking to be released, promising to return to east Tennessee and live peaceably. Davis ordered Nelson released on August 13, 1861. Heiskell would go on to be elected to serve in both the first and second Confederate Congresses.[4]  

   Outside of the presidential election of 1860, the race between Heiskell and Nelson might just be one of the more interesting elections of the 1860s.

Nelson                              Heiskell

 

---

[1] Warner and Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress, 115.

[2] Scott and Angel, The Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, 38; The Tennessean, August 11, 1861.

[3] The Tennessee, August 11, 1861.

[4] OR, Series II, Vol. 1, 824, 826.