7th Tennessee Infantry
The 7th Tennessee Infantry was a Union regiment during the Civil War that was made up of soldiers from Scott and Morgan counties. It was an ill-fated regiment that was routed at the Battle of Huntsville in 1862, then spent several months chasing Confederate guerrillas in the Upper Cumberland area before disbanding.
The 7th Tennessee is born
William Clift (1795-1886) was Chattanooga’s first millionaire, a slave-owner who had amassed thousands of acres of property in Hamilton County, Tenn.
Despite being a slave-owner, Clift was staunchly pro-Union, and placed a cannon on the front lawn of his Chattanooga home as a symbol of defiance towards the Confederacy. He offered refuge to Union sympathizers who needed it, and organized a militia that he called the Seventh Tennessee.
On Nov. 14, 1861, Tennessee Gov. Isham Harris, who had rallied the state to secede from the Union in June 1861, issued an order that Clift and those loyal to him be captured, dead or alive. The 6th Alabama Infantry was dispatched to Sale Creek, Tenn., a small town outside Chattanooga, to capture Clift. When they arrived, Clift and the Seventh Tennessee had already broken camp and escaped into the mountains.
In May 1862, Union Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan commissioned Clift a colonel in the Union army, and ordered him to establish a regiment of Union troops in Scott and Morgan counties in Tennessee, in order to “annoy the enemy’s rear.” Confederate forces held Knoxville at the time, but Union sympathies were strong on the Cumberland Plateau, making Scott and Morgan counties common-sense choices for raising a regiment of federal soldiers in East Tennessee.
Establishing the 7th Tennessee
Clift arrived in Huntsville on June 1, 1862. He set up headquarters in Huntsville and recruited men from throughout Scott, Morgan and Anderson counties — including members of the Scott County Home Guard, which had been established in December 1861 in response to Confederate raids that were being conducted throughout the region. Clift also began fortifying the hill along River Road on the southeast side of town.
William H. Robbins, a native Scott Countian who had helped organize the Home Guard and who had his Brimstone Creek home attacked by Confederate forces months earlier, was one of the first to join Clift’s company. He was commissioned a captain.
By August 1862, Clift had 250 men serving in the 7th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. They were green, had little training, and were ill-prepared for a fight. Clift had repeatedly written to his superiors, urging them to send more supplies.
The rout at Huntsville
Upon learning that a new regiment of Union soldiers was being organized in Scott County, Confederate Capt. T.M. Nelson marched on Huntsville from Knoxville, crossing the Clinch River outside Clinton and climbing in to the Cumberland Mountains. He had an estimated fighting force of 1,500 to 2,000 men, far out-numbering Clift’s small army of 250.
Nelson’s troops arrived on River Road on the morning of August 13, 1862. Clift’s regiment broke within minutes, with many of the soldiers fleeing the breastworks that had been constructed on the hillside. Clift said that it was a scene of “wild confusion.”
Clift was suffering from a bout of diarrhea that day, and could not flee with the rest of his men. A small force of about 50 men stayed with him, and managed to hold the Confederate forces at bay for more than 90 minutes. That prevented the entire regiment from being captured.
“I am proud to speak in the most honorable terms of a part of the officers and men that remained under my command,” Clift said. He specifically mentioned Capt. William Robbins, Maj. James S. Duncan, and two other men named Wilson and Shelton. Their exact identities aren’t clear.
Eventually, Clift and his remaining men fled the breastworks and escaped up the hill.
Guerrilla fighting
Clift slowly regrouped the 7th Tennessee. On October 28, 1862, he wrote to his superiors that his position in Scott County was “very perilous,” but that he had encamped his men in “the most obscure parts of the county” and had posted pickets 20 to 25 miles from his camps.
At that time, he said that he had been “subsisting my troops on corn bread and beef since the fight at Huntsville, Tenn. at a cost to the government from about 10 to 15 cents for each soldier per day and about the same for about 50 horses for mounted infantry.”
Clift wrote to U.S. Sen. Andrew Johnson to request more supplies, saying: “I am by the musket as David was by his sling.” In a requisition request to the Union army, he wrote that “100 bold, dashing horsemen could hold off 4,000 Rebels in the mountains, if they were properly supplied.” He told his superiors that he had little trouble obtaining horses, but was having difficulty finding saddles and bridles.
The Confederates believed that Clift was planning a sneak attack on Rebel positions. On August 23, 1862, Joseph F. Belton wrote to Col. S.J. Smith, the commanding officer of Confederate forces at Loudon, Tenn., and said he believed Clift’s regiment was “awaiting an opportunity to attack at some vulnerable point — probably Loudon.”
However, Clift’s regiment never left the northern Cumberland Plateau. Instead, they focused on rooting out the Confederate guerrillas that roamed the region. On one excursion in October 1862, Clift’s men captured Rebel prisoners. Two weeks later, on October 15, 1862, they skirmished with Confederate guerrillas under the command of the infamous Champ Ferguson, killing four of Ferguson’s men.
The disbanding of the 7th Tennessee
In late 1862, Col. Clift was relieved of his command and the men enlisted in the 7th Tennessee were ordered to transfer to other companies. Most simply deserted and went home.
Clift had been ordered to leave Scott County before the Battle of Huntsville and fall back to Barboursville, Ky., but he had refused. That angered Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan, who telegraphed Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell — commander of the Union forces in the Western theater of the war — to tell him that Clift had twice disobeyed his commands.
Some of Clift’s men transferred to the 8th Tennessee, under the command of Col. Felix A. Reeve. But the 7th Tennessee had a reputation as being both untrained and undisciplined. Reeve complained to his superiors that his new soldiers were “mildly denominated a drunken, refectory and lawless mob,” and asked to be relieved of them.
Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who was in command of the Union forces in Kentucky, reinstated Clift’s command. But he revoked it four days later, after an assistant visited Clift’s camp and reported a state of disarray. The assistant wrote: “Discipline and manners were entire strangers to the party.” He recommended that Clift’s men “be permitted to remain as they are, unrecognized and unpaid.”
Based on that report, Burnside disbanded the 7th Tennessee once and for all.
Clift demanded to know why, even writing to President Abraham Lincoln. He did not receive a reply.
Aftermath
Two of Col. Clift’s sons served in the Confederate army during the Civil War, while two others joined their father in the 7th Tennessee. The husbands of his three daughters were in the Confederate army.
After the 7th Tennessee was disbanded, Clift was attempting to carry messages from federal commanders in Chattanooga to Gen. Burnside in Knoxville when he was arrested on October 14, 1863 by his son, Maj. Moses Hainey Clift, of the Confederate army.
Clift died on February 17, 1886 at age 90. He was buried at Soddy Presbyterian Cemetery in Soddy Daisy, Tenn., where his wife had also been buried when she died in 1847. The last of Clift’s eight children died in 1911.
More: Scott County’s ill-fated Union regiment, a chapter of ‘Enclave.’
More: The Battle of Huntsville