Horace Maynard
Horace Maynard (August 30, 1814 – May 3, 1882) was an educator, attorney and politician who represented Scott County in Congress and played a key role in the county’s decision to reject secession in 1861.
Early Life
Born August 30, 1814 in Westborough, Mass., Maynard was the son of Ephraim Maynard (1783-1864) and Diana Cogswell (1793-1876). He was educated at Millbury Academy and then enrolled at Amherst College, where he was valedictorian of his graduating class.
Maynard moved to Knoxville, Tenn. in 1739 and accepted a position as a professor at East Tennessee College, which is now the University of Tennessee. He began as a teacher in the university’s preparatory department and in 1841 moved to college-level mathematics and ancient languages.
Maynard initially considered leaving Knoxville, considering it backward and unsophisticated. But he was admitted to the bar in 1841 and decided to make the city his permanent home.
Maynard married Laura Washburn in 1840. They had five children: Washburn, Eleanor, Ephraim, Laura and James.
Professional Life
In the 1850s, Union County was formed northeast of Knoxville. Knox County filed a lawsuit, attempting to force the disbanding of the new county. Maynard successfully represented Union County, and in return the county named its county seat, Maynardville, in his honor. The town’s middle school, Horace Maynard Middle School, is also named for Maynard. It was a high school from 1923 until 1997.
Maynard first ran for Congress in 1852. He was attacked by local newspapers, and was defeated by William Churchwell. Four years later, the Knoxville Whig backed his campaign, and Maynard won the 2nd District congressional seat. Scott County was among the counties in the 2nd District. Maynard easily won re-election in 1858, receiving 67% of the vote.
After the Whig Party collapsed in the late 1850s, Maynard ran for Congress on the American, Opposition and Union party tickets in 1856, 1858 and 1860.
Secession
Maynard was fiercely opposed to secession. Unlike fellow politician Andrew Johnson, who represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate and was likewise opposed to secession, Maynard was at least once opposed to slavery. His father was an abolitionist, and Maynard called the institution “a curse to the country” in the 1830s. By the 1850s, however, Maynard defended slavery in letters to his father, saying there was a “bright as well as a dark side to slavery.” He owned four slaves, and defended slavery at the onset of the Civil War. By the end of the war, however, Maynard had shifted back to his abolitionist views and supported President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Maynard campaigned hard against secession in 1860 and 1861. On June 4, 1861, Maynard and Johnson visited Scott County, where they delivered speeches on the steps of the county courthouse in Huntsville. It was one of many pro-Union speeches delivered in East Tennessee by Maynard in the weeks leading up to the June 8, 1861 secession vote.
Like Johnson, Maynard refused to resign his seat in Congress after Tennessee seceded in June 1861. He returned to Washington after the East Tennessee Union Convention adjourned that same month; he was part of the delegation from Knoxville at that convention, which sought to create a separate Union-aligned state in East Tennessee.
Once Confederate forces gained control of East Tennessee, Maynard consistently pleaded with Lincoln to send troops to free the region. He warned Lincoln that East Tennesseans’ “tears and blood will be a blot on your administration that time can never efface.”
In December 1861, Union supporters burned several bridges in East Tennessee as a precursor to an invasion for which Union forces had been training at Camp Dick Robinson in Kentucky. However, Union officers, including Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, decided not to invade, citing a build up of Confederate forces at the Cumberland Gap. As a result, East Tennessee was left to the mercy of the Rebels, and several of the bridge-burners were executed by hanging. Maynard wrote a letter blasting Union Gen. George H. Thomas for the decision not to invade, calling the decision “disgraceful.”
Gen. George B. McClellan, who was at that point still in command of the Union army, wrote to Union Gen. Don Carlos Buell: “Johnson, Maynard, etc., are again becoming frantic, and have President Lincoln’s sympathy excited. Political considerations would make it advisable to get the arms and troops into Eastern Tennessee at a very early day.”
However, the invasion did not occur until September 1863, when Gen. Ambrose Burnside led a 12,000-man-strong army through Scott County en route to Knoxville.
When Lincoln installed Johnson as Tennessee’s military governor, Johnson appointed Maynard the state’s attorney general.
Latter years and death
Maynard was elected to Congress in 1866 as an Unconditional Unionist. He was subsequently re-elected in 1868, 1870, 1872 and 1874 as a Republican, rising to the level of chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Banking and Currency. In 1868, he was appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court by Gov. Parson Brownlow.
Maynard was a candidate for vice president in 1872, but lost. That same year, he defeated his former ally, Johnson, in the race for an at-large congressional seat. He ran for governor of Tennessee the following year but lost to James D. Porter. He was later appointed Minister to Turkey in 1875, and U.S. Postmaster General in 1880.
Maynard died unexpectedly of heart disease on May 3, 1882, at age 67. He is buried at Knoxville’s Old Gray Cemetery. His wife, Laura, was buried there in 1896. All but one of his children are also buried there.