The Battle of No Business
Also known as the Duck Shoals Skirmish, the Battle of No Business was a fight between the Scott County Home Guard and Confederate guerrillas at the home of Jonathan Burke along the Big South Fork River in May 1863, at the height of the Civil War.
Precursor to the Battle
Scott County was a sort of no man’s land during the Civil War. In the early days of the war, Scott County was under the control of Confederate forces commanded by Gen. Felix Zollicoffer. But after Zollicoffer was killed in the Battle of Mill Springs (Ky.) in January 1862, Scott County became more or less a land of lawlessness, left to the mercies of marauding guerrillas from both sides of the fight.
As a result, roving bands of Confederate guerrillas repeatedly raided Scott County, sometimes hanging Union sympathizers, burning homes and barns, and pillaging farms. Like many communities, Scott County responded by raising a Home Guard, made up of men who weren’t serving in the armies for either the North or the South who would defend local farmsteads from Confederate raiders.
Things came to a head on May 3, 1863 at Duck Shoals, located along the Big South Fork River between Parch Corn Creek and No Business Creek.
The Invasion
On May 3, 1863, Confederate Capt. Alec Evans led a band of Rebel guerrillas into the Big South Fork River settlements west of present-day Oneida. The band raided several homes at Station Camp Creek and Parch Corn Creek.
At Station Camp Creek, near present-day Charit Creek Lodge, the Confederates visited the Tackett homestead. Tennessee was a Confederate state, and the Confederacy had a conscription act that required three years of military service for every male between the ages of 17 and 45. Roving guerrillas would sometimes attempt to force men and boys into service, and it was not uncommon to hide when Rebels were near to avoid being forced into the war.
As legend has it, the Tackett brothers — two teenagers — lived with an elderly relative, probably a grandmother. When the band of guerrillas neared, the relative had the boys hide beneath a mattress, then lay atop it, pretending to be sick. The ruse worked, and the Confederates left the home empty-handed. When they had gone and she threw back the mattress, however, the old woman discovered that both boys had suffocated.
Today, two field stones with barely-legible inscriptions mark the graves of the Tackett brothers near the site of the Tackett cabin on Station Camp Creek.
In Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, historian H. Clay Smith wrote that the guerrillas captured three men, Till Slagel, Hudson Burke, and Jackson Smith. They intended to hang Slagel and Burke, Smith wrote, but the two men escaped. Polly Miller, who lived on the Big South Fork River, convinced the guerrillas to release Jackson Smith, according to the Dusty Bits account.
The battle
After raiding the farms in the river settlements, Evans and his men sought shelter at the cabin of Jonathan Burke, the uncle of Hudson Burke. It is not clear how many Rebels were inside the home. An account written by The New York Times suggested it was only four. William Houston Blevins would later write that it was eight. In Dusty Bits, Smith said it was as many as 30 to 40.
At some point during the night, Hudson Burke — also called “Hutts” — led a group of Home Guard men, including his brothers, Benjamin Burke and James Burke, to roust the Rebels from his uncle’s home. The men surrounded the cabin and yelled “This is Wolford’s Cavalry and the valley is full of soldiers!” which was a reference to famous Union Col. Frank Wolford, whom the Burke brothers had served under during the war.
The Home Guard opened fire as the Rebels attempted to leave the cabin, and Capt. Evans was the first to die. Several of his comrades were also shot dead, while at least two drowned in the Big South Fork River, which was at flood stage.
Between seven and 11 Confederate soldiers were killed in the skirmish. Annie Blevins Burke and Margaret Miller dug a hole near the Burke cabin and buried seven of the Confederate soldiers there. They stacked rocks on top of the grave to prevent dogs from digging the bodies up. Today, the exact location of the mass grave is unknown.
Family members traveled to the Big South Fork to retrieve the body of Capt. Evans. However, the smell of the decomposing flesh prompted them to stop and bury him en route to Middle Tennessee, either in present-day Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area or present-day Pickett State Forest. The exact location of the grave is unknown.
More: Read ‘A Confederate Massacre,’ a chapter of Enclave.
Aftermath
The Jonathan Burke cabin was riddled with bullets and its floors stained with blood. “When I was a small boy, I saw the bullet holes in the building and the blood stains on the floor,” Houston Blevins wrote to the Knoxville Journal some 85 years later.
Historian Marie Hickey Davis wrote in “Mountain Memories” that the Burke family moved out of the cabin because “Too much blood had been spilled on its floors for it to ever seem like home again.”
After the cabin was vacated, local residents removed the lead balls from the walls and remelted them for new ammunition.
The Burke family moved to what is now Charit Creek Lodge, near where the Tackett brothers had died. Jonathan Burke died in 1775, after which his son, Peter Burke, moved his mother and some of the rest of the family to Oklahoma. Before he left, Peter Burke sold his father’s home to George Pennington. The cabin remained vacant for another 10 years before being purchased by No Business storekeeper Francis Miller in 1886. The Miller family moved the home to No Business Creek and reconstructed it, living in it until it burned in the early 1900s.
The Battle of No Business was the end of widespread guerrilla warfare in Scott County during the Civil War.
See Also: Enclave, the story of the Civil War in Scott County