East Tennessee bridge-burning conspiracy

The East Tennessee bridge burnings were a series of guerrilla operations carried out during the Civil War by Union sympathizers in Confederate-held East Tennessee in 1861. The operations, which were planned by Carter County minister William B. Carter (1820–1902) and authorized by President Abraham Lincoln, called for the destruction of nine strategic railroad bridges, followed by an invasion of the area by Union Army forces from southeastern Kentucky. The pro-Union conspirators managed to destroy five of the nine targeted bridges, but the Union Army failed to move, and did not invade East Tennessee until 1863, nearly two years after the incident.

The destruction of the bridges, which were all quickly rebuilt, had little military impact. However, the sabotage attacks caused a shift in the way the Confederate authorities dealt with East Tennessee's large number of Union sympathizers. Portions of the region were placed under martial law, while dozens of Unionists were arrested and jailed. Several suspected bridge burners were tried and hanged. The actions of the Confederate authorities placed increased pressure on Lincoln to send Union troops into East Tennessee.

A pro-Union newspaper publisher, William G. "Parson" Brownlow, used the arrests and hangings as propaganda in his 1862 anti-secession diatribe, Sketches of the Rise, Progress and Decline of Secession.

While secessionist sentiment raged throughout the South in late 1860 and early 1861, a majority of East Tennesseans, like many in the Appalachian highlands, stubbornly remained loyal to the Union. Slavery was not very important to the East Tennessee economy, and the region had been at odds with the state government for decades over a lack of state appropriations for internal improvements. Furthermore, the Whig Party and its successors dominated large parts of East Tennessee, and its adherents viewed with suspicion the actions of the predominantly-Democratic Southern legislatures.

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