CONFEDERATE DAMAGES TO MCMINNVILLE’S WARREN HOUSE Marion O. Smith Harvey M. Watterson (1811-1891), a former state legislator, Democratic congressman (1839-43), editor of the Nashville Union (1849-51) and Washington (DC) Union (1851-56), lived predominantly in McMinnville from 1856 until at least 1863. During the secession crisis of 1860-61 he was a firm supporter of Stephen A. Douglas, and even established the Nashville Daily Evening Democrat to advocate that candidate’s bid for the presidency. During 1861 he was one of the most prominent leaders dedicated to keeping Tennessee in the union. That stance perhaps was a factor two years later in the ill treatment of his property, a hotel on the square in McMinnville named the Warren House, which suffered depredations at the hands of unruly cavalrymen and soldiers of the Confederate army. The following letter by Watterson, accompanied by additional documentation, reveal the extent of the injury to the hotel and his efforts to obtain compensation:' Tullahoma Tenn April 29" 1863 Col Beard’ Insp Genl Army of Tenn. Sir, I own the hotel property in McMinnville called the “Warren House.” It is a large brick building containing thirty four rooms. It was very valuable and a credit to the town. When the Cavalry, under command of Brig Gen John H Morgan,” reached McMinnville in January last, they broke open the doors (which were locked) and occupied the house up to a few days past. They have literally ruined the property. In addition they destroyed my library and parlor furniture. Their destruction seems to have been wanton and unbecoming civilized men. I submit to you the report of a board of officers,’ appointed by Maj Gen Wheeler,’ to assess the damages done to the “Warren House.” I did not ask him to give the board referred to any instructions in regard to my library and furniture hoping that they were not destroyed. But I can find no part of the furniture, except a broken sofa, and but a few books. Against the report submitted I enter my protest, and ask you to appoint some gentleman, in whose judgement and integrity you have confidence, to take the testimony of witnesses in regard to the great wrongs which have been perpetrated upon my rights, by Gen Morgans troops, that justice may be done in the premises. : I herewith insert a schedule of the most material spoliations. H. M. Watterson [The schedule] quite a number of large glass windows are wholly destroyed and the remainder nearly SO. A portion of the guttering has been taken away and as it cannot be replaced during the war, there is great danger that the brick will be almost ruined. Every mantle piece in the house, so far as my recollection serve me, has been consigned to the flames. . The plastering has been torn off of several rooms and the lathes used for fuel. All the presses in the different rooms are thoroughly saturated with grease having been used to hold bacon and other meats. | The covering over the walk from the main building to the kitchen has been taken down and burnt. The well house has been entirely destroyed, except the brick walls, the shingles &c were doubtless used for fuel. There was attached to the Hotel one of the best cisterns in town, it held seven hundred barrels of water. The frame plank &c around the mouth of the cistern have been burned and not even the pump remains. There is nothing there now but a big hole of filthy water. The plank fence, gate &c in the rear of the hotel, enclosing an area of ground, used for gardening purposes, have all disappeared and were no doubt burned. _ The door of the brick kitchen not being high enough to admit a horse, it was made sufficiently capacious for the purpose by punching out bricks, and it was thereby converted into a livery stable. All the floor of the adjoining rooms, which were used as servants rooms, have been burned &c, &c, all of which is respectfully submitted. | H. M. Watterson® At Shelbyville the next day Watterson handed the foregoing letter and schedule to Brigadier General Marcus J. Wright (1831-1922) of Memphis and solicited from him a statement. Wright wrote that he had been sent to McMinnville about November 4, 1862, and there he and his assistants were quartered in “two of the upper rooms of the “Warren House” and used “two lower rooms for office business and established the telegraph office in a third lower room.” He recalled the result of the previous summer’s Union occupation of the hotel: “broken glass ... in all the rooms, several mantles in the lower rooms damaged or taken away, nearly all the rooms defaced by ‘charcoal sketches’ on the walls, . . . all the rooms very dirty; most of the locks on the doors of the lower rooms out of repair, or the keys missing; the covering over the walk from the main building to the kitchen badly damaged, about one half... remaining.” He remembered that the “back kitchen was in very good order’’ when he was there except for a few broken planks in the floor. In brief, the “chief damage to the main building” was “the defacing of the walls and the loss of window glass.”” | Watterson also convinced several McMinnville residents to make affidavits as witnesses in his behalf on May 2 and 4, 1863. Samuel L. Colville (1819-1896), a merchant, noted that the Union troops occupied the Warren House “about five weeks” and caused about $500 damage, consisting pretty much the same as General Wright had reported. “the defacing of the walls with charcoal sketches, breaking of glass in some of the windows, greasing window sills, abstracting some of the keys of the doors, and dirtying up the floors.” He had examined the hotel since its occupation by Morgan’s troops and found “it greatly damaged by them.” This included “tearing some of the doors to pieces, knocking out the pannels, tearing off the ceiling of different rooms, injuring the floor by cutting wood on the same, tearing off the window casing, destroying window sashes and mantle pieces by burning the same,” all in the main building. The brick kitchen had been converted “into a stable.” The cavalrymen enlarged “the doors by taking out bricks.” The floors of the adjoining rooms which had been used by the servants were burned, and two of the rooms were used for “purposes unfit to mention.” The destruction Colville observed was essentially much the same that Watterson had detailed, including the burning of the “entire wood work and shingles of the well house.” He thought the damages amounted “at least” to $4.500. M.H. Harmon (b. c1833), a cabinet maker and denizen of the town for eight years, adopted Colville’s “deposition as my own.” George T. Purvis (1798-1895), a carpenter, also claimed that the “four or five” week stay in mid-1862 by the Federals resulted in “very slight” harm, requiring only $500 to repair. His litany of destruction by Morgan’s men was generally a repeat of Colville’s narrative, with the additional observation that the well had been filled with bricks and the cistern had been ruined. He reckoned that restoration would not cost under $5,000. tokeley D. Rowen (1794-1870) only stated that the hotel had “been greatly damaged” by the Confederates. But, “not being a competent judge of what it would take” to revamp the property, he declined to give a figure. However, since he knew the honesty of Colville and Purvis, he believed “the estimate made by them” was “none too high.” Isham G. Harris (1818-1897), the Confederate governor of Tennessee endorsed these witnesses as “gentlemen of character and moral worth, whose statements are entitled to full credit any where. Ms Confederate authorities agreed to re-examine Watterson’s claim. Consequently, on May 6, 1863, at McMinnville, General Wheeler ordered that another board of officers, Colonel George H. Nixon, Major Duff G. Reed, and Captain William Y.C. Humes, would that day investigate the damages to the Warren House by southern soldiers and “if possible ascertain the amount of damages and by what troops inflicted.” Watterson was allowed to attend, and Lieutenant William E. Wailes was to be the recorder. They did meet and “proceeded in person to examine the premises designated.” Then Watterson introduced the testimony by General Wright and the McMinnville deponents. The board agreed to award Watterson $4,500, declaring that $4,250 of the impairment was caused by Morgan’s throng and $250 damage was done by the brigade under Brigadier Ben Hardin Helm, which acted as a provost guard and for a while were 9 also quartered at the Warren House. So far as known, Watterson was not paid the $4,500. But on July 26, 1863, ah: the Army of Tennessee had retreated to Chattanooga, Lieutenant Colonel W.K. Beard asked Watterson to “select three disinterested citizens to assess and value [his] claims for rent” of the Warren House. Watterson actually chose four McMinnville residents in the Confederate army: Colonel Benjamin J. Hill (1825-1880) of the 35" Tennessee Infantry; George E. Purvis (c1836- f11880), a son of George T., and a private in the 16” Tennessee Infantry on ordnance duty; Major Patrick H. Coffee (1821-1895) also of the 16" Tennessee Infantry; and 2 lieutenant W.F.M. Betty (b. c1833), a former lawyer in the 28" Tennessee Consolidated Infantry. These men ruled that the hotel which had been “used partly as a hospital and partly as barracks .. . from December 1862, to May 1863,” was entitled to five months rent at the rate of $2,500 a year, or $1,033.33. The next day Governor Harris vouched for these men as “gentlemen of high character,” and on July 30 Watterson received the $1,033.33.'° SOURCES 1. Ben: Perley Poore, comp., The Political Register and Congressional Directory (Boston, 1878), 687; Joseph F. Wail, Henry Watterson Reconstructed Rebel (New York, 1956), 3-5, 10, 13, 15, 21, 28-29, 32, 35, 57, 212; 1860 Census, Tenn., Warren, McMinnville, 211. That year H. M. Watterson lived at a McMinnville hotel kept by James Glascock (b. c1838), a Virginia Native. Ibid. 2. William K. Beard (c1831-f11876), a merchant from Tallahassee, Florida, and lieutenant colonel of the 1° Florida Infantry, on July 17, 1862, became assistant inspector general on the staff of General Braxton Bragg, commander of the Army of Tennessee. From July 6, 1864, through the end of the,war he was a staff officer in the District of Florida. 1860 Census, Fla., Leon, Tallahassee P.O., 16; 44% Cong., 2°! Sess., House Misc. Docs. No. 35, Pt. 1 (Serial 1768), 46; Generals and Staff Officers, RG109 (M331, Roll 19), National Archives, W. K. Beard File. 3. Morgan (1826-1864), a Lexington, Kentucky, resident, was a notorious Confederate cavalry raider in Tennessee and Kentucky. After considerable success in 1862, his ambition got the best of him in 1863, when in July he invaded Indiana and Ohio and was captured with most of his command. He escaped and in April 1864 became commander of the Department of Southwestern Virginia. After another unsuccessful foray into Kentucky, he was surprised and killed at Greeneville, Tennessee, the following September 4. Francis T. Miller, ed., The Photographic History of the Civil War (10 vols., New York, 1911), 10: 280. 4. On April 8, 1863, the board appointed by General Wheeler to assess the impairment of the Warren House made their report. They found the property “materially damaged” to an amount “variously estimated at from three to five thousand dollars.” But, “after the most carefully inquiry,” they maintained they were unable to determine “the proportion of damage done by the yankee troops or that done by our forces.” The board members were Captain J. J. Murphy, who may have once been associated with John Hunt Morgan’s three company Kentucky squadron, Captain Samuel E. Norton, Jr., a resident of Montgomery, Alabama, who served on Wheeler’s staff as additional assistant adjutant general and then as quartermaster and chief quartermaster; Lawrence Williams Orton (d. 1863), who as William Orton Williams had long served in the U.S. regular army as a member of General Winfield Scott’s staff in Mexico and as an officer in the 2" U.S. Cavalry. He served the Confederacy as a 1° “ lieutenant and aide-de-camp on General Leonidas Polk’s staff, captain of a battery, head of Bragg’s escort company, and by January 1863 as a colonel of cavalry. His name was legally changed by the Mississippi legislature in late 1862. He and another Confederate officer entered Union lines at Franklin, Tennessee, and were hanged as spies June 9; and Colonel John Warren Grigsby (1818-1877), then head of the 6" Kentucky Cavalry, and later a brigadier general and Wheeler’s chief of staff. Generals & Staff Officers (M331, Rolls 188, 191), Samuel E. Norton, Jr., Lawrence W. Orton Files; War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 books in 70 vols., Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), Ser. 1, Vol. 23, Pt. 2: 398, 424-25, 804: Ser. 2, Vol. 5: 762, 763; Ezra J. Warner, General in Gray (Baton Rouge, La., 1959), 108-9. 5. Joseph Wheeler (1836-1906), a native of Georgia raised in Connecticut, was an 1859 graduate of West Point. He served in New Mexico before the war, and joined the confederacy at Pensacola, Florida. He quickly became colonel of the 19" Alabama Infantry, and by August 1862 commanded a brigade of cavalry. By 1863 he was in charge of all the cavalry in the Army of Tennessee, and remained so until fall 1864. He gave what resistance he could to Sherman’s advance through South Georgia and the Carolinas. After the surrender he settled in Alabama, served in congress for many years, and was a major general of volunteers in Cuba during the Spanish American War of 1898. John P. Dyer, “Fightin Joe” Wheeler (University, La., 1941), 9, 11. 15, 77,23, 33, 49, 153, 202-10, 268, 335, 386.00. 6. Citizens Papers, RG109 (M346, Roll 1080), National Archives, H. M. Watterson rile, 7. Ibid.; Warner, Generals in Gray, 346-47. 8. Citizens Papers (M346, Roll 1080), H. M. Watterson File; Betty M. Majors, comp. & ed., Warren County, Tennessee Cemetery Books (4 vols., Signal Mountain, Tenn., and Evansville, Ind., 1993-99), 4: 66, 171; Warren County, Tennessee 1860 Census (n.p., n.d.), 181, 187, 188; Poore, Congressional Directory, 433. 9. Citizens Papers (M346, Roll 1080), H. M. Watterson File. Nixon (1822-1877), a Mexican War veteran, Lawrenceville, Tennessee, lawyer, and 1857-61 U.S. Land Office registrar at Brownville, Nebraska, commanded the ag" (Nixon’s) Tennessee Infantry. Reed (b. c1833), a Washington, D.C., native and Mississippi resident, at some time associated with the 8" Confederate Cavalry, was Wheeler’s assistant adjutant general. Captured in the Sequatchie Valley October 2, 1863, he was a prisoner for thirteen months. Humes (1830-1882), a Memphis lawyer and Wheeler’s chief of artillery, on November 16, 1863, became a brigadier general of cavalry. Wailes, a Maryland native and citizen of Dallas County, Alabama, as 2™ lieutenant, Company F, 3° Alabama Cavalry, from November 18, 1862, until the end of the war was Wheeler’s aide-de-camp. Helm, a Kentuckian and a brother-in-law to Abraham Lincoln, was killed at Chickamauga, September 20, 1863. Bruce S. Allardice, Confederate Colonels (Columbia, Mo. and London, 2008), 291; Warner, Generals in Gray, 144-45; Generals & Staff Officers (M331, Roll 208), Duff Green Reed File; Compiled Service Records, RG109 (M311, Roll 12), National Archives, William E. Wailes File: Stanley F. Horn, The Army of Tennessee (Norman, Okla., 1953[1941]), 463. 10. Warner, Generals in Gray, 135-36; Byron, Barbara, and Samuel Sistler, Index to the 1880 Census of Middle Tennessee (Nashville, 2000), 401; The Heritage of Warren County, TN (Waynesville, N.C., 2005), 314; Warren County Cemetery Books, 4: 190; Eugene M. Wiseman, The Warren County Story (Franklin, N.C., 1995), 307, 310, 311; Warren County, Tennessee 1860 Census, 166; Tennesseans in the Civil War (2 vols., Nashville, 1964-65), 2: 38. Soon after the war George E. Purvis was 1 mean 4 = ? * SD ee partners with Albert Roberts and Henry Watterson, son of Harvey M., in editing the Nashville Republican Banner. 1 he Heritage of Warren County, TN, 314.