Fighting Bushwhackers

In 1861, Mountain City was known as Taylorsville and had served as the seat of Johnson County since 1836. Like other mountain areas, Johnson County strongly supported the Union. Late in 1862, Confederate authorities sent officers to Taylorsville to force all white men between the ages of 18 and 40 years who were subject to conscription to join the army, with mixed results. Confederate supporters remained under constant threat, and as late as October 1864 a group of Taylorsville secessionists asked Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge for support against bands of robbers and bushwhackers who were obstructing the public road, robbing Southern men, killing them, and threatening to drive them from the county. The requested help never came, and instead the Union army arrived. By April 1865, within days of Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in Virginia, Federal authorities posted the First U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery, 420 men, and the Fourth Tennessee Infantry, 544 men, at Taylorsville. The presence of so many African American soldiers stood out in a county where relatively few slaves had lived. The most prominent Civil War leader associated with Johnson County and Taylorsville was Union Lt. Col. R.R. Butler, who organized and commanded the 13th Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry and later served as a U.S. congressman. His large Italianate-style house, completed about 1871, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The best-known postwar incident associated with Taylorsville was the capture of Thomas C. Dula in 1866. Dula, who had served in the 42nd North Carolina Infantry, was charged with murdering Laura Foster. While trying to escape arrest he made his way to Johnson County, where a posse captured him in Taylorsville and returned him to North Carolina for trial. He was executed in 1868, and his story later became famous in the folk song "Tom Dooley."

Mountain City, Tennessee · United States