William Giles Harding, owner of Belle Meade Plantation, strongly supported the Confederacy, gave thousands of dollars to help arm Tennessee’s Confederate forces, served on the state’s Military Armaments Committee, and in March 1862 helped Col. Nathan B. Forrest during the evacuation of Nashville by sending 30 wagons of munitions south. After the evacuation, Union commanders took control and arrested leading Confederates, including Harding, who was imprisoned at Fort Mackinaw, Michigan, from April to September 1862. During his absence, his wife, Elizabeth McGavock Harding, ran the plantation and that fall bitterly complained to Military Governor Andrew Johnson that Union forces had removed hundreds of wagon loads of hay, corn, oats, and wheat, requisitioned nearly all her suitable horses for cavalry use, killed and carried away all the poultry, and taken onions, potatoes, and winter vegetables meant to feed a family of 150 persons. The arrival of Union soldiers also reduced the plantation’s enslaved workforce, and Harding said that 22 able-bodied enslaved men had been taken without even a receipt.
