When the war began, residents of the Upper Cumberland Plateau were divided in their loyalties, and in Cumberland County the numbers of Confederate and Union enlistments were about equal. Some Confederate supporters joined Co. B, Hamilton’s Tennessee Cavalry Battalion, and Co. A and Co. B, 28th Tennessee Infantry, while many Unionists enlisted in Capt. Robert C. Swan’s Co. D, 2nd Tennessee Infantry. Confederate training camps included McGinnis in Fentress County and Myers and Zollicoffer in Overton County, while Union recruits trained at Camp Dick Robinson in Kentucky. Eldridge Myatt, a 65-year-old former member of the state legislature who had introduced the bill forming Cumberland County, served in the Confederate army, was captured at the Battle of Lookout Mountain in 1863, and died in prison in 1864. Azariah Dorton, who enlisted in August 1861, dodged Confederate pickets to reach Union training by taking a 200-mile route through the mountains that took some sixteen days. The war split some Cumberland County families apart forever: Elizabeth S. Ford divorced her husband, Christopher Ford, when he enlisted with the Confederacy, leading to a long custody battle over their two daughters and violence between their families. After the war, Tennesseans faced the challenge of reconciling their differences and rebuilding their communities, a task made especially difficult in the Upper Cumberland Plateau by the vicious, personal nature of the wartime violence they had experienced.