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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''.〔William G. Brownlow, ''Sketches of the Rise, Progress and Decline of Secession'' (Philadelphia: G.W. Childs, 1862), pp. 271-285, 297-313.〕 ==Background== 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.〔David Madden, "Unionist Resistance to Confederate Occupation: The Bridge Burners of East Tennessee," East Tennessee Historical Society ''Publications'', Vols. 52-53 (1980-1981), pp. 22-40.〕 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.〔Eric Lacy, ''Vanquished Volunteers: East Tennessee Sectionalism from Statehood to Secession'' (Johnson City, Tenn.: East Tennessee State University Press, 1965), pp. 122-126.〕 Tennessee as a whole voted to secede from the Union in a referendum held on June 8, 1861, but nearly two-thirds of East Tennesseans rejected the referendum and remained sympathetic to the Union.〔 At the Greeneville session (June 17–20) of the East Tennessee Convention, the region's Unionist leaders condemned secession and petitioned the Tennessee General Assembly to allow East Tennessee to become a separate state and remain in the Union. The legislature rejected the petition, and Governor Isham Harris ordered Confederate forces under General Felix K. Zollicoffer into East Tennessee.〔Larry Whiteaker, (Civil War ). ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: 25 January 2011.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「East Tennessee bridge burnings」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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