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Scott County’s declaration of war on Germany
If Scott County has a legacy defined by its past, it would be one of stubborn independence. It dates back to the Civil War. When Tennessee voted to secede from the Union in 1861, Scott County — which had voted against secession by the largest margin of any county in the state — voted to secede from Tennessee, declaring itself the Free and Independent State of Scott. But the fierce defiance didn’t end there. More than 50 years later, as war was raging in Europe and Scott Countians were being drafted to help fight that war, Scott County’s leaders passed their own resolution declaring war on Germany.
Background
Following decades of tension, war erupted in Europe in the summer of 1914, after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. Austria, with support from Germany, issued an ultimatum to Serbia, and ultimately declared war on July 28, 1914.
Nearly all of Europe was immediately pulled into the conflict, with Russia mobilizing to protect Serbia, which led to Germany declaring war on Russia, then on France. When German forces invaded Belgium — which was neutral in the fight — to reach France, Britain entered the war against Germany. Within weeks, the great powers of Europe were split into two camps: the Allies and the Central Powers.
The United States was initially neutral, with President Woodrow Wilson insisting that America should be “impartial in thought as well as in action.” But as the war proceeded, the U.S.’s neutrality was steadily eroded. German used U-boats to sink merchant ships bound from the U.S. to Britain, and in January 1917 British intelligence intercepted a secret German message proposing an alliance with Mexico if the U.S. entered the war. Germany was promising to return Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico. Finally, in April 1917, Wilson went to Congress and said “the world must be made safe for democracy.” Congress formally declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917.
By mid 1918, more than two million U.S. soldiers were fighting in Europe, including dozens of Scott Countians. Their arrival helped tip the balance of the war in favor of the Allies, leading to Germany’s collapse.
Anger in Scott County
The Zimmerman Telegram — Germany’s secret message proposing an alliance with Mexico — may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the overarching cause that pulled America into the fight was Germany’s unrestricted submarine attacks against American merchant ships.
On April 1, 1918, Scott County officials gathered at the Scott County Courthouse in Huntsville — the same place where they had gathered to declare their independence from Tennessee in 1861. As had been the case at the earlier meeting, Scott County proclaimed its support for the American government. But this time, it went further by unloading on Germany with a double-barrel dose of rhetoric.
The meeting, chaired by Scott County Judge William Henry “W.H.” Potter, resulted in a resolution being passed. It read like this:
It is meet that the people of Tennessee should this day assemble in their several County Seats, and take counsel in respect to the world’s crisis now on, and in which, in the providence of God, we are to act our part. We are a peace loving people, and follow those pursuits that lead to high ideals; to temperance, justice and the right. If permitted, we seek no conquest by the sword, nor at the cannon’s mouth, nor by tramping armies; rather, we prefer to furrow the fields, to grow and gather in the fruitage of the soil; to burrow the mountains and compel nature to surrender the gifts of her store house. We love industrial development that gives employment to labor rather than blood-stained battle fields.
Here one hundred millions of people, remote from the jealousies and contentions of Europe, and acknowledging no earthly master, follow the callings of their own choosing. But this was not to be always. Autocratic power envied our prosperity, denied our right to navigate the high seas and distribute the products of field, furnace, factory and shop in the marts of the world. Nay, it went further, and inhibited our ships from passing into or through a certain zone at their peril. Whence came such authority? Not from heaven, since the sea was made for man and nations by which to exercise commercial relations each with the other; not from the law of nations, since by that law such right has existed and been exercised from the beginning of time; not by the laws of war, since we were at peace with all the world; not by authority of the Reichtag, because no such authority was inherent in it. Then whence came such power? The answer is, from the Kaiser himself, a self constituted autocrat, which claims to wear his crown as the gift of God. as a nation and people, we deny his pretensions and assumptions. He has no powers save those he and his ancestors have wrung from the people by intrigue and by oppression.
Here is a so called prince run mad with autocratic power that seeks to dominate our country by inhibiting our right to the freedom of the seas. If he does so, we are no longer a free people, nor can we exercise a soverign (sic) right inherent in and common to all nations.
The die is cast — we make war to uphold and exercise this natural right, and appeal to the “God of Battles” as Arbiter in the contest now on.
Germany seeks world power, and to dominate both land and sea. For fifty years she has made preparation for a world war. Where diplomacy fails she has threatened and bullied, she has entered conferences for peace, while she prepared for war. She has broken her word and violated her treaties without remorse of conscience.
To illustrate: In the Hague Convention of 1907 she agreed to certain definite rules of war — among them were
1. No employment of deleterious gasses,
2. No bombardment of unfortified towns,
3. No pillaging,
4. No levying of illegal contributions in occupied territory,
5. No seizure of funds belonging to private persons,
6. No collective penalties for individual acts (prohibiting shooting of hostages.)
7. No terrorization of a country by outrages on its civil inhabitants. Every one of these provisions has been deliberately violated.The catalog of crime has been exhausted by her soldiery in Belgium and France. She has made slaves of the boys and girls and older men and women. In short, she has carried them into foreign lands, there to serve in field and shop, as so many slaves — without a word from the Kaiser in opposition. She has permitted nameless crimes to be committed against the purity of womanhood, and sunk them into the abysm of despair, with hope gone out forever.
Rape, robbery, larceny and murder of both sexes, old and young, has been allowed to run their course without restraint or palliation, — a very hell of blackness and desolation has been committed in the name of German Kultur.
Words fail to express our censure of the murder of Edith Cavell, an English woman of the Red Cross, — because she aided a young Belgian in making his excape (sic) through the line to his people. More than 700 women and children have been killed in London, besides men by bombs of flying zepperline, in controvention of Germany’s agreement before set out. But this is not all: She has laid tribute upon the people and citizens within the occupied territory of both France and Belgium, and compelled payment at the point of the bayonet, and when provisions have been sent from our own land to feed the starving, she has permitted her soldiers to appropriate the major part.
Germany has done even more, — she has entered into an alliance with the cruel Turk, (for a consideration) to fight her battles, and has permitted him unrestrained to deport the Christian Armenians from their own country and corral them as so many beasts of burden, in a strange land of the Turk’s choosing, subjecting them to unsanitary conditions and other brutalities not mentionable, — where they have died by the thousands, thus wiping out practically a race of people that were christians in the days of the Apostles.
Yea more, she has sunk our ships and murdered our fellow citizens, men, women and children, in mid ocean, and in watery graves has given their bodies as food for the fishes that inhabit the mighty deep.
Cruel, relentless Turk! Brutal, savage Hun! When will their crimes upon the innocent receive just and proper retribution? — When the boys in khaki meet their armies on the gory field and try the quarrel hilt to hilt, then and not ’till then will retribution come.
A word more. Much has been said of peace, and the terms of peace. Mr. Taft has recently said: ‘We cannot make progress by further debate with Germany and Austria — Blows are the only argument now possible to win permanent peace.’
The Prime Minister of Great Britain knows of no way ‘by which we can make peace without betraying the great and sacred trust for which we entered the war.’
The voice of labor, speaking through Mr. Gompers, says: ‘You can’t talk peace with us now, either you smash your autocracy, or, by the gods, we will smash it for you. Before you talk peace terms, get back from France, get back from Belgium into Germany and then we will talk peace.’
The supreme war council of the allies meeting at Versailles has recently said: ‘Peace is loudly advertised, but under the disguise of verbal professions lurks the brutal realities of war, and the untempered rule of the lawless — *** We are fighting and mean to continue fighting, in order to finish once and for all with this policy of plunder, and to establish in its place the peaceful reign of organized justice.’
And supplementing this thought your committee say, speaking for our county of Scott: ‘Whip Germany and peace afterwards.’
Therefore in view of the premises, be it received:
(1) That we pledge anew our unfaltering loyalty to our Government, now and hereafter, in the war against Germany and her allies, to the end that the right commence and travel on the high seas may remain free to us and our children forever.
“(2) That our sons shall answer every call to the colors, with assurance that they will acquit themselves like men in the line of duty and in the hour of battle.
“(3) That we will in so far as our means and capabilities permit, give our time, our energies and our money, to carry the war to a successful end.
(4) That if need be, we favor not only thousands, but millions to constitute our armies, to the end that a force be organized and equipped to crush the Hun and his allies as Washington did the Hessians at Trenton, and win the war, to the further and that a lasting, enduring and speedy peace be ours.
(5) We condemn Germany and her allies for bringing on the war, and for the wrong and brutality they have committed in its persecution.
(6) We extend to France and Belgium our sympathies for the desolation wrought in their respective countries, and demand of the Central Powers heavy indemnities by way of remuneration.
(7) We demand indemnity for sinking our ships, and murdering our people on the high seas, as well the expenses of the war.
Scott County’s cost in the war
Dozens of Scott Countians were sent to Europe to fight in the war. Twenty of them would not return home. Twelve were killed in action. Eight more died non-combatant deaths during or just after the war.
No Scott Countian had been killed in the fight when Scott County leaders met in Huntsville on April 1, 1918. Huffman Davis, a 26-year-old Winfield man, had been accidentally shot and killed at a U.S. Army base in Campbell County, Ky. just outside Cincinnati while training for the war in September 1917. And Jasper York, a 26-year-old man from Bull Creek, had died of the Spanish flu while training at Camp Greene in Charlotte, N.C. in February 1918.
But tragedy was looming. In July 1918, as the fighting heated up in Europe, a few Scott Countians fell. In the final month of the war — October 1918 — the fighting became especially fierce, and it was the deadliest month of the war for Scott Countians in the fight. But it was a success, as Germany’s strength was broken, and the armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918 to bring an end to the fight.
Here is the complete list of Scott Countians who died in World War I (with “N” denoting non-combat deaths):
William Blevins
William Brown
Huffman Davis – N
John W. Fletcher
Guy D. Fryar – N
James Gibson – N
Robert M. Hughett
Elsic Lawson – N
Hugh T. Lewallen
Clovis Jeffers
Lawrence Phillips
Onva Phillips – N
Hett Phillips
Lonus Reed
Fred Sexton – N
Mitchel Sexton – N
Jesse Slaven
Sherman Stanley
Edson L. Toomey
Jasper York – N
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◼️ Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
◼️ Tuesday: Echoes in Time (stories of our history)
◼️ Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
◼️ Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
◼️ Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
◼️ Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)
Hello Ben, this is my second week on Substack, and I’m trying to connect with more interesting minds, so I thought I’d comment!
I write about history with a philosophical edge, drawing mainly from old books and architectural studies.
Here’s one of my recent pieces on star forts, if you’re curious:
https://open.substack.com/pub/jordannuttall/p/star-forts-and-cymatics?r=4f55i2&utm_medium=ios