Isham Green Harris, 1857-1862, Democrat.
Harris was born near Tullahoma in 1818. He clerked in a
store and later opened his own business. He studied
law and in 1847 was elected to the state Senate. After
serving that term and two in the state House he was
elected governor in 1857, and re-elected in 1859 and
1861. Under his administration Tennessee seceded
from the Union, the last state to do so. When President
Abraham Lincoln asked for soldiers to force the Confederate states back into the Union, Harris refused. When
Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson military governor
in 1862, Harris, still nominally governor, served on the
staffs of Confederate Generals Albert Sidney Johnston
and Joseph E. Johnston. After the war he fled to Mexico,
then England, returning to serve in Congress for twenty
years. He died in 1897.
Tennessee Blue Book - Available at www.tennessee.gov - Transcribed by, Amanda Jowers
Another Bio
Isham Greene Harris, Governor of Tennessee, 1857-1862, was the son of a Methodist preacher and was born in Franklin county, Tennessee, February 10, 1818. He was educated at Winchester Academy. On leaving school he engaged in the mercantile business and soon made a nice little fortune. A little later he began the study of law [p.140] under his brother, William R. Harris. His success in law was as marked as had been his venture in business. In 1847 he entered politics and was elected to the state senate. From 1849-1853 he represented his district in Congress. In 1853 he moved to Memphis and in 1856 was candidate for elector for State-at-large on the ticket with Buchanan and Breckinridge. In this canvass Harris made a great reputation as a speaker and the year following was elected Governor, defeating Robert Hatton, the Whig candidate. He was re-elected in 1859 and 1861, and was thus Tennessee's war Governor. Under his administration Tennessee seceded from the Union, and raised over 100,000 men for the Confederacy. At the close of the war Harris returned to Memphis and practiced law until 1877, when he was elected to the United States Senate. He served in this capacity for twenty years. He was a man of strong personality. He died at Washington, July 8, 1897, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, and was buried at Memphis.
Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1769-1923, Vol.2
Obituary
Isham G. Harris Dead
The Veteran Tennessee Senator Expires in Washington – His Long and Varied Career
Washington, July 8 – Senator Isham G. Harris, of Tennessee, died at his home in this city a few minutes before 5 o’clock this afternoon. He had been growing constantly weaker for several days past, the intense summer heat which has prevailed greatly debilitating him, and no doubt hastening his end. There were times when he would rally slightly, giving his family hopes that he would be able to regain strength sufficient to be removed from the city, but his vitality had become too much exhausted to withstand the strain. This morning he revived somewhat, but only temporarily. In the afternoon he sank rapidly, and passed away peacefully. There were present at his bedside when death came his son, Edward K. Harris, and the latter’s wife; Representative Benton McMillin, of Tennessee; Miss Polk, a friend from his native State, and the members of the household where the Senator has lived for some time. Another son, Charles H. Harris, not realizing that the end was so near, had left the house a short time before death came. Another son, James E. Harris, living in Tennessee, is expected to arrive in the city tomorrow; and a fourth son, Isham G. Harris, Jr., is now on his father’s ranch and stock farm at Abilene, Tex., and probably will meet the funeral train when it reaches Memphis, where the burial will be made.
Senator Harris was last in the Senate Chamber about ten days ago, but he was unable to stay for any length of time, and had to be taken home in a carriage. In the last six months he had been able to attend to his duties only at intervals, having been away from the city several times endeavoring to recuperate.
Isham Green Harris was born near Tullahoma, Coffee County, Tenn., February 10, 1818. His father was the owner of a sterile farm and a dozen negro slaves. At the age of fourteen Isham went to Paris, Tenn., to take employment as a shop boy. In the following year he went to school, and before he was nineteen years old removed to Tippah County, Miss., where he had success as a merchant. In the mean time he was studying law in his spare moments and at night. In 1841 he was admitted to the bar, and in the same year was elected to the Legislature. His Congress district had a small Democratic majority, but Mr. Harris, put up by the leaders in the caucus as a candidate for Congress to compel the withdrawal of one of two rival candidates, both of whom insisted on running, defeated them and his Whig opponent.
He entered Congress in 1848, and served two terms. At the expiration of the second a renomination was offered to him, but he refused it, and in 1853 settled in Memphis as a lawyer. He continued active in politics. In 1856 he canvassed the State in the Presidential election, and the success of the ticket was attributed largely to him. In 1857 he was elected Governor of Tennessee, and was re-elected in 1859 and in 1861. He took a decided stand for the Southern Confederacy, and was known as one of the Southern war Governors. The vicissitudes of conflict rendered a frequent change of residence necessary, and he was often with the army in the field. He was attached at different times to the staffs of Generals Albert Sydney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, Beauregard and Bragg. Albert Sidney Johnston fell from his horse into Governor Harris’s arms when he received his death wound at Shiloh. After Lee’s surrender Harris was one of a small party of political refugees who escaped to Mexico, going across country on horseback. “Parson” Brownlow, who had become the Military Governor of Tennessee, offered a large reward in a characteristically worded poster for the capture of his predecessor, but the latter remained absent from the country until his return was safe. He remained in Mexico for several months, going thence to England, where he lived until 1867, when he returned to Memphis and resumed the practice of law.
In 1876 Mr. Harris was a Tilden and Hendricks elector, but his appearance on the ticket caused so much adverse comment on his standing as an “unreconstructed rebel” that he resigned. In so doing he wrote a letter defining his views and stating his position. This paved the way for his nomination and election to the United States Senate, which took place in 1876. He was re-elected in 1883, 1889, and 1895. In these years he has had many hard-fought political contests.
When he first went to the Senate, in 1877, there were two Senators to be elected, owing to the death of Andrew Johnson, who had been elected by the previous Legislature. The struggle for the short term was a hard one, James A. Bailey, of Clarksville, finally securing the place, but Senator Harris was elected to the long term without serious opposition. In 1883 Colonel John H. Savage, who had figured in the fight against Harris in 1877, again entered the lists, and shortly before the balloting began expressed himself as sanguine of the nomination. Senator Harris, however, won, the Republicans voting for ex-Governor Alvin S. Hawkins. In 1889 J. D. C. Adkins essayed the task of defeating Harris, members of the Legislature being largely elected on this issue. When the General Assembly met Senator Harris was the victor. In 1895 there was no crystallized opposition, Senator Harris’s name being the only one presented to the Democratic caucus.
Senator Harris had received almost all the honors that the Senate could bestow, “He was president pro tempore in the LIIId Congress, a leading member of the Committees on Finance and Rules and also of the Democratic Advisory, or “steering,” sent the front place on both sides of the chamber on parliamentary questions, and in recent years he had been more frequently heard in expounding these questions than in the elucidation of other subjects. His manner was extremely positive, and he never failed to throw into his statements concerning parliamentary practice the fullest force of which he was capable. His language on these and other occasions was usually so uncompromising that he was regarded by those who did not know him well as a man of little feeling. That, however, was not true, and none are more willing to testify to this than his opponents in the Senate, who unite in attributing to him a warm heart as well as a just spirit and a brilliant mind.
Mr. Harris had not been especially active in the Senate since the passage of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff act in 1894. He was one of the three Democratic Senators to whom the arduous duty of putting the bill in shape in committee was intrusted, and to him was delegated the control of the parliamentary work of getting the bill through the Senate Although a man of advanced years, his energies never seemed to flag. He was at his post of duty day and night, and his opponents who sought to make a legislative point against the bill never caught him napping but once. They adjourned one day earlier than he intended when he was temporarily absent, but he made the incident so disagreeable to friend and foe alike that the worker, and made it a point to be prompt in his attendance at committee meetings whenever able to be at the capital. He was punctilious in observing the rules of the Senate, regarding that body much in the light of a daughter to be cherished and protected.
A Washington View of Mr. Harris, Some of His Characteristics and Incidents of His Long Service in The Senate
Washington, July 8 – One of Senator Harris’s marked peculiarities was the reticence he observed on the subject of his age. He positively declined to give the year of his birth in the brief autobiographical sketch which he furnished for “The Congressional Directory” on his return to Congress in 1877, and which has remained unrevised and unamplified ever since. No questions, however discreetly put, could wring from him the secret which he seemed in his later years to guard with so much zeal; though, of course, it was comparatively easy for those who followed his record back into ante-bellum times to fix his age with undeniable accuracy. Though verging on his eightieth year when he died, he was never classed among the distinctly “old men” of the Senate. Senator Morill, who is only eight years older, and Senators Evarts and Palmer, who are just about his age, almost, seemed to belong to an earlier generation than the fiery Tennesseean, while many of his juniors – men like Edmunds, Sherman, “Matt” Ransom, Reagan (of Texas), Pugh, Morgan and “Joe” Brown (of Georgia) – were always put far ahead of him on the roster of Senatorial patriarchs. Mr. Harris, indeed, carried his years well to the last, and up to six months ago there was little in his manner or appearance to show that he had already overstepped by nearly a decade the three-score-and-ten limit peremptorily set by the Hebrew Psalmist.
Senator Harris’s carriage and bearing had always something precise and military about them. His white mustache stood out as fiercely and menacingly as a French brigadier’s, and his manner was often that of a martinet drillmaster overawing a draft of raw recruits. In debate his peppery qualities were sure to come to the surface at the first provocation, and there was always a rush into the Senate galleries when it was learned that Mr. Harris had come or was about to come into collision with some colleague worthy of his steel. During the fight for the passage of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff bill in 1894, Mr. Harris, who was one of the three Democratic leaders in charge of that measure, took occasion several times to rap sharply at Senator Hill for his factious opposition to the policy of the Democratic Steering Committee. Mr. Hill took the ??? of his venerable colleague for awhile in good part, but finally resentment got the better of the New-York Senator’s urbanity, and he exclaimed angrily:
“Let me tell the gentleman from Tennessee that his display of plantation manners does not terrify me.”
“Nor am I to be terrified.” Retorted Mr. Harris tartly. “By the Bowery bravado of the Senator from New-York.”
Mr. Harris’s oratory was conspicuous for its vehemence and intensity. He spoke with deliberation, but threw into his sentences all the emphasis of which he was capable, so that his talks on the floor of the Senate, generally brief and casual in character, seemed always strikingly crisp and pungent. The Tennessee Senator rarely cared to discuss any other questions than those of parliamentary privilege and order, and in all such disputes his judgment was accepted as wellnigh infallible. He was one of the stanchest upholders of the rule and practice of unlimited debate, and always repelled with scorn the suggestion that the previous question could become a part of the Senate’s parliamentary procedure, except by the free closure plan. This view he expressed from time to time with his accustomed vehemence and extravagance of phrase and gesture. During the fight in 1893 for the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman act he went so far, according to an interview published in “The New York Sun,” as to say that no presiding officer could close debate in the Senate and live. This statement naturally excited a storm of criticism and comment, which Mr. Harris met by explaining that he was misunderstood, having simply meant to say that no presiding officer lived who would attempt to override the Senate rules and apply the previous question by mere force. The Tennessee Senator, unlike some of his Democratic colleagues, remained true to his theory of unrestricted debate to the last. For he was as much opposed to attempting to restrict the liberties of the opposition in 1894, when the Wilson-Gorman bill was under discussion, as in 1891 and 1893, when the Lodge Election bill and the Wilson-Voorhees bill repealing the purchasing clauses of the Sherman act were encountering more stubborn and passionate resistance. Mr. Vest, for instance, who equally with Mr. Harris contended for freedom of debate in 1891 and 1893, found discussion wearisome and unprofitable when directed against the Democratic
Tariff bill of 1894, and incontinently joined Mr. Hill in advocacy of a change of the rules, Mr. Harris, however, was always scrupulous as a parliamentary leader to give the opposition all the rights which when in the minority he had demanded for himself.
One of the so-called Senatorial triumvirate who, through the agency of the Bimetallic League, gained control of the Democratic organizations in enough States to insure a free coinage majority in the National Convention of 1896, Senator Harris, was expected to play a conspicuous role at Chicago last June. Though he came at the head of the Tennessee delegation and sat through the convention he took no active hand in its management. At one of the earliest sessions a Chicago policeman mistook him for an interloper and hustled him out of the hall with violence and dispatch. The shaking-up, though not serious, had a depressing effect pm the aged Senator, and he seemed thereafter to lose interest decidedly in the doings of the pandemonium of W. J. Bryan for the Presidency. Mr. Harris’s last term began on March 4, 1895, and he had still nearly four years of it to serve. He had been a Senator continuously since March 5, 1877, a little over twenty years.
Arrangements For The Funeral
Washington, July 8 – The body of Senator Harris will lie in state in the Marble Room of the Senate on Saturday morning, and in the afternoon funeral services will be held in the Senate chamber. Accompanied by committees of the Senate and House, the body will be taken to Memphis, leaving here after the Senate ceremonies. On Monday the body will lie in state for a few hours at Nashville. The burial will be in Elmwood Cemetery, at Memphis.
New York Herald-Tribune, July 9, 1897 – transcribed by Amanda Jowers
