Carroll Van West

The best reference books make for the best browsing. At least that has been my experience. At the age of ten or eleven, I convinced myself that I would be a well-educated person if I could simply read all twenty of the old red-and-blue volumes of the World Book encyclopedia from cover to cover. Soon I learned that that might be a more challenging task than I had bargained for. Quickly I learned to pick-and-choose. Manitoba and Minotaur, I found, were more interesting entries than mollusks and minimum wages. Cross references may lead one on and on in a chain of readings, and if that should fail, free association or random sampling can hold one’s interest indefinitely. My five children followed faithfully in my footsteps, except that by then the volumes were green-and-white pseudo-leather. But my first son one-upped me. His favorite reading for several years was the Guinness Book of World Records.

Even now, after all these years, I cannot resist books that I catalog simply as B for Browsing, though in other libraries they would more likely be catalogued under R for Reference. In recent years, The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History & Culture, edited by Carroll van West (Rutledge Hill Press, c1998) has topped the chart in my B section.

I am an old Tennessean, who fell in love with Tennessee history when he first hero-worshipped Andy Jackson, “Old Hickory” to his fellow adventurers. Then, a few years later, I learned of the Trail of Tears and swore fealty to Sequoyah and John Ross, even Dragging Canoe. I followed Sam Houston to the Alamo and Thomas Hart Benton to Missouri. Cordell Hull, Estes Kefauver, Howard Baker, and Albert Gore, Jr., persuaded me that the 20th century had its own panoply of Tennessee heroes. Beale Street and the Fugitives and TVA and Oak Ridge kept Tennessee history as exciting and controversial as it had ever been. As an educator, I learned that the Webb School in Bell Buckle had produced the most Rhodes scholars of any prep school during the tenure of its founder W. R. “Sawney” Webb; even more important, the Highlander School in Monteagle had influenced Rosa Park and Septima Clark and the civil rights movement of the 1950s. It was there that “We Shall Overcome” was adopted as its anthem. From my youth I had loved Fall Creek Falls and Lookout Mountain and the Parthenon and the Peabody Hotel in Memphis with that line of live ducks in the lobby. But as a visionary I learned to value Rugby, the Eden of Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s School Days, and to admire the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, whose tours in the US and Europe popularized the spiritual and inspired contributions to save the university.

All of these topics receive the attention they deserve in the Encyclopedia. Of course, I cannot resist reading about places where I have lived, and topics associated with them: for example, Marshall County, its US Dairy Experiment Station and the Walking Horse National Celebration; Henry Horton, Jim Nance McCord, and Buford Ellington (the governors hailing from this county); the nearby Milky Way Farm, established by the Mars (candy) family in 1930; Nathan Bedford Forrest, outstanding Confederate general (“the fustest with the mostest”) and the Ku Klux Klan, of which he was the first Grand Wizard; Johnny Majors of football fame, who played against us in the Duck River Conference; and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, established by the Sears, Roebuck magnate, to finance construction of schools for African American children in the South of the early 20th century.

Even more fun than browsing for the familiar, however, is the discovery of what is wholly unexpected. The Fenian Brotherhood in Nashville produced two major leaders of militant Irishmen seeking independence from England: Thomas J. Kelly who replaced the founder of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood as “Acting Chief of the Irish Republic” in 1866; and John O’Neill led an attack in Canada that captured Fort Erie, an action designed to hold territory hostage, forcing the British to free Ireland.

I grew up with Cumberland Presbyterian churches all around, but only in the Encyclopedia did I learn the sources of their separation from US Presbyterians; that is, their rejection of strict Calvinism, particularly the doctrines of predestination and unconditional election, their focus on frontier revivalism as a means of converting the unsaved, and their confession of the mystery of God’s grace without downplaying the role of human choice in achieving salvation.

Among well-known Tennessee authors, I had always heard of but never investigated Charles Egbert Craddock, who it turned out was Mary Noailles Murfree, a descendant of the family for whom Murfreesboro was named. Her first local-color stories and novels were based on people and settings she became acquainted with at the resort area of Beersheba Springs. After publishing Craddock’s work for seven years (1878-85), Thomas Bailey Aldrich was surprised, indeed he was astonished, to find that M. N. Murphrees, for whom Craddock was the pen name, was an attractive, gentle woman.

My father worked at Oak Ridge when its purpose — even its existence — was still a matter of secrecy. Previously he had helped build Camp Forrest near Tullahoma (named for Nathan Bedford Forrest), an important induction and training center for the US Army during World War II, where 250,000 young men were inducted and where, later in the war, more than 24,000 German prisoners of war were kept under guard. In 1951, my father also made sure that I attended the dedication of the Arnold Engineering Development Center at the same site, at which time President Harry Truman was the keynote speaker. Again a top secret facility, the AEDC was not opened to the public until the end of the Cold War in 1986. In the meantime, work continued in “over 50 aerodynamic and propulsion wind tunnels, rocket and turbine engine test cells, space chambers, arc heaters, and ballistic ranges to simulate flight conditions, from sea level to outer space and from subsonic speeds to over Mach 20. Virtually every modern aircraft’s design, engine and weapons systems, missile, space vehicle, and probe have been tested in the center’s three major test complexes.”

My brother was named for Edward Ward Carmack, a Democratic Congressman and US Senator, who became an ardent prohibitionist and was killed by the son of one of his most impassioned opponents. Not until I read this article in the Encyclopedia, however, did I learn some of the other details of the attack. Fearing an ambush, according to this account, Carmack fired the first shot, wounding the young man whose return fire resulted in Carmack’s instant death. In the aftermath of the “assassination,” the prohibition forces gained enough power that the legislature overwhelmingly passed an act two months later “to ban the sale, manufacture, and consumption of intoxicants.” At the same time, representatives authorized the erection of a statue of Carmack on the capital grounds. It still stands as a memorial to this controversial figure. Prior to his political career, he had graduated with a law degree from Cumberland University (which my wife attended in another era) and edited a number of Tennessee newspapers, including the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. In the Congress he had been a reputable reformer, opposing monopolies and Teddy Roosevelt’s imperialism.

Carmack himself was named for one of Tennessee’s earliest governors, Edward Ward. Looking for an entry on the earlier Ward (and, curiously, not finding one), I noticed a piece on one Nancy Ward, perhaps the most fascinating article I’ve read yet in the Encyclopedia, all of the information totally new to me, for all my years admiring the Cherokee. Ward (1738-1822) was originally named Nanye-hi (a term for the Spirit People of Cherokee religion). Fighting by her husband’s side in a raid on the Creek, she took over upon his death and led the warriors to victory. Thence, she was chosen Agi-ga-u-e, or “Beloved Woman,” a powerful position among the matrilineal Cherokee. Later in life she was instrumental in welcoming white settlers such as James Robertson and John Sevier, warning them of oncoming attacks and saving Lydia Bean, the wife of William Bean, a prominent settler at Watauga and later governor of the territory. Still later she spoke up for peace during treaty negotiations, for a time securing the rights of the Cherokees.

Her second husband was an Englishman from South Carolina, who already had a wife there. Nancy visited him and his family and was welcomed. In her old age, she became known as Granny Ward because of her caretaking of homeless children; she made her living until her death as an innkeeper on the Ocoee River. How could a lover of Tennessee history and Cherokee lore have never been informed of such an important and romantic figure?

Such is the browser’s delight. I think you can see the pleasure browsing this reference work has brought me. Now where are the articles on the original Edward Ward, on Lydia Bean’s husband, William, and on Meriwether Lewis, whose untimely and mysterious death happened on the Natchez Trace? At least they appear in the thorough index, which should lead the faithful browser to several other fascinating entries.… (mais)