A Message from the CEO

Spring 2025

We are now just a year away from the 250th anniversary of the publication and release of the Declaration of Independence, the document that is part of the literal foundation of the United States, and our moral charter. Eighty-years later, a divided country, grappling with whether natural born “equality” was actually “self-evident,” and plagued by the moral, political, and monetary entanglements of slavery and its expansion, plunged headlong into civil war. In the spring of 1865, while moldering bodies still lay in shallow graves south of Franklin, Tennessee, the war ended. The Union had been preserved, and African slavery was to be terminated by constitutional amendment in the months to come. However, other insidious pitfalls and battles were lurking…

Sometimes it is remarkable to consider how the country has managed to endure for two and a half centuries, especially when one reflects on how perilously close the Union came to collapse between 1861 and 1865.

I encourage everyone to think differently about the post-war period. We did not really reconcile in any meaningful way for many, many years. That is a romantic vision that makes us feel better about what happened. The bravery and dedication of many blacks and whites, dedicated to the principles of Reconstruction and real civil rights for all, based in true equality, have too long been ignored. But like a Greek tragedy, the decency and dignity of some was opposed, and often by violence, at the hands of others who refused to accept the outcome of the war as anything other than a temporary setback. Wrapped up in all of it were layers of apathy.

Middle Tennessee was a smoldering bed of trouble throughout much of 1867 and 1868. Not long after the war, all white men over the age of 21 in Tennessee who supported the Confederacy or had been disloyal to the United States were barred from voting. In February 1867, the State General Assembly gave the right to vote to black men over the age of 21. The reaction was immediate and ugly, and the Ku Klux Klan was born.

I want to share with you some excerpts from a book that will be published later this year, which will detail some of this history. When one asks about or discusses “Southern” history or “Tennessee” history, this is part of it:

By December, it was widely known a “secret order” was “all over Maury and Giles counties.” A Columbia account said there was “general and undefined dread among the negroes” about the Klan. Another told of the “unbroken silence” maintained by Klansmen while “on parade,” and how they all dressed in “long red gowns, red pants and red caps, with black face-cloths covering their features.” On Christmas Day a gathering of black men in the Columbia square led to two men “disguised and dressed in red” showing up on South Main Street. Rumors spread about the impending arrival of the Klan, and the crowd dispersed. No one else in disguise showed up, but the idea alone served its own purpose.


Among those targeted was Henry Eddy in Spring Hill. He had served in Co. E, 95th Illinois Infantry, and since September 1865 had run a Freedmen’s Bureau school. He started with “39 scholars” in a barn about a mile south of town, and by early 1866, there were over 100 students - five adult males, seven adult females, forty-five male children, and fifty female children. The former soldier did his best to teach people, mostly former slaves, to read and write, along with other skills, while the ringing effects of poverty, low wages, and crop problems lingered as day-to-day issues. Then there was the Klan.

On April 21, 1867, Eddy’s home came under attack. It is no coincidence this was at the same time the Klan was first making itself known. While Eddy was “at church” that evening a “large rock came into the house with great force.” He said his family “was very much frightened” and rumors quickly spread that Eddy had been killed “by a mob...” U. S. troops were sent to Spring Hill from Nashville as a result. Eddy wrote, “As long as we were suffering insult by word and look we thought we would bear it but it seemed too much to have rocks flying through our windows among our children.”

The psychological warfare did not stop. In early 1868, Eddy wrote, “The Kuklux have caused us some anxiety - aside from that everything has been quiet. There was a debt on the school house and it has all been removed by the colored people.” A few weeks later he said, “Freedmen all busy but little idleness - scarcely any drunkenness. Every think (sic) quiet. The KKK’s fill the colored people with fear but there has, as yet been no disturbance.” In a letter to a friend, he said the Klan “have sent me notice to leave...threatening to hang me if I do not go.” He would not break and added, “I believe God will take care of us, and if any of us should fall it will serve to open the eyes of the people and thereby work good.”

The strength of those formerly enslaved, and men like Henry Eddy, is remarkable. Even in early 1866, long before there was a Ku Klux Klan, Eddy reported violence at the hands of angry whites. In February of that year, he reported “the windows of the colored school house were broken to pieces and the building otherwise injured.” He ended by writing, “God forbid that the spirit of rebellion, at this late day, should destroy all the means these poor people have of elevating themselves.”

In recent years there has been much debate about Confederate monuments, race, “erasing” history, and what it all means. Perhaps it is time to recognize, and rightfully admire, people like Henry Eddy, who was simply trying to teach children. Perhaps it is time to look at Anna Bunch, who was born a slave and later lived and worked at Rippa Villa, and acknowledge her humanity and her place in the American story. Perhaps it is time to recognize that Tennessee is critically important in the history of the United States and that its history helps us all to better understand who we were and who we are.

Perhaps it is time to recognize that many heroes from our past have names we have never heard. Perhaps it is time to embrace and understand our past difficulties to give us a better appreciation of how tenuous real liberty, equality, and justice often are.

Perhaps it is time to admit the South did not lose the Civil War, but the Confederacy did. The South, like Tennessee, has always been more than 1861-1865.

Perhaps it is time to remember that we are so very fortunate to live in the United States, a country born of revolution, one that stared down an internal rebellion and fought “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” and a government of the people that is still maturing, growing, changing, and developing.

Lastly, I am unashamed to say that I love my country. The more I learn about our past only deepens my affection. We are fortunate to live in a modern time, which only exists because of those who sacrificed to defend the country at its moments of greatest peril, and quiet Americans who stood up for themselves and others during times of great strife.

Eric A. Jacobson
Chief Executive Officer
The Battle of Franklin Trust