Representative Felix Kirk Zollicoffer

Felix Kirk Zollicoffer (May 19, 1812 – January 19, 1862) was an American newspaperman, slave owner, politician, and soldier. A three-term United States Representative from Tennessee, an officer in the United States Army, and later a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War, he led the first Confederate invasion of eastern Kentucky and was killed in action at the Battle of Mill Springs. Zollicoffer was the first Confederate general to die in the Western Theater.

Zollicoffer was born on a plantation in Bigbyville, Maury County, Tennessee, the son of John Jacob Zollicoffer and Martha (Kirk) Zollicoffer. He was descended from Swiss emigrants who had settled in North Carolina in 1710. His grandfather, George Zollicoffer, served as a captain in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and received a tract of land in Tennessee as payment for his military service, helping to establish the family in the region. Raised in a slaveholding household in Middle Tennessee, Felix Zollicoffer attended local schools and then studied for a year at Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee, before leaving formal education at the age of sixteen.

In 1828 Zollicoffer became an apprentice printer and entered the newspaper trade in Paris, Tennessee, where he worked until 1830. After that paper closed, he moved to Knoxville in 1831 and spent two years as a journeyman printer at the Knoxville Register. By the mid-1830s he had advanced rapidly in the profession: he became editor and part owner of the Columbia Observer and, in 1835, was elected State Printer of Tennessee. On September 24, 1835, he married Louisa Pocahontas Gordon, daughter of Captain John Gordon, who had fought alongside Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend and Pensacola. Through her mother, Dolly, she was a direct descendant of Pocahontas. The couple had fourteen children, of whom only six survived infancy. Louisa Zollicoffer died in 1857.

Zollicoffer’s early career combined journalism, public service, and intermittent military experience. He edited the Mercury for a time in Huntsville, Alabama, and in 1836 volunteered for service in the Tennessee militia during the Second Seminole War in Florida, where he held the rank of second lieutenant. Returning to Tennessee, he resumed his newspaper work, becoming owner and editor of the Columbia Observer and the Southern Agriculturist. In 1843 he assumed the editorship of the Nashville Republican Banner, the state organ of the Whig Party, which brought him into close contact with leading Whig politicians and helped launch his political career. He served as Comptroller of the State Treasury of Tennessee from 1845 to 1849 and also held the post of adjutant general of the state. From 1849 to 1852 he was a member of the Tennessee State Senate, and in 1852 he served as a delegate to the Whig National Convention, where he supported General Winfield Scott for the presidency.

Zollicoffer entered national politics in 1853. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-third Congress and then reelected as a member of the American Party (Know Nothings) to the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1853, to March 3, 1859. As a member of the American Party representing Tennessee, he contributed to the legislative process during three terms in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during a period of mounting sectional tension in the 1850s. His first congressional campaign was marked by a violent political culture; he fought a duel with the editor of the rival Nashville Union newspaper. In Congress he aligned with Southern Whigs and American Party members who sought to preserve the Union while defending states’ rights and slavery. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1858 and retired to private life, but remained politically active, supporting fellow Tennessee moderate John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party for president in the election of 1860.

As the secession crisis deepened following Abraham Lincoln’s election, Zollicoffer emerged as a prominent Southern Unionist within Tennessee. In early 1861 he served as a delegate to the Washington Peace Conference, an eleventh-hour effort to avert civil war. A strong supporter of states’ rights, he nevertheless opposed Tennessee’s immediate secession from the Union. In February 1861 Tennessee voters rejected a call for a secession convention, but Governor Isham G. Harris soon maneuvered the state toward separation. On May 6, 1861, the Tennessee General Assembly adopted a “Declaration of Independence and Ordinance,” to be submitted to the voters on June 8, along with a separate measure on joining the Confederacy if independence were approved. Even before the popular vote, Harris had entered into a military alliance with the Confederacy and began organizing the Provisional Army of Tennessee.

Upon the formation of the Provisional Army of Tennessee in the spring of 1861, Zollicoffer offered his services to the state. Despite having only brief combat experience from the Second Seminole War, he was appointed a brigadier general in the Provisional Army of Tennessee on May 9, 1861, by Governor Harris. On July 9, 1861, he was commissioned a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. Because the Confederate government did not complete the absorption of the Provisional Army of Tennessee until late October, Zollicoffer spent nearly four months as a Confederate general in command of state troops not yet formally mustered into Confederate service. Initially, Harris attempted to manage the largely pro-Union population of East Tennessee with a relatively lenient policy and a small garrison. On July 26, 1861, he ordered Zollicoffer, with about 4,000 raw recruits, to Knoxville to command the District of East Tennessee and to be in position to suppress resistance to secession. After Harris’s reelection as governor on August 8, 1861, he shifted from leniency to coercion and directed Zollicoffer on August 18 to arrest and, if necessary, banish leaders of pro-Union factions from the state.

Seeking to prevent a Union incursion into East Tennessee, Zollicoffer took the initiative on September 14, 1861, by occupying Cumberland Gap, a key mountain pass. He was charged with guarding roughly 128 miles of Confederate line between Cumberland Gap and Tompkinsville, Kentucky, including 71 miles across the rugged Cumberland Mountains. On September 15, 1861, General Albert Sidney Johnston assumed command of Confederate forces in the Western Theater and retained Zollicoffer as district commander in East Tennessee. Zollicoffer soon pushed into southeastern Kentucky. On September 17 he sent a force through Cumberland Gap along the Wilderness Road to drive Union troops from Barbourville, Kentucky, relieve pressure on the Confederate line at Bowling Green, and thwart an anticipated advance by Union Brigadier General George H. Thomas toward East Tennessee. On September 19, 1861, about 800 of his men under Colonel Joel Battle routed a small Union home guard force at the minor Battle of Barbourville. Additional detachments under Colonels James Rains and D. H. Cummings dispersed Union recruits at Laurel Bridge, Kentucky, and seized 200 barrels of salt at the Goose Creek Salt Works. These operations were essentially raids, and Zollicoffer soon withdrew.

In mid-October 1861 Zollicoffer marched a large part of his command about 40 miles from Cumberland Gap to London, Kentucky. At the Battle of Wildcat Mountain on October 21, his largely untrained troops were checked by a well-positioned Union force fighting from strong defensive ground, forcing him to retreat back into East Tennessee, where Unionist sentiment remained strong. In November he altered his strategy, advancing westward and then back into southeastern Kentucky to strengthen Confederate control south of Somerset. He hoped to place his force so that it could be reinforced from Bowling Green and drive Thomas’s Union troops from the region. Before moving west, he left detachments to guard Cumberland Gap and three other approaches into East Tennessee. Zollicoffer then established an encampment at Mill Springs, Kentucky, near present-day Nancy, on the south bank of the Cumberland River. By December 6 he had shifted his main force to the north bank at Beech Grove, believing this position would better support his supply line, allow construction of fortifications, and enable closer observation of Thomas’s movements. The move was risky: his men were poorly equipped, ill-trained, and ill-disciplined, and many potential reinforcements in Tennessee remained unarmed.

Throughout December 1861 Zollicoffer’s position deteriorated. Short of supplies and with few reserves, he was unable to take offensive action against the growing Union threat. On December 20 he did not respond to a probing movement by Brigadier General Albin F. Schoepf, who hoped to draw the Confederates into a vulnerable engagement. Colonel William H. Carroll did not leave Knoxville with his brigade to reinforce Zollicoffer until January 16, 1862, and ultimately brought only a single regiment to Mill Springs, having been ordered to send the rest of his men to Bowling Green. Unaware of the weakness of Confederate forces in East Tennessee and of Zollicoffer’s precarious situation, President Jefferson Davis had already appointed Major General George B. Crittenden on December 8, 1861, to command the District of East Tennessee and lead an offensive into Kentucky. When Crittenden arrived, he found far fewer troops than expected and retained Zollicoffer as commander of the 1st Brigade. On December 15 Zollicoffer reported that Thomas had ten regiments under his command. Crittenden, lingering at Knoxville for two weeks, ordered Zollicoffer to withdraw to the south side of the Cumberland River, but with the river swollen and only two rafts available, Zollicoffer remained at Beech Grove on the north bank.

The campaign culminated in the Battle of Mill Springs, also known as the Battle of Fishing Creek or the Battle of Logan’s Crossroads. On January 1, 1862, Thomas began moving from Lebanon, Kentucky, to join Schoepf’s troops near Somerset, a march slowed to eighteen days by incessant rain and mud. Crittenden arrived at Mill Springs on January 2 and decided to strike Thomas’s force before it could fully unite with Schoepf. Although the approximately 6,500 Confederates might have held their fortifications, Crittenden chose to attack in the open. Shortly after midnight on January 18–19, 1862, he ordered an advance while the Union forces were still separated by the rain-swollen Fishing Creek. Zollicoffer led the first brigade toward Logan’s Crossroads, with Carroll’s brigade following. After an eight-mile march in driving rain, Zollicoffer’s skirmishers engaged Union pickets about a mile south of the crossroads, and a confused three-hour battle ensued over thickly wooded ground in rain, fog, and heavy smoke. Many Confederates wore blue or grayish-blue uniforms, contributing to misidentification on the field.

During the fighting, the 15th Mississippi Infantry Regiment mistook the blue-clad Union 4th Kentucky Infantry Regiment for friendly troops. In the confusion, the near-sighted Zollicoffer, wearing a conspicuous white raincoat, rode forward and inadvertently entered the lines of the 4th Kentucky. Believing he was addressing Confederate soldiers, he began discussing the misalignment of the lines with Colonel Speed S. Fry of the Union regiment. Accounts differ on the exact sequence of events, but as a Confederate aide rode up and fired on the Union troops, Union soldiers returned fire. Zollicoffer, turning to ride away, was shot and killed. Some contemporaries and later historians, including Larry J. Daniel, credit Fry personally with firing the fatal shot, while others suggest that Fry and several of his men fired almost simultaneously. Historian Stuart W. Sanders has examined the incident in detail, noting that both officers rode out from their lines and that Fry initially mistook Zollicoffer for a Union officer before recognizing him and firing. Zollicoffer’s death, combined with the failure of many old Confederate flintlock muskets to fire in the wet conditions, contributed to the collapse of Confederate morale. Thomas launched a flank attack with six regiments, breaking the Confederate line and driving it back to Beech Grove. That night Crittenden evacuated his remaining troops across the Cumberland River using a small steamboat and a few barges, abandoning artillery, mules, equipment, and most of the army’s food supply and severely damaging Confederate ordnance and logistical capabilities in the region.

Federal officials treated Zollicoffer’s remains with respect. His body was embalmed by a Union surgeon and later returned to Tennessee, where he was interred in the Old City Cemetery in Nashville. His death removed one of the most prominent Tennessee moderates who had cast his lot with the Confederacy and marked a significant early Union victory in the Western Theater. In later years, his role in the defense of East Tennessee and his death at Mill Springs became part of regional Civil War memory. Near Nancy, Kentucky, Zollicoffer Park, a Confederate cemetery containing a mass grave of Confederate soldiers killed in the battle, commemorates the engagement and its fallen. The park hosts at least two memorial events each year, on January 19 and on Memorial Day, and has been the site of periodic reenactments of the Battle of Mill Springs. Nearby, Mill Springs National Cemetery, a Union cemetery, is one of the oldest national cemeteries still receiving burials, other than Arlington National Cemetery.