Heart of Controversy

Heart of Controversy. Bethlehem United Methodist Church. In 1861, as the secession debate raged across Tennessee, Mary Catherine Sproul taught school here on the church grounds. She was excited to learn that pro-Union leader Horace Maynard would give a speech in Livingston. Then she overheard local secessionists claim they would “riddle his hide” if Maynard spoke. Sproul, shocked, wondered aloud to her students whether their parents were not “heathens and cutthroats? Surely a civilized nation will never tolerate such a course. My God! Are you going to prohibit the freedom of speech in this free, enlightened and blood bought land?” Residents branded Sproul a “Lincolnite,” and longtime friends abandoned her. Others threatened her, and a man offered to tighten the noose if local women decided to hang her. The secessionists prevented Maynard from giving his speech. Sproul’s school somehow continued, but she wrote that students were “casting reproachful glances at me as though I had committed a terrible crime.”, Alvin Cullom, a local leader who was a Tennessee delegate at the unsuccessful Washington Peace Conference that met in February 1861, is buried in the cemetery. Former President John Tyler of Virginia led the conference, which submitted a compromise plan to the Senate, where it was ignored., Sam Cullom, a slave who belonged to Alvin Cullom, is also buried here. Sam Cullom accompanied his owner’s son, Jim, during the Civil War. Decades later, Cullom was among the 280 Tennesseans who applied for and received a state pension under a 1921 law to support former slaves “who served as servants and cooks in the Confederate army.”, (Inscription under the photo on the lower left side) , Horace Maynard, 1859-Courtesy Library of Congress., (Inscription under the photo on the lower right side) , Peace Conference, Washington, D.C., February 1861, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 16, 1861