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I don’t thing that bunch described in the link is very much to be admired. The mountains were filled with such troublers of the peace of a region that had limited sympathy with the Confederacy and the illegal secession process that took Tennessee out of the Union. The best thing that can be said about gangs like that is that they helped Union recruitment in Tennessee and made the public that much more happy to see the arrival of the Union army.

You would be very surprised how much sympathy CSA had in that area. East Tennessee had plantations even in the very county a lot of this occured in. Also from that area came a Confederate General who on a Battle Field even showed up his commander Braxton Bragg. Rather than promote him or thank him for a highly sucessful victory Bragg court martialed him. These people were known as Mountain Rebels. They were very tough and very skilled fighters.

The man mentioned in that article I linked Col Thomas? I haven't been able to pin it all down as far as genealogy goes but I'm pretty well sure his earlier uncles and cousins helped first establish Sevier county in the 1700's.

There were pockets of secessionist sentiment like Sullivan County, but even in the second rubber stamp election, the margin was 69-31 against secession. After years of Confederate misrule I suspect the pro-Unionist margin was even larger by the time the liberators in blue evicted reb rule.

That whole Tennessee secession site you linked is slanted to only the reb point of view and ignores the legitimate complaints that a significant segment of the whole state had against rebel practices of the time. It is as if the reb manipulator Isham Harris himself, the subverter of the expressed will of the people, was in charge of the site.