History Mystery:

The past is a blast

Bloodshed on Broad Street

By Jennifer Crutchfield

Blood boiled and tempers were raging when Jefferson Davis stopped by Chattanooga’s Crutchfield House. It was the end of January, 1861, and a “procession of secession” had begun among the southern states, increasing tensions in the Deep South.*
The first blood of the Civil War is historically known to have been shed at Fort Sumter, near Charleston, S.C. Yet a book published in 1881 includes a description of a remarkable event that shakes accepted Civil War and Chattanooga history. The tale is one of a city divided, families separated by beliefs, and brothers on both sides of the question of war.
Chattanooga at that time was a bustling town, the flow of people and commerce steady—even as the region prepared for impending war. Tennessee was the last state to secede from the Union, and Chattanooga, with its rivers and railroads, was a hub of activity in an area bursting with tension.
Thomas Crutchfield the elder had come to Chattanooga and by 1839 began to purchase land here, eventually erecting the Cabins, Chattanooga’s first hostelry, in the shadow of the former BlueCross BlueShield headquarters on Pine Street. He brought a family history of fine brick-making and a resume of houses and government buildings constructed from Virginia to Tennessee; among the notable structures he built in Chattanooga were First Presbyterian Church and James Whiteside’s mansion on Cameron Hill.
Thomas set a good example for his children; both he and his sons served their adopted city in elected positions before, during and after the Civil War. In 1847, the family built The Crutchfield House across from the city’s new rail terminal, and it became a thriving center of the bustling city.

Dilemma of a duel denied

The story of the duel that was almost fought between Jefferson Davis and Chattanooga’s William Crutchfield spread like wildfire in the news-hungry papers in those days prior to the outbreak of war. It has been repeated for generations in Chattanooga lore and was the only reference to our city in Paul Johnson’s 1999 tome, History of the American People.
The story goes that Jefferson Davis was rushing to Mississippi after having resigned his Senate seat, hurrying to his expected election as president of the newly forming Confederate States of America. Drawn inexorably to Chattanooga, the funnel of the world, he stopped at the Crutchfield House for respite and was called by citizens to address an assembled crowd.
Retiring after his comments, Davis was swept up in a furor as word came that the Unionist, William Crutchfield, had denounced him as a traitor. In a fiery speech atop a table, fist brandished, Crutchfield had labeled Davis a “future military despot,” refuting Davis’ call to secede. The story accepted as legend has held that his brother, Thomas Crutchfield, a Southern sympathizer himself, pulled William off of the table—and thus narrowly averted the duel that could have changed the course of the Civil War.

First blood makes new history?

Louis Jarrell Dupre, known in print as “the Newspaper Man,” was both a college-educated journalist and a law school graduate. His career included extensive newspaper work before the Civil War, post-war service to President Grover Cleveland and years of experience as a Confederate Army scout, from which he based a book published in 1881.
In a chapter entitled “First Blood Spilled” Dupre reported that during the encounter made legendary at the Crutchfield House, a man named John Vaughn defended Davis’ honor and broke a black bottle over the head of “Bill” Crutchfield, who was then “borne helpless and senseless from the scene of the conflict, shedding the first blood spilled in the war.”
Could this be true? Can there be any new discoveries in the history of a war we thought we knew? In fact, history can be as exciting as the unknown future as long as modern-day investigators—historians, archivists, students, even hobbyists—work to uncover new dimensions of long-held stories. Louis Dupre’s historic reference may have remained unknown had the University of North Carolina not embarked upon a program to digitalize documents from early Southern history.
Internet research reveals logs and records verifying that there was, indeed, a Civil War soldier named John Crawford Vaughn who accompanied Jefferson Davis as he left the Senate for Mississippi. Vaughn was made a brigadier general during the Civil War, was one of the five brigade commanders who took part in the last council of war held by President Davis in Abbeville, S.C., and led the escort guarding Davis at the close of the war.

History with us

Descendants of some key players in this story are still prominent in Chattanooga today. After the Civil War, members of the Crutchfield family continued to lead the city. William Crutchfield became a congressman, Thomas Crutchfield was a mayor and brought agricultural advances to the area, and together the brothers helped establish the First National Bank at the close of the war. Nearly 150 years after the fiery Unionist’s tabletop speech, a new generation of Crutchfields—William, Ward and Tom—all are attorneys in Chattanooga.
And the Crutchfield House? During the Civil War it was the first building in Chattanooga to be occupied by Union troops that eventually overtook the city. While it survived the war, serving as a military hospital, it burned to the ground in 1867. Four years later, a doctor named John Read built a new hotel on the site. The Read House, since then rebuilt and renovated, stands at the corner of Broad and 8th Streets—a stately reminder of the duel that almost was.