en sharply divided politically, and with
few exceptions that alignment held. Those who were Union sympathizers
went north into Kentucky and joined the Federal forces, and those on the
side of the South went for enlistment in the armies of the Confederacy.
The men who remained at home were compelled by public sentiment to take
sides, and the bitterest of feeling was engendered. The raids of passing
soldiers was the excuse for the organization, by both sides, of bands
who claimed they were "Home Guards"--the Federals under "Tinker" Beaty,
and the Confederates under Champ Ferguson. These bands, each striving
for the mastery, soon developed into guerrillas of the worst type the
war produced, and anarchy prevailed.

Churches were closed, for religious services were invaded that the
bushwackers could get the men they sought. Homes were burned. Civil
courts suspended. Post-offices and post-roads were abandoned. No stores
were kept open and the merchandise they formerly held was concealed, and
there became a great scarcity of the necessaries of life. Many homes
were deserted by entire families and their land turned out as common
ground. There was waste and ruin on every hand, and no man's life was
safe.

Each deed of cruelty was met with an act of revenge, until men were
killed in retaliation, the only charge brought against them being, "a
Northern sympathizer," or "a Southern sympathizer." There is not a road
in the county not marked with the blood of some soldier or
non-combatant.

No section of the great Civil War suffered so enduringly as that which
was the boundary line between the sections, and no part of the boundary
suffered more from devastations of war in the passing to and fro of
armed forces and from the raids of marauding bands, steel-heartened in
quest of revenge, than did Fentress county.

At the outbreak of the war, Uriah York went north into Kentucky and
joined the Federal forces. Ill, he had returned to the home of his
wife's father at Jamestown, and while in bed learned of the approach of
a band of Confederates. He arose and fled for safety to a refuge-shack
his father-in-law had built in the forest of "Rock Castle." His flight
was made in a storm that was half rain and half sleet, and from the
exposure he died in the lonely hut three days afterward. Only forty
years of age, he had served his country in two wars.

The "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" paid its tribute of blood
and money. Elijah Pi