The military significance of east Tennessee Unionism was evident in the way Longstreet’s Confederate forces were treated before the gates of Knoxville. They received little help from the people of the mountain region. In 1864, Lincoln remembered.

“The political significance of east Tennessee Unionism became evident during the 1864 national election, when Lincoln drafted a Greeneville [TN] Democrat, Andrew Johnson, as his vice presidential running mate. The selection of a Southern loyalist symbolized the sort of compromise that Lincoln believed would be necessary to reunify the country after the war.”

Thus Lincoln’s intentions, ironically thwarted by a Rebel, Booth.