Tennessee Tailor
1865 – 1869
“Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribed for our motto: ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,’ and exclaim, ‘Christ first, our country next!’”
Did you know?
Like most white men of the time, Tennessee Tailor was openly racist. Surprisingly he considered himself an ally to the black population stating, “Everyone would, and must admit, that the white race was superior to the black, and that while we ought to do our best to bring them . . . up to our present level, that, in doing so, we should, at the same time raise our own intellectual status so that the relative position of the two races would be the same.”⠀
Fun Fact:
Initially, the conspirators in the assassination of Honest Abe also planned on killing Tennessee Tailor. However, George Atzerodt, his supposed assassin, backed out.