East Tennessee did not tear itself
loose from the Union; Andrew Johnson and Parson Brownlow, one a
statesman and the other a fanatic, strangled the edicts of the lordly
lowlanders and sent regiment after regiment to the Federal army. Among
the first to enlist were old Jasper Starbuck and his twin boys. The boys
did not come back. In the meantime their heart-broken mother died, and
when the father returned to his desolate home, there was a grave beneath
the tree where he had heard a sweet voice in the evening.
Years passed and he married again, a poor girl in need of a home; and at
the time which serves as the threshold of this history, he was sobered
down from his former disposition to go out upon a "pilgrimage" of
revenge. His "spells" had been cured by grief, but nothing could kill
his humor. Drawling and peculiar, never boisterous, it was stronger than
his passion and more enduring than the memory of a wrong. He was not a
large man. A neighbor said that he was built after the manner of a
wild-cat. He was of iron sinew and steel nerve.
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