Confederate Senator

This was the home of Landon Carter Haynes, a distinguished lawyer and politician who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives before the onset of the Civil War. Haynes was born in Carter County on December 2, 1816. He attended nearby Washington College and studied law under Thomas A.R. Nelson, one of the founders of Tennessee's Whig party.

Following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860, Haynes argued strongly for Tennessee's secession from the Union. The following October, the General Assembly chose Haynes as one of the state's senators for the Confederate Congress, where he served from 1862 to 1865. As a Confederate senator, he consistently pressed the government to institute harsher measures against Union supporters in East Tennessee.

After the Civil War ended, President Andrew Johnson pardoned Haynes for his loyalty to the Confederacy during the war. Fearing retribution by East Tennessee Unionists, however, Haynes moved with his family to Memphis, where he died on February 17, 1875.

"(Tennessee's) union with the Southern States ... is natural and inseparable, and the unalterable condition of her present and future safety, prosperity, and independence." — Landon C. Haynes, Knoxville, January 2, 1861

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Col. John Tipton constructed the original log dwelling that forms the core of the house shown above. One of Tennessee's earliest settlements, the farm later was home to Landon Carter Haynes, a Confederate senator and avid supporter of states' rights within a region that strongly supported the Union. In 1839, he married Eleanor Powell of Elizabethton, And Haynes' father presented the newlyweds with this farm as a wedding gift. Haynes remodeled the log house, adding the Greek revival portico in the 1850s. George Haynes, one of the family's slaves, lived in a cabin interpreted on the property. The Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Tipton-Haynes House, ca.1960 Courtesy Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site
Landon C. Haynes — Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration

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Show me all markers in:  Johnson City, TN  |  Washington County  |  37604  |  Tennessee  |  United States of America

Andre Michaux
Tipton-Haynes Historic Site
Tennessee Early History Monument
First Court of Washington County
Robins' Roost
East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Depot
Johnson City
Johnson City
State Flag
Samuel Cole Williams

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