Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,923
By This is the grave of David Patterson.
Born in 1818 on Cedar Creek, outside of Greeneville, Tennessee, Patterson was the kind of early 19th century riser that personified many of the politicians of that era. He evidently didn’t come from much, but managed to go through the local schools and then Greeneville College before studying the law and passing the bar. That meant he could buy slaves, the dream of nearly all whites of the South in that era. Like a lot of men in east Tennessee, his slavery economy was not that of the plantations, but of the factories. He had manufacturing interests and quite a few farms around east Tennessee too. Slavery could be useful in both enterprises. But the important thing here is that he might well have been a slaver, but that doesn’t mean he shared the politics of the plantation holders. Before the Civil War, Patterson was a locally important figure, but hardly someone who mattered outside of it. He was a judge on one of the state’s circuit courts, appointed in 1854.
Patterson was a Whig and thus was opposed when the South and the rest of his state committed treason in defense of slavery. He saw the future as tied to the North anyway. East Tennessee was pretty divided between treason and patriotism and the war there was pretty nasty because it often was very much a civil war there, dividing families and neighbors. Patterson remained a strong Unionist and it was here that he became a more prominent person because unionists such as he and, more prominently, Tennessee senator Andrew Johnson were really important in Republican rhetoric about the war. In fact, this ran in the family. Patterson had married Johnson’s daughter. Evidently, she was the only one of his children that Johnson actually liked. He was such a loving and kind man after all.
Tennessee was the first state readmitted to the Union after the Civil War, in 1866. It had to get back on the cycle of senators. It normally would have a Senate seat up in 1868, so it needed someone for two years. With Andrew Johnson already at odds with Congress, the state decided to send Patterson to prop him up. Charles Sumner rejected this, not trusting him and questioning whether Patterson was really loyal to the Union during the war. After all, he had still served as a judge under Confederate government. But this move angered not only Democrats but moderate Republicans who thought Sumner was being ridiculous as usual. Their argument is that if he perjured himself in taking an oath of loyalty, he could be evicted from the Senate later, but what right did Sumner have to question a man’s oath? A lot of naivety there, yes, but Sumner also went way over the line in terms of his colleagues all the time. After all, one of the reasons why Preston Brooks decided to nearly beat Sumner to death on the floor of the Senate is that Sumner was doing stroke imitations of Brooks’ uncle, Andrew Butler, while giving speeches in the world’s worst deliberative body, another pro-slavery senator who was disabled after that stroke.
In any case, Sumner did win this debate because of fears not so much of Patterson but of Mississippi sending Jefferson Davis back to the Senate, so it delayed accepting Patterson for two days until senators were convinced that he was loyal. He had support here too, notably from Lyman Trumbull, a close Lincoln ally who continued to hold the torch for the assassinated president and so whose word held a lot of sway. Patterson was pretty pissed about all of this and rightfully so, as not only had he consistently ruled for unionists while a judge, but risked his life in doing so, as well as in his channeling information about Confederate troops in the the region to Union officers. But one can see why the Senate quite well should have been reticent to seat any former Confederate officeholder. And had the Senate been as aggressive going after Confederate leaders as it was about someone as relatively anodyne as Patterson, the nation would have been a lot better off in the future.
Patterson was only in the Senate until the next senator came in 1869. But in that two plus years, he didn’t do a lot except support his father in law. Of course that really mattered in the trial after Johnson was impeached. Naturally, Patterson voted to acquit. To say the least, it was a conflict of interest. But he didn’t care. It also killed any chance he had to stay in Washington, as the legislature dominated by the east Tennessee unionist and all-time hater Parson Brownlow wanted Johnson gone. Patterson did have defenders in the Senate here though, not so much on his position, but over the correct point that every senator knew everyone anyway and there no was no way to create some sort of impartial jury by excluding senators for this and that, even if the this and that was being a son-in-law. Patterson did move out of the White House, where he had been living, to make this seem less obvious. But Martha, his wife and Johnson’s daughter, had taken over a lot of the social activities of the White House, so it did make some sense for them to live there. Johnson hated everyone in Washington–and everyone generally–so Patterson and Martha were basically his social life.
When Brownlow came to Washington to replace Patterson, the senator returned to east Tennessee, where he ran his farms and lived a pretty good life but one that was also pretty unexceptional. He died in 1891, at the age of 73.
David Patterson is buried at the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, Greeneville, Tennessee.
If you would like this series to visit other senators sent to Washington in 1866-67, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Timothy Howe is in Allouez, Wisconsin and John Sherman is in Mansfield, Ohio. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.