Albert Smith Marks

Marks's war cost him a leg. A lifelong Democrat who opposed secession, he joined the Confederate army anyway, rose to colonel of the 17th Tennessee, and was chosen at Munfordville in 1862 to accept the surrender of Union forces. At Stones River canister shot shattered his right leg, and it was amputated below the knee. He ran for governor in 1878 and won with 89,958 votes, the first lifelong Democrat elected after the Civil War. His administration, like those before it, was dominated by the state's debt crisis.

What the plaque says

Albert Smith Marks 1836-1891 A native of Kentucky, Albert Marks moved to Winchester at the age of 19. The Confederate veteran was elected Chancellor of the Fourth Division in 1870. Elected Governor in 1878, he achieved fame for prosecuting the railroad debt scandal. He served as Presidential Elector in 1888. Governor Marks died in Nashville.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tims Ford State Park — 7.9 mi
  A lake park on the Elk River below the Cumberland Plateau, made by a 1970 TVA dam on land the Cherokee and Chickasaw ceded by treaty in the early 1800s.
• Sewanee: The University of the South — 11 mi
  The Episcopal university on the Cumberland Plateau, founded in 1857 as a school for the slaveholding South and now examining that history through its own Roberson Project.
• Jack Daniel Distillery — 16 mi
  The oldest registered distillery in the United States, in a limestone hollow outside Lynchburg, where the tour now names Nathan Nearest Green, an enslaved man, as the first master distiller.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 21 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.

More markers nearby

• Secession — 0.7 mi
• The Blind Knight — 1.1 mi
• Peter Turney — 2.2 mi
• Cowan Railroad Museum — 6.3 mi