Secession

Two future governors fought out the county's choice in early 1861. Peter Turney ran for the proposed state convention as the pro-secession candidate, and Albert Marks, an opponent of secession, ran as the pro-Union one; the two canvassed together. When Tennessee voters rejected the convention, Turney led a movement for Franklin County to leave the state and join Alabama. The county was strongly secessionist, and Tennessee's own secession that summer made the effort unnecessary. Marks fought for the Confederacy anyway, and both men lived to be elected governor.

What the plaque says

Secession In this locality, on Feb. 24, 1861, occurred the mass meeting as result of which Franklin County seceded from the State of Tennessee, at the same time petitioning the then Confederate State of Alabama to annex it. The secession of Tennessee June 24, 1861, rendered further action needless.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tims Ford State Park — 8.2 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 — 20 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

• Albert Smith Marks — 0.7 mi
• The Blind Knight — 1.3 mi
• Peter Turney — 1.8 mi
• Cowan Railroad Museum — 5.9 mi