Skirmish at Mansfield

The officer being escorted was the Confederacy's governor in exile. Isham G. Harris pushed Tennessee's secession in 1861, fled Nashville in 1862, and spent the rest of the war as an aide to Confederate generals; at Shiloh, Albert Sidney Johnston died in his arms. After Appomattox he fled to Mexico and then England, returned to Memphis in 1867, and won a Senate seat in 1877. For twenty years he led Tennessee's Bourbon Democrats, who defended white supremacy and the existing social order.

What the plaque says

Skirmish at Mansfield In the month of March, 1864, Company G, Seventh Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry, was detailed to escort Tennessee's Governor Isham Green Harris to Paris. Near Mansfield they encountered a detachment of Federal soldiers and a spirited engagement took place. The Federal force retired with two killed including their major in command. Company G had two men wounded.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 11 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge — 14 mi
  A 51,000-acre refuge along Kentucky Lake and the Tennessee River, created in 1945 for migratory birds, with a visitor center in Springville and a drowned Archaic site nearby.
• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 20 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.
• Paris Landing State Park — 21 mi
  A Kentucky Lake state park on the site of a Tennessee River steamboat landing, created after the 1944 TVA dam drowned a sulphur-spring resort.

More markers nearby

• Henry County Courthouse/Henry Co. — 5.0 mi
• Camp Tyson — 6.3 mi
• Governor Thomas Clarke Rye — 8.0 mi
• Edwin Wiley Grove — 9.0 mi