On a cloudless, deep-blue sky afternoon, I drive 45 miles south of Nashville to Columbia for a visit with one of my favorite people, Campbell Ridley. He\u2019s an 80-year-old semi-retired farmer, U.S. Army veteran, rock & roll devotee, and storyteller with a wit and sense of humor as sharp as the tip of a new bayonet.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow are you feeling?\u201d I ask my friend minutes after arriving at his farm office.<\/p>\n
Aside from mourning the recent death of Barney\u2014his nine-year-old barn cat\u2014Ridley feels fine, a fact he attributes to \u201cclean living and cheap beer.\u201d He wears tan Carhartts, brown work boots, a blue-checkered shirt and, appropriately, a baseball cap with the words \u201cLife Is Good\u201d across the front.<\/p>\n
Ridley\u2019s roots run deep here in Maury County, one of the wealthiest counties in the state before the Civil War. He\u2019s the great-great-grandnephew of Gideon Pillow, the Confederate brigadier general, Mexican War veteran, politician, lawyer and, before the war, one of the foremost slaveholders in the county. Ridley\u2019s paternal great grandfather, who depended on mules for farming and was one of the county\u2019s leading citizens, earned the nickname \u201cMule King\u201d\u2014Columbia, in fact, has long been touted as the \u201cMule Capital of the World.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I need my history fix and a good laugh, I visit Ridley. We\u2019ve sat together inside magnificent St. John\u2019s Church\u2014a slave-constructed plantation church built under the direction of Leonidas Polk and his brothers. It stands roughly a mile and a half southwest along Mount Pleasant Pike, across the road from the mostly empty field where Polk\u2014an Episcopalian bishop and future Confederate lieutenant general\u2014lived in a mansion called Ashwood Hall. There, we have admired the two massive gingko trees Polk imported eons ago from Japan and have poked about what little remains of brick kitchen for the mansion, destroyed by fire in 1874 and never rebuilt.<\/p>\n
Today, though, we will explore far more humble construction. Near Ridley\u2019s farm office and the east fork of Greenlick Creek stand three ramshackle slave cabins. \u201cThe Quarters,\u201d Ridley calls the property, which is owned by his daughter, who lives in New Mexico, and a friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll take care of this until she puts me in a nursing home,\u201d he says, half-jokingly.<\/p>\n
In a way, these cabins are as much a part of Ridley as the land he has farmed for decades in Columbia. As late as the 1990s, he tells me, these humble structures served as homes for poor Black farmhands and others. Many of them worked for the Ridleys.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe woman who raised me lived here,\u201d Ridley says as we examine one of the rickety cabins. Her name was Katie, a \u201cwonderful\u201d lady who had a gift for cooking fried chicken. The Ridley family employed her for more than three decades.<\/p>\n
At another cabin yards away, ancient white paint clings to exposed exterior logs. Four modern wooden posts strain to prop up its porch overhang above two large, well-worn walkway stones. On an exterior wall, a half-dozen old hangers dangle from a rusty nail. Above us, a corrugated tin roof keeps nature at bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been there as long as I can remember,\u201d Ridley says.<\/p>\n
What a contrast these antebellum structures make with Clifton Place, the brick manor house on the hill 750 yards away. In rich late-fall sunlight, the mansion almost seems to glow. Peek through trees from the road leading to Ridley\u2019s farm office and you\u2019ll spot its imposing Ionic columns and impressive limestone porch.<\/p>\n From 1839 until the early years of the war, when the U.S. Army confiscated the property, the mansion served as centerpiece of Clifton Place, Pillow\u2019s plantation that encompassed hundreds of acres. His slaves\u2014most of whom lived in cabins at \u201cThe Quarters\u201d\u2014generated his wealth by planting and harvesting cotton, hemp, corn, and other crops as well as tending to his cattle, sheep, and hogs.<\/p>\n As one of Tennessee\u2019s leading citizens and one of the wealthiest men in the South, Pillow moved in elite social circles. He counted James K. Polk, the 11th U.S. president, among his friends. Following the end of his presidency in 1849, Polk dined at Clifton Place with Gideon and his wife, Mary. Pillow himself dabbled in national politics, opposing secession initially in 1861 before relenting.<\/p>\n As a military man, though, political general Pillow failed to measure up. During the Mexican War, the twice-wounded Pillow angered superiors\u2014including Winfield Scott\u2014for his self-promotion. No surprise, perhaps, given a massive painting of a heroic Pillow in military uniform greeted visitors in the front entrance of Clifton Place.<\/p>\n During the Civil War, Pillow abandoned his post at Fort Donelson in February 1862, sneaking away from the beleaguered garrison under the cover of darkness before the Union Army under Ulysses S. Grant accepted the Confederates\u2019 surrender. At the Battle of Stones River nearly 10 months later, Pillow led a brigade with mixed results. True or not, a story of the 55-year-old officer cowering behind a tree during the battle has stained his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 ever since.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Scott\u2014overall commander of the U.S. Army when the Civil War broke out\u2014did not count himself among Pillow\u2019s fans. In his 1864 memoirs, \u201cOld Fuss And Feathers\u201d described Pillow as \u201camiable, and possessed of some acuteness, but the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty; ever as ready to attain an end by the one as the other, and habitually boastful of acts of cleverness at the total sacrifice of moral character.\u201d<\/p>\n As we walk from cabin to cabin, Ridley reflects only briefly on his connection to Pillow and the slaves who toiled for him.<\/p>\n \u201cJust part of history,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Ridley and I gingerly step into a cabin, home for Pillow\u2019s field slaves. More than a year ago, he had brush and other vegetation cleared from around these remarkable survivors, giving us easy access.<\/p>\n Each cabin is roughly 15-by-15 feet with a small loft accessed by a rickety ladder. Each has a post-Civil War room out back. I\u2019ve visited the site a half-dozen times but see something new each time.<\/p>\n Steps ahead of me, Ridley shines the narrow beam from his flashlight on a fireplace, revealing bricks and small dirt piles in an otherwise barren room. Fragments of newspaper\u2014used as insulation by postwar inhabitants\u2014speckle the walls. A dour-looking baseball player stares from a March 1937 newspaper sports section. A decrepit floor, victimized by time and nature, crunches beneath my feet.<\/p>\n In another cabin, we find more reminders of the 20th century: a swinging blade, peeling wallpaper adorned with blue- and aqua-colored floral designs, a chipped ax handle, and a barren clothes hook on a door. Pasted to the back wall is a fragment of The New York Times<\/em> from decades ago.<\/p>\n \u201cLife in America,\u201d the partial headline reads.<\/p>\n From the era of slavery, though, we find no visible evidence they <\/em>were here. No fragments of 19th-century pottery or shards of glass. No messages etched on bare, wooden walls.No privy to mine for secrets. Much is left for our imaginations.<\/p>\n And so, I wonder: Who were these men, women, and children?<\/p>\n What treatment did they receive from Pillow?<\/p>\n What were their names?<\/p>\n Perhaps the 1870 U.S. census provides us hints. \u201cSarah\u201d and \u201cRandall\u201d\u2014listed as farm hands for the Pillow family in that census\u2014appear on deeds as far back as the 1840s.<\/p>\n I wonder what ultimately became of the slaves who toiled for Pillow. Were they buried in the nearby cemetery in the woods\u2014the remote graveyard at the base of Ginger Hill that Ridley showed me months ago? Or were they buried in St. John\u2019s Church Cemetery, far in the back, away from the final resting places of the White folks? Or perhaps they ended up in one of the scores of family cemeteries that dot the county.<\/p>\n And I wonder what will become of these historic treasures near the east fork of Greenlick Creek. Ridley wants to save the cabins, but that probably would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and more expertise than he has.<\/p>\n What would a professional archaeologist unearth here?<\/p>\n I also wonder what will happen to Clifton Place, where Ridley\u2019s paternal grandfather lived until 1949. It remained part of the Ridley family for years afterward.<\/p>\n \u201cI watched television in there for the first time in my life,\u201d Ridley says. He recalls family gatherings in the 12-room Greek Revival-style mansion and 16-foot-high ceilings.<\/p>\n In 1972, a Kentucky Fried Chicken magnate named John R. Neal purchased the property from the Ridley family. He and his wife, Linda, aimed to restore the mansion, but their yearslong effort proved daunting. \u201cWe saw the white columns, the Gone With The Wind<\/em> atmosphere,\u201d she told a reporter in 1986. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see the cracks, the structural problems.\u201d<\/p>\n The Clifton Place grounds include the original detached kitchen, carriage house, ice house, law office, spring house, blacksmith, and quarters for \u201chouse\u201d slaves. In the Pillow-era smokehouse stands the original poplar chopping block and \u201cham logs\u201d\u2014hollowed out poplar logs for the salting of hams. The smoky aroma in the small brick building still tantalizes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most complete 19th-century plantation complex anywhere,\u201d a researcher once called Clifton Place.<\/p>\n John Neal died in 2018, but Clifton Place remains with his family. The mansion, however, has stood unoccupied (and inaccessible to the public) for more than a decade. Like the nearby slave cabins, it too could become nothing but a memory without significant preservation efforts.<\/p>\n Time may not be on the side of people like us who relish places like this. In an empty field across Mount Pleasant Pike from Clifton Place, developers have plans for residential housing. \u201c750 houses on 450 acres,\u201d Ridley says.<\/p>\n Oh my, what will I see here a decade from now? <\/p>\n John Banks is author of three Civil War books. Check out his latest, <\/em>A Civil War Road Trip of a Lifetime (Gettysburg Publishing). He also can be visited on Facebook at <\/em>John Banks\u2019 Civil War blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Clifton](\"https:\/\/www.historynet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/clifton-place-1936-cwt-spring-2024-1024x708.jpg\")
\n (Library of Congress)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"Gideon](\"https:\/\/www.historynet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/gideon-pillow-cwt-spring-2024-823x1024.jpg\")
\n (Tennessee State Library & Archives)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"Newspaper](\"https:\/\/www.historynet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/clifton-place-newspaper-wall-cwt-spring-2024-1024x768.jpg\")
\nliving, including pottery or shards of glass, remains inside.
\n (Photo by John Banks)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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