Alfred Madison Cate (December 12, 1822 – September 13, 1871) was an American politician, soldier and farmer who served two terms in the Tennessee Senate from 1865 to 1869. A Radical Republican, he generally supported the policies of Governor William G. Brownlow, including ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He served as chairman of the Republican State Central Committee in the late 1860s.
Cate remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. He was a delegate to the pro-Union East Tennessee Convention in 1861, and was a key organizer of the East Tennessee bridge burnings later that year. He fought for the Union Army during the war, eventually rising to the rank of captain.
Early life
Cate was born in Jefferson County, Tennessee, the son of Elijah Cate, a farmer, and Nellie (Davis) Cate. When he was still very young, his parents moved to McMinn County, where they established a large plantation in the Mouse Creek Valley near Niota. By 1850, Alfred had married and moved to Ooltewah, Tennessee, in Hamilton County, where he engaged in farming.
Civil War
During the secession crisis of late 1860 and early 1861, Cate remained loyal to the Union. His family was very divided over the issue, however. His father and two younger brothers supported secession, while three other brothers— William T. Cate, George O. Cate, and Thomas L. Cate— supported the Union. Alfred and his brother, George, were members of the Hamilton County delegation at the first session of the East Tennessee Convention in Knoxville in May 1861. This convention denounced secession, and would subsequently petition the Tennessee state government to allow East Tennessee to form a separate, Union-aligned state.
After Confederate troops occupied East Tennessee in August 1861, William B. Carter, a staunch Unionist from Carter County, organized a conspiracy to burn nine railroad bridges across the region to make way for a Union invasion. Carter recruited Cate to burn the four bridges in the Chattanooga vicinity, namely the bridge over the Hiwassee River near Charleston, two bridges over Chickamauga Creek outside Chattanooga, and the bridge over the Tennessee River near Bridgeport, Alabama. Cate in turn recruited R.B. Rogan and James Keener to burn the Bridgeport bridge and entrusted the Chickamauga Creek bridges to William T. Cate and W.H. Crowder. Considering the Hiwassee bridge the most dangerous due to its location near a populated area (increasing the risk of getting caught), he decided to personally oversee its destruction. He was aided by Thomas L. Cate, Jesse Cleveland and Adam Thomas.
The bridge burners executed their plan on the night of November 8, 1861. Rogan and Keener found the Bridgeport bridge too heavily guarded by Confederate troops, and abandoned their attempt to burn it. William Cate and W.H. Crowder, however, managed to burn the two Chickamauga Creek bridges (which were relatively close to one another, though on different rail lines). Alfred Cate and his men also managed to destroy the Hiwassee bridge and escape undetected. Cate and the southeastern Tennesseans thus accounted for three of the five bridges destroyed that night. Unbeknownst to the bridge burners, however, the Union Army had decided against an immediate invasion of the region, and Confederate authorities launched a crackdown against the region's Unionists in the weeks following the bridge-burnings.
Though not suspected of being a bridge-burner, Cate's reputation as a Unionist nevertheless made him a target of the Confederate crackdown. Under threat of arrest, Cate left home for Kentucky on November 14, 1861. He briefly linked up with a group headed by fellow Hamilton County Unionist William J. Clift, but with more than a thousand Confederate troops in pursuit, this group disbanded. After a journey in which he frequently hid out in caves to avoid capture, Cate arrived in Somerset, Kentucky, in early January 1862.
