Felix Kirk Zollicoffer (May 19, 1812 – January 19, 1862) was an American newspaperman, slave owner, politician, and soldier. A three-term United States Congressman from Tennessee, an officer in the United States Army, and a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War; he led the first Confederate invasion of eastern Kentucky and was killed in action at the Battle of Mill Springs. Zollicoffer was the first Confederate general to die in the Western Theater.
Early life and career
Felix Zollicoffer was born on a plantation in Bigbyville in Maury County, Tennessee, a son of John Jacob and Martha (Kirk) Zollicoffer. He was descended from emigrants from Switzerland who had settled in North Carolina in 1710. His grandfather, George Zollicoffer, had served as a captain in the Revolutionary War, and had been granted a tract of land in Tennessee as payment for his military service.
Zollicoffer attended the local schools and studied for a year at Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee. He left at the age of sixteen, became an apprentice printer, and was engaged in newspaper work in Paris, Tennessee, from 1828 to 1830. When the newspaper closed, he moved to Knoxville in 1831 and worked for two years as a journeyman printer at the Knoxville Register. Three years later, he became editor and part owner of the Columbia Observer. Zollicoffer was elected State Printer of Tennessee in 1835.
On September 24, 1835, he married Louisa Pocahontas Gordon, with whom he had fourteen children, of whom only six survived infancy. Gordon was the daughter of Captain John Gordon who had fought alongside Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend and Pensacola. She was a direct descendant of Pocahontas through her mother, Dolly. Louisa Zollicoffer died in 1857.
Zollicoffer also edited the Mercury for a time in Huntsville, Alabama. He volunteered for the army in 1836 and served as a second lieutenant in the Tennessee militia in the Second Seminole War in Florida. He then returned to Tennessee and became owner and editor of the Columbia Observer and the Southern Agriculturist and in 1843 the editor of the Republican Banner, the state organ of the Whig Party.
This brought Zollicoffer into political circles, and he was Comptroller of the State Treasury from 1845 to 1849, as well as Adjutant General for the state. He was a member of the State Senate from 1849 until 1852, and was a delegate to the Whig National Convention in 1852, supporting General Winfield Scott. Zollicoffer was himself elected as a Whig to the Thirty-third United States Congress and was reelected as a candidate of the American Party to the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses (March 4, 1853 – March 3, 1859). During his first campaign, he fought a duel with the editor of the rival Nashville Union newspaper. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1858 and retired to private life. He supported fellow Tennessee moderate John Bell (CU) for president in the election of 1860.
Following the secession of the Deep South in 1861, Zollicoffer served as a delegate to that year's peace conference in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to prevent the approaching civil war. A strong supporter of states' rights, Zollicoffer nevertheless opposed Tennessee's secession from the Union.
Civil War
Tennessee voters rejected the call for a secession convention in February 1861. Tennessee Governor Isham Harris soon began to maneuver the state into a position where secession would be inevitable. On May 6, 1861, the Tennessee General Assembly, urged on by Harris, adopted a "Declaration of Independence and Ordinance." The people were to vote on the ratification of this measure on June 8. A separate vote on the same date would determine if Tennessee should join the Confederacy if the voters approved the measure asserting independence of the State. On May 9, a joint committee of the legislature issued an explanation sponsored by Harris of the military alliance Tennessee had entered into with the Confederacy on May 7. During the period between April and July, Harris organized a state army, the Provisional Army of Tennessee.
Upon the announcement of the formation of the Provisional Army of Tennessee, Zollicoffer offered his service to the state army. Despite only having brief combat experience, he was appointed as a brigadier general in the Provisional Army of Tennessee on May 9, 1861, by Governor Isham Harris.