Editing Stewart County, Tennessee (section)

==History==
Stewart County was created by European Americans in 1803 from a portion of [[Montgomery County, Tennessee|Montgomery County]], and was named for [[Duncan Stewart (Mississippi politician)|Duncan Stewart]], an early settler and state legislator.<ref name=tehc />  The first County Court met in March 1804. According to Goodspeed's history of Stewart County, "Stewart County was settled principally by North Carolinians, the first of whom came some time about 1795, that State having issued military grants to survivors of the Continental war, which called for large tracts of land lying in this county".<ref>{{Cite web|title=Goodspeed/Part2:Early Settlement|url=https://www.tngenweb.org/stewart/gshis2.htm|access-date=November 25, 2020|website=www.tngenweb.org}}</ref> It was settled during the early migration of pioneers from Virginia to the west after the American Revolutionary War. They pushed Native American peoples, such as the [[Cherokee]], out of the area.

During the [[American Civil War]], the [[Battle of Fort Donelson]] took place in February 1862. Union forces took control of the state, occupying several strategic areas. In August 1862 their forces partially burned the county seat, Dover, to prevent its re-capture by Confederate Lt. Col. Thomas G. Woodward.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924077728248;view=1up;seq=53|publisher=Cornell University|access-date=February 11, 2019|date=August 22, 2012|title=The War of the Rebellion}}</ref>  A second battle in the area, commonly called the [[Battle of Dover (1863)|Battle of Dover]], took place in February 1863.

Tobaccoport Saltpeter Cave was intensely mined for saltpeter, possibly during the War of 1812 but more likely not until the Civil War. Saltpeter is the main ingredient of gunpowder and was obtained by leaching the earth from the cave. The Union took control of Tennessee and this area in February 1862, early in the Civil War. It seems unlikely that mining could have happened before that.<ref>Thomas C. Barr, Jr., "Caves of Tennessee", ''Bulletin 64 of the Tennessee Division of Geology,'' 1961, 568 pages.</ref>