Editing Grainger County, Tennessee (section)

===Civil War===
Like its surrounding East Tennessee counties, Grainger County was generally opposed to secession from the Union. In Tennessee's Ordinance of Secession referendum on June 8, 1861, sparsely populated Grainger County voters rejected secession by 1,756 to 495.<ref>Oliver Perry Temple, [https://archive.org/details/easttennesseean00tempgoog/page/n227 <!-- pg=199 quote="The detailed vote of the several counties was as follows". --> East Tennessee and the Civil War] (R. Clarke Company, 1899), p. 199.</ref>

During the [[American Civil War]], a state of near-[[guerrilla warfare]] brought economic, political, and social chaos to Grainger County, notably during the [[Knoxville campaign]]. Two arguments occurred within the county during the Civil War, with the first as a skirmish in Blaine around Christmas of 1862. In the year ahead, the [[Battle of Bean's Station]] pitted the forces of [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] General [[James Longstreet]] against a [[Union Army|Union forces]] under General [[James M. Shackelford|James Shackelford]] in a planned [[Military deception|surprise attack]] that failed for Confederate forces through the critically poor decision-making of Longstreet's staff.<ref name="Collins">{{Cite web|url=https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/grainger-county/|title=Grainger County|last=Collins|first=Kevin|date=October 8, 2017|website=TennesseeEncyclopedia.net|publisher=Tennessee Historical Society|access-date=March 13, 2020}}</ref> While the Battle of Bean's Station proved victorious for Longstreet in the end, he later failed to capture Knoxville westward through Blaine, and went into hiding in [[Russellville, Tennessee|Russellville]] in nearby [[Hamblen County, Tennessee|Hamblen County]].<ref name="hartley">{{cite book |last1=Hartley |first1=William |editor1-last=Heidler |editor1-first=David |editor2-last=Heidler |editor2-first=Jeanne |title=Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History |date=2002 |publisher=W. W. Norton |isbn=9780393047585 |chapter=Knoxville Campaign}}</ref>