Excerpt from Historic Sullivan: A History of Sullivan County, Tennessee, With Brief Biographies of the Makers of History For a long time an impelling influence hung about me that finally pulsed into an idea that something should be done to preserve the history of Sullivan County. It was a rich mine of undeveloped memories. In my talks with our old people I found those memories falling into deplorable and pathetic decay. The written records of the county had been burned during the battle of Blount Ville in 1863. With a limited experience and other limited essentials I dared not permit myself to give existence to an effort so rash as the writing of a history, for well I knew it meant the tyranny of merciless truths. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.