page_title: Horace Maynard
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Horace Maynard / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Tennessee Historical Commission marker dedicated to Horace Maynard (1814–1882) in Maynardville, Tennessee, United States.
context_page_description: Horace Maynard was an American educator, attorney, politician and diplomat active primarily in the second half of the 19th century. Initially elected to the House of Representatives from Tennessee's 2nd Congressional District for the term commencing on March 4, 1857, Maynard, an ardent Union supporter and later abolitionist, became one of the few Southern congressmen to maintain his seat in the House during the Civil War. Toward the end of the war, Maynard served as Tennessee's attorney general under Governor Andrew Johnson, and later served as ambassador to Turkey under President Ulysses S. Grant and Postmaster General under President Rutherford B. Hayes.
  Maynard left his teaching position at East Tennessee College in the early 1840s to pursue a career in law, and quickly developed a reputation among his peers for his reasoning ability and biting sarcastic style. He spent much of his first two terms in Congress fighting to preserve the Union, and during the Civil War, he consistently urged President Abraham Lincoln to send Union forces to free East Tennessee from its Confederate occupiers.
context_section_description: Maynard was remembered among his peers for his powerful intellect and sense of persuasiveness. Knoxville Journal editor William Rule wrote that Maynard was the "best read man" of East Tennessee's lawyers, while abolitionist Frederick Douglass once remarked that Maynard had a "three story head." Knoxville mayor Peter Staub (a Democrat) said that even though he disliked Maynard, he was so impressed with Maynard's reasoning and rhetoric that he voted for him twice. Oliver Perry Temple wrote of Maynard: "Many were the persons he stung and wounded by his biting sarcasm or pungent wit." Humorist George Washington Harris mocked Maynard ("Stilyards") in his story, "The Widow McCloud's Mare."
  During the 1850s, Knox County attempted to sue the newly formed Union County, Tennessee, out of existence. Maynard successfully represented Union County, and in return, the county named its county seat, Maynardville, in his honor. Horace Maynard High School served the county from 1923 until 1997, when it became a middle school. During the Spanish–American War, the USS Nashville, commanded by Maynard's son, Washburn, fired the war's first American shot.  Another son, James, was president of the Knoxville-based Brookside Mills in the early 1900s.
caption: Tennessee Historical Commission marker in Maynardville
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