Oliver Perry Temple was an American attorney, author, judge, and economic promoter active primarily in East Tennessee in the latter half of the 19th century. During the months leading up to the Civil War, Temple played a pivotal role in organizing East Tennessee's Unionists. In June 1861, he drafted the final resolutions of the pro-Union East Tennessee Convention, and spent much of the first half of the war providing legal defense for Unionists who had been charged with treason by Confederate authorities.
Oliver Perry Temple
1866 advertisement for Temple in the Knoxville Whig
Temple family obelisk at Old Gray Cemetery
East Tennessee Convention
The East Tennessee Convention was an assembly of Southern Unionist delegates primarily from East Tennessee that met on three occasions during the Civil War. The Convention most notably declared the secessionist actions taken by the Tennessee state government on the eve of the war unconstitutional, and requested that East Tennessee, where Union support remained strong, be allowed to form a separate state that would remain part of the United States split from the rest of Confederate Tennessee. The state legislature denied this request, and the Confederate Army occupied the region in late 1861.
East Tennessee Convention Proceedings title page
James G. Spears (vice president)
The old Greene County Courthouse in Greeneville, where the East Tennessee Convention met in June 1861
Tennessee Historical Commission marker in Greeneville, recalling the East Tennessee Convention's June 1861 session