help the Confederate cause. While Unionism had "played out," Sperry wrote in January 1863, its "bastard and malignant offspring, neutrality, has succeeded it." Sperry slammed Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and happily published a letter from prominent Unionist T.A.R. Nelson suggesting that East Tennessee Unionists had been deceived. Demise When General Ambrose Burnside's Union forces entered Knoxville in September 1863, Sperry was forced to suspend publication of the Register and flee south. He briefly revived the paper in Atlanta, but advancing Union forces again forced him to flee. Sperry finally settled in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1864, and attempted to again revive the Register, boasting that the paper was "once again published on East Tennessee soil." Finally, in December 1864, Bristol fell to Union forces, and Sperry and several other Confederate leaders were captured and marched back to Knoxville. In Knoxville, Sperry was shackled to a ball-and-chain, and forced to work on the city's fortifications. Many of the city's Unionist leaders found this treatment too harsh and degrading, the exception being Brownlow, who demanded Sperry and other secessionists be hanged for treason. Sperry was eventually tried for slandering East Tennessee's Unionists, but acquitted. In the 1870s, Knoxville's Democrats launched a new newspaper, the Tribune, which they considered a successor to the Register. Throughout the 1880s, the Tribune bickered with the city's Republican paper, the Chronicle, founded by William Rule as a successor to the Whig. References External links Finding Aid for the F.S. Heiskell Subscription List of the Knoxville Register, 1820 — University of Tennessee Special Collections Defunct newspapers published in Tennessee Publications established in 1816 Mass media in Knoxville, Tennessee History of Knoxville, Tennessee 1816 establishments in Tennessee Publications disestablished in 1864 1864 disestablishments in Tennessee