Union. On April 27, 1861, pro-Union and pro-Confederate factions held simultaneous rallies at opposite ends of Gay Street in Knoxville, and Nelson spoke alongside Andrew Johnson at the pro-Union rally. In subsequent weeks, Nelson, Johnson, Brownlow and Horace Maynard canvassed East Tennessee, delivering hundreds of speeches and encouraging the region's residents to reject secession. While Tennessee voted to secede on June 8, most counties in East Tennessee remained solidly pro-Union. On May 30, Nelson was named president of the East Tennessee Convention, which met to discuss forming a separate state in East Tennessee. At the convention's June meeting, Nelson proposed a resolution that would create such a state, and violently resist Confederate occupation, if necessary. Other delegates, led by Oliver Perry Temple and John Netherland, rejected this as too extreme, and adopted a resolution petitioning the legislature for separation without threatening violent resistance. Nevertheless, the legislature rejected the petition, and dispatched Confederate troops to occupy the region. Nelson was reelected to Congress in 1861, and attempted to travel to Washington, D.C., to take his seat. While passing through Kentucky, however, he was captured by Confederate authorities, and jailed in Richmond. Confederate president Jefferson Davis ordered Nelson released, however, after Nelson agreed not to oppose the Confederate government, and Nelson returned to his home in Jonesborough. He published an article in the Knoxville Register in 1862 expressing his opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation, but nevertheless followed Ambrose Burnside's Union forces to Knoxville in late 1863. While in Knoxville, Nelson wrote several poems about his wartime experiences, one of which was published as Secession, Or Prose in Rhyme and East Tennessee, A Poem. In April 1864, at a meeting of the revived East Tennessee Convention, Nelson led a faction which called for a return to the Union, but still rejected the abolition of slavery. This brought him into conflict with Brownlow and Maynard, who both supported Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. Nelson supported George B. McClellan in the presidential election of 1864. Later life In the late-1860s, Nelson continued to oppose the Radical Republican policies of his long-time friend Brownlow, who was now governor, and aligned himself with Johnson, now president. After the House voted to impeach Johnson in 1868, Johnson asked Nelson to join his defense team at his impeachment trial in April of that year. For nearly two days, Nelson gave a point-by-point refutation of the impeachment charges, and the