Perry Temple, where Temple and several other pro-Union leaders had gathered. Among them were Brownlow, Perez Dickinson, and William Rule. Temple later recalled:Mr. Bell said, in a half-sad and half-complaining tone: "I see that none of my old friends were over to hear me speak." "No," said Mr. Brownlow, "we were not present, and did not intend being. We did not wish to witness the spectacle of your being surrounded by your enemies, who a few months ago were denouncing you as a traitor. We did not wish to hear these men shouting for you and see you in such a position." Mr. Brownlow then poured forth a torrent of abuse and denunciation of secession. Mr. Bell made no attempt to defend them, nor indeed to defend his own course.Brownlow had supported Bell for over two decades and, indeed, had named one of his sons after Bell. He recalled the incident in Temple's office when he came to write his 1862 book, Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession. In that volume, Brownlow stated he had criticized Bell that night with "great pain," and remembered that he and Bell "parted in tears." Temple surmised that Bell's decision to support the Confederacy was driven by panic, for "there was not a drop of disloyal blood in his veins." After Tennessee seceded on June 8, Bell retired from public life, though his sons and sons-in-law actively supported the Confederate cause. When the Union Army occupied Tennessee in 1862, Bell fled to Huntsville, Alabama, and later to Georgia. After the war, he moved to Stewart County, Tennessee, where he managed his family-owned ironworks. He died at his home near Dover, Tennessee in 1869, and he is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville. Family Bell married his first wife, Sally Dickinson, in 1818. They had five children (Mary, John, David, Fanny, and Sally) before she died in 1832. Sally Dickinson was the sister of Congressman David W. Dickinson, the granddaughter of Hardy Murfree, and the aunt of author Mary Noailles Murfree. In 1835, Bell married Jane Erwin Yeatman, a prominent socialite and widow of wealthy businessman Thomas Yeatman. Confederate Congressman Edwin Augustus Keeble (1807–1868) was a son-in-law of Bell's, being married to his daughter, Sally. Bell's great-grandson, also named Edwin A. Keeble, was a prominent Nashville-area architect, his best known design being the city's first skyscraper, the Life & Casualty Tower.