 Convention secretary John M. Fleming and Sevier County delegate Robert H. Hodsden were arrested and detained by Confederate authorities in December 1861, but were subsequently cleared by a Confederate court.President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued in early 1863, divided Tennessee's Unionists.While Andrew Johnson, who had been appointed the state's military governor, supported the Proclamation, other prominent Unionists, including T. A. R. Nelson and former congressman Emerson Etheridge, opposed it, arguing it would serve only to postpone a Union victory in the war.