Tennessee

/ten'euh see"/, n.

1. a state in the SE United States. 4,590,750; 42,246 sq. mi. (109,415 sq. km). Cap.: Nashville. Abbr.: TN (for use with zip code), Tenn.

2. a river flowing from E Tennessee through N Alabama, W Tennessee, and SW Kentucky into the Ohio near Paducah. 652 mi. (1050 km) long.

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I

State (pop., 2000: 5,689,283), southeast-central U.S. It occupies 42,144 sq mi (109,153 sq km); its capital is Nashville.

It is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Alabama and Mississippi to the south, and Arkansas and Missouri to the west. The Great Smoky Mountains edge the eastern part of the state, while the Mississippi River is on its western boundary. The Tennessee River valley dominates much of the state, and the Tennessee Valley Authority is the nation's largest electric-power generating system. Tennessee has a moderate climate; about half of it is forested. American Indians, including Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Shawnee, inhabited the region when Spanish, French, and English explorers visited it in the 16th–17th centuries. It was included in the British charter of Carolina and in the French Louisiana claim and was ceded to Great Britain after the French and Indian War. The first permanent settlement was made с 1770. It was part of North Carolina until 1785, when the area's settlers broke away and formed the free state of Franklin. North Carolina relinquished its claim in 1789, and Tennessee became the 16th U.S. state in 1796. In 1861 it seceded from the Union; the hard-fought American Civil War battles of Shiloh, Chattanooga, Stones River, and Nashville occurred there. In 1866 it was the first state readmitted to the Union. During the Reconstruction era, blacks lost what little power they had gained. After World War II Tennessee became a testing ground for those involved in the civil rights movement. The state's economy is based on manufacturing.

II

(as used in expressions)

Ford Tennessee Ernie

Tennessee River

Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee Walking Horse

Williams Tennessee

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▪ state, United States

Introduction

Tennessee, flag of    constituent state of the United States of America. It is located in the upper South (South, the) of the eastern United States and became the 16th state of the Union in 1796. The geography of Tennessee is unique. Its extreme breadth of 432 miles (695 km) stretches from the Appalachian Mountain (Appalachian Mountains) boundary with North Carolina in the east to the Mississippi River borders with Missouri and Arkansas in the west; its narrow width, only 112 miles (180 km), separates its northern neighbours, Kentucky and Virginia, from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, to the south. Nashville is the capital and Memphis the largest city.

      The geographic diversity of Tennessee has generated a variety of economic, social, and cultural patterns that have led residents to perceive the state in terms of three “grand divisions”: East, Middle, and West Tennessee. East Tennessee, dominated geographically by the Great Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau (also called Cumberland Mountains), is the home of the state's well-known mountain traditions. Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Kingsport are East Tennessee's major population centres. Middle Tennessee has level, fertile land interrupted regularly by gently rolling hills; it traditionally has been a balanced agricultural and commercial region, with Nashville as its main urban centre. West Tennessee is mainly flat land with rich soil and long has had an economy based on plantation agriculture, notably cotton. Memphis is by far the region's dominant urban centre.

      Tennessee enjoys a rich Native American heritage, mainly from the Cherokee and Chickasaw, who populated the area at the time of white settlement in the 1770s. The Cherokee, who lived in the Smoky Mountains area, left a palpable legacy in East Tennessee, despite white encroachment. In response to the challenges on the frontier, white settlers in Tennessee developed a strongly independent attitude that has revealed itself often in state and national politics. Tennessean Andrew Jackson (Jackson, Andrew), hero of the War of 1812 (1812, War of) and seventh president of the United States, led the Democratic Party of the 1830s to become the party of the common people, a path similarly pursued by his fellow Tennessean and U.S. president in the 1840s, James K. Polk (Polk, James K.). Strongly divided by the American Civil War and its own version of Reconstruction, Tennessee became a part of the solid Democratic (Democratic Party) South, and, like much of that region, it lagged behind the rest of the country in wealth and prestige. The dreams of the industrialists of the late 19th century were not realized until later in the 20th, when World War II and spending by the national government fueled new kinds of industrial activity. By the early 21st century, a strong service sector had developed. Also by this time, the Republican Party had won the favour of many Tennesseans, and Tennessee became once again a two-party state. Although still diverse within its own borders, Tennessee had clearly begun to merge economically and politically with the rest of the country. Area 42,143 square miles (109,150 square km). Pop. (2000) 5,689,283; (2006 est.) 6,038,803.

Land

Relief (Tennessee)

   From a strictly geological perspective, Tennessee is divided into six natural regions. In the extreme eastern part of the state lie the Unaka Mountains—a section of which is popularly known as the Great Smoky Mountains—with more than a dozen peaks that rise above 6,000 feet (1,830 metres); the tallest of them, Clingmans Dome, rises to 6,643 feet (2,025 metres). West of the Unakas, the Great Appalachian Valley (or, simply, Great Valley) of East Tennessee, varying from 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 km) in width, includes a series of low ridges that rise above the intervening valleys. West of the Appalachians, the Cumberland Plateau has a generally flat, slightly undulating surface cut by deep and sometimes wide river valleys. The Interior Low Plateau in Middle Tennessee is dominated by the Nashville, or Central, Basin and the Highland Rim. About 60 miles (100 km) wide and running roughly north to south across the state, the basin floor is a slightly rolling terrain punctuated by small hills known as knobs. To the west the eastern Gulf Coastal Plain undulates only slightly and is laced with meandering low-banked streams; the region stretches westward, terminating in the Mississippi alluvial plain, a narrow strip of swamp and floodplain alongside the Mississippi River.

Drainage and soils

 Tennessee is drained directly by three major rivers. The Tennessee River, which flows southward in the east and northward in the west, drains the east, the southern part of the middle region, and a major part of the west. The Cumberland River, dipping into the state from the north, drains the upper middle region, while the Mississippi River directly drains a small portion of the west. The damming of the Tennessee and, to a lesser extent, of the Cumberland not only has controlled flooding and improved navigation but also has created an impressive chain of slack-water lakes, sometimes known as the Great Lakes of the South, many of which lie in Tennessee.

      The valleys and upland basins of Tennessee have moderately fertile soil of limestone origins, and the streams have created rich alluvial lands along their beds. The soils of the ridges and the plateau, however, are thin, stony, and moderately acid, while the eastern Gulf Coastal Plain has a sandy, thin soil that does not support agriculture. Although a substantial portion of the state's soils are unfit for any kind of cultivation, over two-fifths of the total land area is used for crops, livestock, or other agricultural products.

Climate

      Tennessee has a moderate climate featuring cool, but not cold, winters and warm summers. The drop in elevation causes temperatures to rise significantly from east to west. In Nashville high temperatures in July average in the upper 80s F (about 32 °C); high temperatures in January average in the mid-40s F (about 8 °C), while the average low is around 30 °F (−1 °C). The growing season ranges from 130 days in the mountainous east to nearly 240 days at Memphis. Most of Tennessee is within the range of 160 to 220 days. The state receives ample precipitation, about 51 inches (1,300 mm) a year, rather evenly distributed over the seasons and regions.

Plant and animal life

 Because of the state's diverse elevations and its central position in the eastern half of the country, many plants, animals, and fish identified more with the extreme northern and southern parts of the United States are found in Tennessee. Roughly one-half of Tennessee is forested, and there are more than 200 species of trees, a variety of which are commercially valuable. Such trees as locust, poplar, maple, oak, elm, beech, pine, spruce, walnut, hickory, and sycamore are found throughout the state.

 Tennessee's forests are home to a broad spectrum of animal life. Dozens of species of mammals are native to the state. Among them are deer; various carnivorous species such as bobcats, coyotes, foxes, skunks, and weasels; shrews; opossums; assorted bats; and various rodents, including beavers, voles, and squirrels. The state also hosts nearly 100 species of amphibians and reptiles, some one-third of which are snakes. Birds are especially abundant; many migratory waterfowl winter in the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge in the northwestern part of the state. Loons, grebes, herons, ducks, geese, and numerous shorebirds inhabit Tennessee's wetlands, while a wide array of woodpeckers, warblers, vireos, and other small birds animate the woodlands. Common fish include various suckers, catfish, sunfish, perch, and many types of minnows.

People

Population (Tennessee) composition

      The population of Tennessee is composed primarily of people of white European descent. African Americans constitute a significant minority. Peoples of Asian, Hispanic, and Native American ancestry make up the small remainder of the population; the Hispanic community has grown notably since the late 20th century.

      When significant numbers of Europeans began to arrive in present-day Tennessee in the 18th century, the region was already inhabited by various indigenous peoples, most notably the Chickasaw in the west and the Cherokee in the east. In the 1830s, however, most native peoples were forced to leave the state to live on reservations in so-called Indian country (later the state of Oklahoma). Native Americans today constitute just a tiny fraction of the population.

      The first European settlers were predominantly of Scotch-Irish and English ancestry, although Germans also were well represented. The Europeans brought with them slaves of black African descent, and, with the expansion of cotton cultivation in Middle and West Tennessee in the 19th century, the black population grew significantly. In the 20th century, however, many African Americans left Tennessee, while substantial numbers of white Americans moved into the state. In the early 21st century, about four-fifths of Tennessee's population was white, and about one-sixth was African American.

Settlement patterns

 Between the early 20th and the early 21st century, the population of Tennessee lost its overwhelmingly rural character to become predominantly urban and suburban. Since the late 20th century, the state's population has grown faster than those of its southern, northern, and western neighbours but slower than those of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. The suburbs of the state's major urban centres— Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville—have grown especially rapidly. In East Tennessee the counties surrounding Knoxville have developed quickly, and, at the far eastern tip of the state, the proximate cities of Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol have merged to form a metropolitan area about the size of Chattanooga. Suburban growth around Nashville has endowed the city with a substantial metropolitan population. By the turn of the 21st century, the overwhelming majority of the old cotton-producing areas of West Tennessee had lost population, while Memphis had gained some. Minority populations are concentrated in the state's major cities, notably Nashville and Memphis.

Economy

      Until about 1940 Tennessee's economy was predominantly agricultural, with cotton, tobacco, and livestock as the principal cash products. Textile and iron-manufacturing plants were built, mainly in East Tennessee, in the 1800s, but industry did not grow significantly until the 1930s and '40s. This growth was propelled to a considerable degree by the construction of hydroelectric dams and power plants by the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and by World War II, which catalyzed industrial activity in virtually all areas. Since the mid-20th century, Tennessee's economy has grown mainly in the service sector. However, development of information and high-technology services has not been as rapid in Tennessee as it has been elsewhere in the region, despite the ongoing activities of the federal government in association with the TVA and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Agriculture and forestry

      Agriculture and forestry constitute only a tiny fraction of the state's gross domestic product (GDP) and employ a similarly small segment of the workforce. The main crops are cotton, soybeans, hay, tobacco, corn (maize), and small grains, but livestock nearly equals crops in terms of cash receipts. Broiler chickens, eggs, cattle, and milk are the most important livestock products, although the Tennessee walking horse, historically bred in Tennessee's central region, brings the state fame among equestrians. Hardwoods (oak, maple, walnut, and others) and softwoods (pine and cedar) are harvested in Tennessee for lumber, chips, pulp, and other wood products. The government operates regular reforestation programs to ensure sustainability of the state's forest resources.

Resources and power

      The principal product of Tennessee's mining industry is crushed stone, followed by construction materials, including sand and gravel, dimension stone (marble and sandstone), clay, lime, barite, and other minerals. The state is a national leader in the production of zinc, but copper, silver, lead, and other metals also are important. Coal (coal mining) is the state's primary fuel mineral, with large deposits in the Cumberland Mountains.

 Tennessee draws most of its electricity from coal-fired plants, but nuclear power (nuclear energy) stations also are a significant source of energy. During World War II a nuclear reactor was developed at Oak Ridge, near Knoxville, for the purpose of producing material that could be used in an atomic bomb. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory remains an important institute for the research of military and nonmilitary uses for nuclear materials. Hydroelectric power is prevalent in the eastern part of the state. The TVA, established in 1933 to develop the resources of the Tennessee River valley, is among the largest electric-power-generating systems in the country.

Manufacturing

      Although employment in manufacturing has declined since the late 20th century, the sector continues to be a significant contributor to Tennessee's GDP. The major products manufactured in the state are computers and electronic equipment, transportation equipment, foods (including beverages and tobacco), chemicals, and metal products. Automobile manufacturing has been one of the fastest-growing segments of Tennessee's manufacturing sector since the late 20th century.

Services

      In the early 21st century, the service sector—including government, trade and transportation, various financial and professional services, education, health services, and leisure and hospitality services—accounted for well over half of Tennessee's GDP and provided the vast majority of new jobs. With the state's bountiful scenery, parks, historical sites, and entertainment facilities, tourism has emerged as an important component of the service sector and now employs a significant and growing portion of the population. Health care services, also a major segment of the sector, have shown steady growth.

Transportation

      Tennessee's river system is a vital component of the state's transportation complex. The Tennessee River has a high level of barge traffic. In 1985 it was connected to the Tombigbee River to the south by the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, a canal that created a direct route from the state to the Gulf of Mexico (Mexico, Gulf of). Railroads remain important, despite a general decline. A network of interstate highways and urban beltways facilitates travel between and around major cities. The state has dozens of public domestic airports. International air service is available from Nashville and Memphis; these two cities also serve as important regional transportation hubs.

Government and society

Constitutional framework

 Tennessee's first constitution was enacted in 1796, and new constitutions were adopted in 1835 and 1870. The 1870 constitution was revised several times in the 20th century. Tennessee's government—like that of the federal government—consists of executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The governor, chosen through statewide elections, is the chief executive and appoints the heads of major departments and important state commissions. The General Assembly, Tennessee's bicameral legislature, consists of the 33-member Senate as its upper house and the 99-member House of Representatives as its lower house. Senators are elected to four-year terms, while representatives are elected for two years in office. The Senate elects its own speaker, who also serves as lieutenant governor. The General Assembly has the authority to override a governor's veto by a simple majority. Amendments to the constitution must be approved by both the legislature and the citizens.

      The judicial system is headed by the five-justice Supreme Court, which appoints the attorney general and hears appeals from lower courts. Directly below the Supreme Court are two appellate courts: the Court of Appeals, which has authority in civil matters, and the Court of Criminal Appeals, which handles appeals involving felonies, misdemeanors, or postconviction petitions. The Supreme Court justices and the other appellate judges are apportioned among East, Middle, and West Tennessee, and they are elected by the people. The lowest level of the judiciary consists of chancery, circuit, and criminal courts, the judges for which are elected from within their respective counties of jurisdiction. There also are juvenile and family courts.

      Local government follows the national pattern. A county commission, composed of commissioners from the civil districts into which the counties are divided, constitutes the legislative authority of most of the state's 95 counties. School boards, either elected or appointed, administer the schools under the direction of county superintendents. Popularly elected sheriffs enforce the criminal laws, and elected officers collect the property taxes and record real-estate transfers. The chief executive officers of the counties are the county executives. Types of city government include the council-manager, mayor-council, and commissioner systems. The city of Nashville and Davidson county constitute a single governmental unit, called Metropolitan Government, or Metro.

Health and welfare

      Outstanding medical centres are available in Tennessee's major cities. The Department of Human Services offers a broad spectrum of nonmedical programs to citizens with disabilities, underprivileged children and families, and seniors. In addition to providing basic welfare services, the state facilitates foster care and adoption, licenses day-care centres, and oversees programs to prevent child abuse.

Education

      A significant portion of every state tax dollar goes to public education. The State Board of Education administers elementary and secondary education. Tennessee arose in the 1980s as a leader in education reform through the implementation of its Better Schools program, which rewarded teachers for upgrading their credentials and for their performance in the classroom. Since the late 20th century, there also has been increased emphasis on art, music, and physical education in the elementary schools and on math and science requirements at the secondary level. However, Tennessee schools have continued to suffer from poor overall funding, largely because of their dependency on revenues from only modest sales and property taxes.

      The Tennessee Higher Education Commission coordinates the work of two higher education boards—the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees and the Board of Regents of the State University and Community College System of Tennessee. The University of Tennessee (Tennessee, University of) has campuses in Knoxville, Memphis (the medical school and other schools related to health services), Martin, and Chattanooga. There are several regional public universities, among the oldest and most prominent of which are East Tennessee State University (1912) in Johnson City, the University of Memphis (Memphis, University of) (1911), and Tennessee State (Tennessee State University) (1912) in Nashville. There are more than a dozen community colleges and many technical institutes. Tennessee has long been known for its private colleges; of these, Vanderbilt (Vanderbilt University) and Fisk (Fisk University) universities, both in Nashville, and the University of the South in Sewanee are perhaps the best known. Fisk is among the country's most highly regarded historically black universities.

Cultural life

      The geographic, economic, and social divisions of Tennessee are reflected in a regionalized culture from which have emerged many notable figures in the arts. The white European pioneer tradition helped to shape the music, crafts, and legends of East Tennessee, while African Americans have been a formative cultural force in the western part of the state. Middle Tennesseans have nurtured a rich amalgam of religious, educational, and other institutions.

The arts

Music

      Tennessee has long been at the vanguard of the country's musical development. The mountainous eastern region is home not only to an array of rural Appalachian musics rooted in Scotch-Irish tradition but also to popularized country music styles. East Tennessean Dolly Parton, among others, has been at the forefront of mountain and country music performance, and she has actively promoted Appalachian traditions in her popular Dollywood theme park at Pigeon Forge, in the Great Smoky Mountains.

      West Tennessee has an especially salient musical history. Beale Street in Memphis emerged as a magnet in the early 20th century for distinguished African American musicians and singers, such as W.C. Handy (Handy, W.C.) (an Alabaman by birth), who fostered the development of the blues; the street remains a widely recognized hub of musical activity. In the 1950s, at the studios of Sun Records in Memphis, Elvis Presley (Presley, Elvis) merged blues and country music to create a new musical genre that revolutionized American popular music— rock and roll. Presley's mansion, Graceland, is now a popular museum devoted to his life and legacy.

  The musical heritage of Middle Tennessee is no less illustrious than those of the eastern and western parts of the state. Since 1925, when the “ Grand Ole Opry” radio program was first broadcast, Nashville has been the national centre for the performance, recording, and publishing of country music. The Opry, now a full-fledged stage show that draws immense crowds, has been instrumental in propelling musicians such as long-time Tennessee resident Bill Monroe (Monroe, Bill), the creator of bluegrass music, to stardom. Further enlivening the performing arts of Middle Tennessee and of the state as a whole have been the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (opened 1980) and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (established 1967, with a new building in 2001), both in Nashville.

Literature

      Several important literary movements have ties to Tennessee. In the 1920s the so-called Fugitive poets, associated with Vanderbilt University, gained international attention. Four of them, John Crowe Ransom (Ransom, John Crowe), Donald Davidson (Davidson, Donald), Allen Tate (Tate, Allen), and Robert Penn Warren (Warren, Robert Penn), joined with eight other writers in contributing essays to I'll Take My Stand (1930), a defense of traditional agrarian culture against the changes in values associated with industrialization. Among the state's most distinguished writers of the mid-20th century were Peter Taylor (Taylor, Peter), known for his short stories illuminating conflicts of the changing rural South, and James Agee (Agee, James), recognized for his film scripts, writings on film, and novels. In the later 20th century, Alex Haley (Haley, Alex) produced groundbreaking historical fiction and documentary works depicting the struggles of African Americans, while Shelby Foote (Foote, Shelby) was acclaimed particularly for his multivolume account of the American Civil War.

Cultural institutions

      Of Tennessee's many historical sites, the Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson (Jackson, Andrew), near Nashville, and the Civil War battlefield of Shiloh (Shiloh, Battle of) are the most famous. The Tennessee State Museum (1937) in Nashville exhibits contemporary and earlier art as well as historical artifacts that document the cultural richness and vitality of the state. In East Tennessee the Museum of Appalachia (1967) near Norris displays the life and material culture of the Appalachian people; the American Museum of Science and Energy (1949) at Oak Ridge chronicles the development and applications of atomic energy; and Rock City Gardens and the Tennessee Aquarium, both in Chattanooga, are popular attractions. In West Tennessee the former Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, site of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (King, Martin Luther, Jr.), now draws many visitors as the National Civil Rights Museum.

Sports and recreation

 Tennessee has consistently fielded several strong collegiate sports teams. Most notably, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has fronted nationally prominent gridiron football and women's basketball teams. Both the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt University are members of the Southeastern Conference of collegiate sports. Nashville is home to professional hockey (Predators) and gridiron football (Titans) teams; Memphis has a professional basketball team (Grizzlies).

      The natural beauty of East Tennessee draws many visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park (shared with North Carolina), one of the largest protected areas in the eastern United States and among the most heavily visited national parks in the country. At Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, also in the eastern mountains, a wide variety of entertainment facilities, such as campgrounds, riding stables, and amusement parks, have emerged since the late 20th century to serve the millions of tourists who visit the area annually. Tennessee also has dozens of state parks, most of which are located near the lakes and mountains of the middle and eastern regions.

Media and publishing

      Tennessee is served by many daily newspapers, of which The Tennessean, published in Nashville, and Commercial Appeal, produced in Memphis, have the widest circulations. The Tennessean has a national reputation for journalistic excellence. The state has more than 100 radio stations and several dozen television stations.

Sarah McCanless Howell James A. Hodges Robert J. Norrell

History

Prehistory and European settlement

      The earliest inhabitants of Tennessee are believed to have been ice age peoples descended from Asians who crossed the former Bering Strait land bridge more than 20,000 years ago. These peoples were of Paleo-Indian culture, and, like their Archaic (Archaic culture) successors, they lived primarily by hunting. The Archaic culture was succeeded by the Woodland culture (Woodland cultures) and later by the Mississippian culture, both of which refined hunting methods and ultimately developed an agricultural livelihood. The Mississippian peoples were dominant when the first known European in the area, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto (Soto, Hernando de), arrived in 1540 in search of gold. By the time Europeans returned to the area for further exploration in the 1700s, the principal indigenous groups were the Chickasaw, in the west, and the Cherokee, in the east.

      The name Tennessee derives from that of the Cherokee village Tanasi. The Cherokee developed warm relations with English traders from Virginia and South Carolina and were initially their allies in the French and Indian War of the 1750s and '60s. However, as English traders and hunters became land-hungry settlers, the Cherokee came to see them as a threat. Thus began a long period of intermittent conflict, which ended with the final removal of the Cherokee from the state in the 19th century.

      As for the English settlers, a group in upper East Tennessee, learning that they were not under royal authority, set a precedent for self-government in the Watauga Association in 1772, the example of which was later followed by the signers of the Cumberland Compact on the site of Nashville. An important group of Tennesseans showed their support for independence during the American Revolution (1775–83) by contributing to the defeat of the loyalists (loyalist) (Tories)—those who supported Great Britain—in the Battle of Kings Mountain (Kings Mountain, Battle of) in South Carolina in 1780. This was one of several encounters that encouraged British leaders to withdraw their forces.

Early statehood and the Jackson era

      Initially a part of the new state of North Carolina following the Revolution, Tennessee made a bid for admission to the Union as a state named Franklin. Because North Carolina had rescinded its original cession of western lands, however, the Continental Congress—the governing body of the early United States—turned down this petition for statehood. Under the new federal constitution, the region was organized as the Territory South of the River Ohio. In 1796 Tennessee became a state, the first admitted from territorial status, with Knoxville as its first capital, John Sevier (Sevier, John) as its first governor, and Gen. Andrew Jackson (Jackson, Andrew) as its first congressman.

 Tennesseans played a decisive role as volunteers under the leadership of Jackson in the Creek War, which erupted in 1813 and ended in 1814 at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. In response to a devastating attack by Creek warriors on Fort Mims, Alabama, such Tennessee volunteers as Davy Crockett (Crockett, Davy) led the destruction of many Muskogee (Upper Creek) towns and people. Jackson's victory over the British at New Orleans (New Orleans, Battle of) in 1815 made him a national hero of the War of 1812 (1812, War of). Jackson, perceived as a champion of the common people, in part because of his success in fighting the indigenous populations, was elected president in 1828 and again in 1832. As president he was the leader of the Democratic Party, an opponent of the national bank, and an advocate of the removal of all native peoples in the eastern United States to the western regions.

 Despite their efforts to assimilate into the dominant white culture, most of the Cherokee of East Tennessee were forcibly removed from the state by the U.S. government in 1838–39. Together with other indigenous peoples of the southeastern United States, Tennessee's native populations were routed via the so-called Trail of Tears to reservations in what is now Oklahoma.

 The growing commercial interests in the country—in national politics led by Henry Clay (Clay, Henry), Daniel Webster (Webster, Daniel), and John C. Calhoun (Calhoun, John C)—opposed the policies of so-called “King Andrew” Jackson. Out of this opposition emerged the Whig Party, led in Tennessee by John Bell (Bell, John) and Hugh Lawson White. The Whigs controlled state politics at the very time Jackson was president. Jackson's champion in the U.S. House of Representatives, Tennessean James K. Polk (Polk, James K.), was elected president in 1844, although the majority of Tennesseans, sympathetic to the Whig Party, voted against him.

The Civil War and Reconstruction

 With growing tension between the states of the North (North, the) and those of the South (South, the) over the issue of slavery, many Southern states considered the 1860 election of emancipation advocate Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, Abraham) as president to be their signal to secede from the United States; initially, though, the majority of Tennesseans remained loyal to the Union. However, when the American Civil War finally broke out in 1861, Tennessee, like other states in the upper South (South, the), voted for secession and joined the new Confederate States of America (Confederacy). Only Virginia saw more fighting than Tennessee during the war. Engagements such as those at Fort Donelson (Fort Donelson, Battle of), Shiloh (Shiloh, Battle of), Stones River (Stones River, Battle of), Chattanooga (Chattanooga, Battle of), Knoxville, Franklin, and Nashville (Nashville, Battle of) destroyed much of the state's property and population; the Union army won most of the encounters and occupied much of Tennessee by 1864.

 While Middle and West Tennessee were sympathetic to the South, the majority of East Tennesseans remained loyal to the Union, and some attempted to form a separate, pro-Union state. This turmoil was reflected in the career of Andrew Johnson (Johnson, Andrew), a popular Democratic governor and U.S. senator before the war. Johnson's loyalty to the Republican-dominated Union, his marked disregard of plantation owners and their interests, and his position as military governor of Tennessee during the war subjected him to threats (including assassination) by many people in the state.

      After the war, Tennessee experienced a relatively brief period of Radical Reconstruction, distinguished mainly by the tenure of the Radical Republican governor William G. Brownlow (Brownlow, William G.), a Knoxville minister and newspaper editor who served from 1865 to 1869. Like Johnson, Brownlow was resolutely unreceptive to the concerns of the plantation aristocracy.

      Having been selected as Lincoln's vice president in 1864, Johnson took office as president of the United States following the assassination of Lincoln in 1865. When Johnson was impeached by a House of Representatives dominated by Radicals, who believed that he was too sympathetic to Southern interests, he became a hero to many Tennesseans who had formerly disliked him. (The Senate, however, fell one vote short of the majority needed to remove him from office.) In 1871 the conservative, pro-Confederate Democrats regained control of the state and used their power to reinstitute pro-plantation, antiblack politics.

Tennessee, c. 1900 through World War II

 Factionalism within the ascendant Democratic Party and popular crusades such as prohibition (a movement to restrict the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages) and women's rights captured public attention and worked to polarize Tennessean society in the early 20th century. The preoccupation with prohibition delayed effective reform of state government until the ascendancy of Gov. Austin Peay in 1922. Also indicative of the state's ideological fracture was the 1925 Scopes Trial in the small town of Dayton in East Tennessee. In this highly publicized proceeding, a local biology teacher was convicted of having broken the state's law against the teaching of Charles Darwin (Darwin, Charles)'s theory of evolution. The event underscored the emerging division among Americans between modernist thought and more fundamentalist values.

      Plagued by the Great Depression and ongoing party factionalism in the early 1930s, Tennessee resumed its reform program under Gordon Browning, who was elected governor in 1936; among Browning's most notable reforms were the overhaul of the state's financial structure (to reduce debt) and the implementation of various social programs. National initiatives of the 1930s and '40s, such as the development of the social security system, also helped to rebuild and reshape Tennessee's economy. Especially important was the federal government's establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which in 1933 began building a large network of hydroelectric dams on the Tennessee River and its many tributaries in East Tennessee and western North Carolina. The TVA stimulated economic activity in East Tennessee into the 21st century. During World War II a nuclear-materials production facility at Oak Ridge was integral to the U.S. wartime atomic energy program known as the Manhattan Project.

Tennessee since the mid-20th century

      After the war, under the leadership of Governors Frank G. Clement and Buford Ellington, the state gave increased attention to education, mental health, highways, and constitutional reform, and Tennessee became a testing ground for breaking the barriers of racial segregation in schools and in other public facilities. Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis were sites of important protests by African Americans against segregation. The sit-ins (sit-in) in Nashville in 1959–61 gained national attention for the civil rights movement, as did the Memphis sanitation workers' strike in 1968. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (King, Martin Luther, Jr.), was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers when he was assassinated on April 4 of that year; a Tennessee court subsequently convicted James Earl Ray (Ray, James Earl) of the murder.

      After the 1960s, Tennesseans experienced the revitalization of two-party politics. Republicans (Republican Party), who after Reconstruction typically held strength only in East Tennessee, began to acquire more supporters among Middle and West Tennesseans. Democrats (Democratic Party) have won most of the elections for governor since the 1960s, while the two parties have been fairly well balanced in both houses of Congress (Congress of the United States); one Democrat, Al Gore (Gore, Al), was first elected U.S. senator in the 1980s and was elected vice president in the 1990s.

      Since the turn of the 21st century, Tennessee has experienced moderate population growth, concentrated heavily in the suburban areas of the major cities. The overall ethnic composition of the state generally has been maintained, although the Hispanic community has expanded significantly. The service sector of the economy has performed strongly in the areas of shipping, hotels and entertainment, and health care, while the production of automobiles has bolstered the state's manufacturing industry.

Sarah McCanless Howell Robert J. Norrell

Additional Reading

Basic physical geography is presented in Ralph O. Fullerton and John B. Ray (eds.), Tennessee: Geographical Patterns and Regions (1977); and Edward T. Luther, Our Restless Earth: The Geologic Regions of Tennessee (1977). Federal Writers' Project, Tennessee: A Guide to the State (1939, reissued as The WPA Guide to Tennessee, 1986), is still a useful survey of many aspects of the state's geography and culture. DeLorme Mapping Company, Tennessee Atlas & Gazetteer, 8th ed. (2007), contains topographic and other maps as well as information on various recreation sites. Ralph O. Fullerton, Place Names of Tennessee (1974), combines geography and local history. Marguerite Owen, The Tennessee Valley Authority (1973), recounts the history and details of the programs of this important agency. Works dealing with various cultural matters include Lester C. Lamon, Blacks in Tennessee, 1790–1970 (1981, reissued 1996); Ronald N. Satz, Tennessee's Indian Peoples: From White Contact to Removal, 1540–1840 (1979); Herman A. Norton, Religion in Tennessee, 1777–1945 (1981); and Charles K. Wolfe, Tennessee Strings: The Story of Country Music in Tennessee (1977).A valuable history of the state is Robert E. Corlew, Tennessee: A Short History, 2nd updated ed. (1990), which contains excellent chapter bibliographies. A fine account of Tennessee's history through the late 1990s is rendered by Paul H. Bergeron, Stephen V. Ash, and Jeanette Keith, Tennesseans and Their History (1999).Robert J. Norrell

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