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Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. In 1796, it became the sixteenth state to join the union. Tennessee is known as the "Volunteer State", a nickname it earned during the War of 1812, in which volunteer soldiers from Tennessee played a prominent role especially during the Battle of New Orleans.Brief History of Tennessee in the War of 1812 from the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Retrieved April 30, 2006.
Geography
Tennessee lies adjacent to 8 other states: Kentucky and Virginia to the north; North Carolina on the east; on the south by Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi; and on the west by Arkansas and Missouri—which makes Tennessee tied with Missouri as the states with the most states touching them in the U.S. The state is trisected by the Tennessee River. The highest point in the state is the peak of Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet (2,025 m), which lies on Tennessee's eastern border. The geographical center of the state is located several miles east of Murfreesboro on Old Lascassas Pike and is marked by a roadside monument.
The state of Tennessee is geographically and constitutionally divided into three Grand Divisions: East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and West Tennessee.
Tennessee features six principal geographic regions: the Blue Ridge, the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Region, the Cumberland Plateau, the Highland Rim, the Nashville Basin, and the Gulf Coastal Plain.
East Tennessee
The Blue Ridge area lies on the eastern edge of Tennessee, on the border of North Carolina. This region of Tennessee is characterized by high mountains, including the Great Smoky Mountains, the Chilhowee Mountains, and the Snowbird Mountains. The average elevation of the Blue Ridge area is 5,000 feet (1,500 m) above sea level. Clingman's Dome is located in this region.Stretching west from the Blue Ridge for approximately 55 miles (88 km) is the headwaters of the Tennessee River and formation of the Tennessee Valley. This area of Tennessee is covered by fertile valleys separated by wooded ridges. The western section of the Tennessee valley, where the depressions become broader and the ridges become lower, is called the Great Valley.
Middle Tennessee
To the west of East Tennessee lies the Cumberland Plateau. This area is covered with flat-topped mountains separated by sharp valleys. The elevation of the Cumberland Plateau ranges from 1,500 to 1,800 feet (450 to 550 m) above sea level.The northern section (in Kentucky) of the Highland Rim is sometimes called the Pennyroyal Plateau. To the west of the Cumberland Plateau is the Highland Rim, an elevated plain that surrounds the Nashville Basin. The Nashville Basin is characterized by rich, fertile farm country.
West Tennessee
West of the Highland Rim and Nashville Basin is the Gulf Coastal Plain, which includes the Mississippi embayment. The Gulf Coastal Plain is, in terms of area, the predominant land region in Tennessee. It is part of the large geographic land area that begins at the Gulf of Mexico and extends north into southern Illinois. In Tennessee, the Gulf Coastal Plain is divided into three sections that extend from the Tennessee River in the east to the Mississippi River in the west. The easternmost section consists of hilly land that runs along the western bank of the Tennessee River. This section of the Gulf Coastal Plain is about 10 miles (16 km) wide. To the west of this narrow strip of land is a wide area of rolling hills and streams that stretches all the way to Memphis. This area is called the Tennessee Bottoms or bottom land. In Memphis, the Tennessee Bottoms end in steep bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. To the west of the Tennessee Bottoms is the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, less than 300 feet (90 m) above sea level. This area of lowlands, flood plains, and swamp land is sometimes referred to as The Delta region.Public lands
Areas under the control and management of the National Park Service include:- Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville
- Appalachian National Scenic Trail
- Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area
- Fort Donelson National Battlefield and Fort Donelson National Cemetery near Dover
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park
- Natchez Trace Parkway
- Obed Wild and Scenic River near Wartburg
- Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail
- Shiloh National Cemetery and Shiloh National Military Park near Shiloh
- Stones River National Battlefield and Stones River National Cemetery near Murfreesboro
- Trail of Tears National Historic Trail
Twenty-three state parks, covering some 132,000 acres (534 km²) as well as parts of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee National Forest, and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park are in Tennessee. Sportsmen and visitors are attracted to Reelfoot Lake, originally formed by an earthquake; stumps and other remains of a once dense forest, together with the lotus bed covering the shallow waters, give the lake an eerie beauty.
See also: List of Tennessee counties, List of Tennessee state parks
History
The area now known as Tennessee was first settled by Paleo-Indians nearly 11,000 years ago. The names of the cultural groups that inhabited the area between first settlement and the time of European contact are unknown, but several distinct cultural phases have been named by archaeologists, including Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian whose chiefdoms were the cultural predecessors of the Muscogee people who inhabited the Tennessee River Valley prior to Cherokee migration into the river's headwaters.
When Spanish explorers first visited the area, led by Hernando de Soto in 1539–43, it was inhabited by tribes of Muscogee and Yuchi people. Possibly because of European diseases devastating the Native tribes, which would have left a population vacuum, and also from expanding European settlement in the north, the Cherokee moved south from the area now called Virginia. As European colonists spread into the area, the native populations were forcibly displaced to the south and west, including all Muscogee and Yuchi peoples, including the Chickasaw and Choctaw. From 1838 to 1839, nearly 17,000 Cherokees were forced to march from Eastern Tennessee to Indian Territory west of Arkansas. This came to be known as the Trail of Tears, as an estimated 4,000 Cherokees died along the way.1
Tennessee was admitted to the Union in 1796 as the 16th state; it was created by taking the north and south borders of North Carolina and extending them with only one small deviation to the Mississippi River, Tennessee's western boundary. The word Tennessee comes from the Cherokee Indian language. Some believe the word to be generic and is a transliteration of the Cherokee word "tanasi" meaning village. However, there is a historic marker in East Tennessee attributing the word "tanasi" to the capital city of the Cherokee nation.
The American Civil War to a large extent was fought in Tennessee. It was the last border state to secede from the Union when it joined the Confederate States of America on June 8, 1861. Many battles were fought in the state—most of them Union victories. Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S. Navy captured control of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers in February 1862, and they held off the Confederate counterattack at Shiloh in April. Capture of Memphis and Nashville gave the Union control of the western and middle sections; this control was confirmed at the battle of Murfreesboro in early January 1863. But the Confederates held East Tennessee despite the strength of Unionist sentiment there, with the exception of extremely pro-Confederate Sullivan County. The Confederates besieged Chattanooga in early fall 1863, but were driven off by Grant in November. Many of the Confederate defeats can be attributed to the poor strategic vision of General Braxton Bragg, who led the Army of Tennessee from Shiloh to Confederate defeat at Chattanooga. The last major battles came when the Confederates invaded in November 1864 and were checked at Franklin, then totally destroyed by George Thomas at Nashville, in December. Meanwhile Andrew Johnson, a civilian appointed by President Abraham Lincoln, was the military governor, and slavery was abolished.
After the war, Tennessee adopted a new constitution that abolished slavery effective February 22, 1865 and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 18, 1866. Tennessee was the first state readmitted to the Union on July 24, 1866. Because it ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, Tennessee was the only state that seceded from the Union that did not have a military governor during Reconstruction.
The Nashville Republican Banner on January 4, 1868, published an editorial calling for a counter-revolutionary movement to unseat Republican rule and restore the racial subjugation of the region's blacks. "In this State," the paper argued, "reconstruction has perfected itself and done its worst. It has organized a government which is as complete a close corporation as may be found, it has placed the black man over the white as the agent and prime-move of domination; it has constructed a system of machinery by which all free guarantees, privileges and opportunities are removed from the people.... The impossibility of casting a free vote in Tennessee short of a revolutionary movement ... is an undoubted fact." The Banner in conclusion urged readers to ignore the presidential election and instead put energies into building "a local movement here at home" that would end Republican rule. in Harcourt 2005
In 1897, the state celebrated its centennial of statehood (albeit one year late) with a great exposition.
The need to create work for the unemployed during the Great Depression, the desire for rural electrification, and the desire to control the annual spring floods on the Tennessee River drove the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933. It quickly became the nation's largest public utility.
During World War II, Oak Ridge was selected as a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, one of the principal sites for the Manhattan Project's production and isolation of weapons-grade fissile material.
Tennessee celebrated its bicentennial in 1996 after a yearlong statewide celebration entitled "Tennessee 200" by opening a new state park (Bicentennial Mall) at the foot of Capitol Hill in Nashville.
Demographics
| Historical populations | |
|---|---|
| Census year | Population |
| 1790 | 35,691 |
| 1800 | 105,602 |
| 1810 | 261,727 |
| 1820 | 422,823 |
| 1830 | 681,904 |
| 1840 | 829,210 |
| 1850 | 1,002,717 |
| 1860 | 1,109,801 |
| 1870 | 1,258,520 |
| 1880 | 1,542,359 |
| 1890 | 1,767,518 |
| 1900 | 2,020,616 |
| 1910 | 2,184,789 |
| 1920 | 2,337,885 |
| 1930 | 2,616,556 |
| 1940 | 2,915,841 |
| 1950 | 3,291,718 |
| 1960 | 3,567,089 |
| 1970 | 3,923,687 |
| 1980 | 4,591,120 |
| 1990 | 4,877,185 |
| 2000 | 5,689,283 |
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2005, Tennessee has an estimated population of 5,962,959, which is an increase of 69,661, or 1.2%, from the prior year and an increase of 273,697, or 4.8%, since the year 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 117,203 people (that is 414,305 births minus 297,102 deaths) and an increase from net migration of 159,680 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 49,973 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 109,707 people.
| Major cities Secondary cities |
Education
Colleges and universities
Professional sports teams
Miscellaneous topics
Name origin
The earliest variant of the name that became Tennessee was recorded by Captain Juan Pardo, the Spanish explorer, when he and his men passed through a Native American village named "Tanasqui" in 1567 while traveling inland from South Carolina. European settlers later encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi (or "Tanase") in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee. The town was located on a river of the same name (now known as the Little Tennessee River). It is not known whether this was the same town as the one encountered by Juan Pardo.The meaning and origin of the word are uncertain. Some accounts suggest it is a Cherokee modification of an earlier Yuchi word. It has been said to mean "meeting place", "winding river", or "river of the great bend".**
The modern spelling, Tennessee, is attributed to James Glen, the governor of South Carolina, who used this spelling in his official correspondence during the 1750s. In 1788, North Carolina created "Tennessee County", the third county to be established in what is now Middle Tennessee. (Tennessee County was the predecessor to current-day Montgomery County). When a constitutional convention met in 1796 to organize a new state out of the Southwest Territory, it adopted "Tennessee" as the name of the state.
Trivia
- The State of Tennessee has seven State Songs *.
- On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the thirty-sixth and clinching state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allowed women the right to vote.
- USS Tennessee: Four ships of the United States Navy (and two ships of the Confederate States Navy) have been named in honor of Tennessee.
See also
- List of people from Tennessee
- List of Governors of Tennessee
- Tennessee State Flag
- Seal of Tennessee
- Music of Tennessee
- Scouting in Tennessee
References
- Bontemps, Arna. William C. Handy: Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. Macmillan Company: New York, 1941.
- Brownlow, W. G. Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession: With a Narrative of Personal Adventures among the Rebels (1862)
- Satz, Ronald. Tennessee's Indian Peoples. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1979. ISBN 0870492853
- Schaefer, Richard T. "Sociology Matters". New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2006. ISBN 0072997753
Further reading
- Norton, Herman. Religion in Tennessee, 1777-1945. University of Tennessee Press, 1981.
- Lamon, Lester C. Blacks in Tennessee, 1791-1970. University of Tennessee Press, 1980.
- Van West, Carroll, ed. The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. 1998.
- Van West, Carroll. Tennessee history: the land, the people, and the culture University of Tennessee Press, 1998.
- Bergeron, Paul H. Antebellum Politics in Tennessee. University of Kentucky Press, 1982.
- Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee’s Race Relations in the 1880s. University of Tennessee Press, 1976.
- Cimprich, John. Slavery's End in Tennessee, 1861-1865 University of Alabama, 1985.
- Honey, Michael K. Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers. University of Illinois Press, 1993.
External links
- Tennessee Encyclopedia Online
- State Government Website
- Tennessee Literary Figures from the Southern Literary Review
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- U.S. Census Bureau
- GenealogyBuff.com - Tennessee Library of Files
- Tennessee Blue Book - All things Tennessee
- Timeline of Modern Tennessee Politics
- Tennessee State Facts
1796 establishments | Tennessee
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"Tennessee"