Tennessee Admitted to the Union

Tennessee Admitted to the Union

In 1929, the Tennessee legislature passed an act designating June 1, the anniversary of the admission of Tennessee to the Union, as Statehood Day. Tennessee's admission in 1796 as the 16th state was the climax of a long and complicated struggle for an independent status separate from the previously settled areas of Virginia and North Carolina.

The Spanish, French, and English, in turn, touched upon, explored, and laid claim to the region that is now Tennessee, setting off a rivalry for its possession that was not settled in favor of the English until the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto was probably the first European to set foot within the boundaries of the present state. He may have crossed the southeastern section as early as 1540 on his march from Florida. In about 1541 he and his men, having reached the Mississippi River, stopped hastily to gather supplies and construct crude rafts on a lofty bluff, presumed to be the site of Memphis in southwestern Tennessee. There was, however, no attempt at colonization.

Over 130 years passed before other Europeans visited the area. Starting in the late 17th century French adventurers, including the intrepid missionary Jacques Marquette and his companion Louis Joliet, explored the Mississippi River and its tributaries and undoubtedly visited the western portion of Tennessee. The explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle considered this western region part of the vast area of French Louisiana and constructed Fort Prud'homme near what is now Memphis in about 1682. Subsequent French explorers erected Fort Assumption at the same strategic location.

The Spanish and French explorations of Tennessee were minimal in comparison with the inroads made by English fur traders and hunters in the 18th century. Although Virginians are known to have traded with the local tribes there as early as the 1670s, the 1750 expedition led by the Virginia physician and land agent Thomas Walker, who also penetrated the area of Kentucky, is regarded as the decisive beginning of the steady English probing of the region.

In 1756, during the French and Indian Wars, British soldiers established Fort Loudoun (named after John Campbell, the fourth earl of Loudoun, then commander in chief of the British military establishment in North America) on the Little Tennessee River some 30 miles south of what is now Knoxville. Four years later Cherokee attacked the outpost's garrison and the scattered frontiersmen it defended. After the British victory in the protracted struggle for supremacy in North America had been achieved in 1763, Native Americans, especially the Cherokee, were partially appeased by a royal proclamation guaranteeing them their hunting grounds west of the Appalachian Mountains and forbidding colonists along the eastern seaboard from settling on these lands.

Lured by tales spun by hunters and speculators, land-hungry Virginians and North Carolinians nevertheless ventured west across the mountains. In 1769 border settlers, primarily from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, built a few log cabins along the Holston and Watauga Rivers in what they presumed to be Virginian soil, but which was in reality the northeastern corner of Tennessee. When the western boundary between Virginia and North Carolina was subsequently surveyed, the settlements were discovered to be in what then was North Carolina.

The hardy, self-sufficient residents of the first Watauga River valley settlements met in 1772 to form a “homespun government” for the “preservation of their ideals of liberty.” This “government” became known as the Watauga Association. For the first time frontiersmen west of the Alleghenies had joined together in drawing up a written agreement for civil government. The general committee of 13, empowered to act as a legislature, itself elected five of its members to wield executive and judicial powers. A clerk, an attorney, and a sheriff were also elected. The laws of the Royal Colony of Virginia served as models “so near as the situation of affairs would admit,” and provisions for recording deeds and wills were stipulated. The Watauga Association survived for several years, and it soon gained additional support from the Brown Settlement, which had been made on the Nolichucky River in the early 1770s.

Any thought the Wataugans may have had of eventually founding a separate royal colony became obsolete with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775. Instead they organized their area into the Washington District. In 1777 the district, at the request of its residents, was formally annexed to North Carolina and gave its name (changed to Washington County) to North Carolina's entire territorial claim west of the Alleghenies to the Mississippi River. The frontiersmen, including such fighters as John “Nolichucky Jack” Sevier, participated in several Revolutionary War campaigns, helping to defeat the British in the important battle of Kings Mountain in October 1780 in South Carolina. Meanwhile, exploration and settlement over the mountains continued apace. The war years saw the creation of Nashborough (later Nashville), founded by the ubiquitous explorer James Robertson, sometimes dubbed the Father of Tennessee.

After the Revolution, North Carolina, wishing to avoid the financial burden of defending its westernmost territory, ceded it to the federal government in 1784 on condition that the cession be accepted within two years. The Watauga River valley settlers in eastern Tennessee were upset by this action, taken without their approval, and were disturbed at the prospect of finding themselves without any government protection whatsoever. They met in convention at Jonesboro on August 23, 1784, and declared their intention of forming a new state of Franklin (at first dubbed “Frankland,” or “land of the free”). They deemed the move essential to ensure protection against Native American attacks, validity of land titles, and a stable government. Delegates were chosen for a later convention, which would organize the new governmental apparatus.

North Carolina reversed its decision, repealed the act of cession, and tried to reclaim the territory. The precarious civil government of Franklin was beset with financial problems, Native American difficulties, and a struggle to wrest recognition from North Carolina and the United States Congress. It tottered on for four years under the leadership of the war hero John Sevier, now governor, whose annual salary had to be paid in animal skins. The Franklinites and the Cumberland settlers eventually found it necessary to gain support by intriguing with Spanish Louisiana, whose control of the mouth of the Mississippi River vitally affected the area's economic development.

By the late 1780s, the situation in Franklin was confused. North Carolina put an abrupt halt to the possibility of having the territory fall under the control of Spanish Louisiana by re-enacting the cession of its western claim. Sevier was arrested on charges of treason. Congress accepted the cession, and on May 26, 1790, created the “Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio” with William Blount as governor. Blount had served as a member of the Continental Congress and delegate to the federal Constitutional Convention. Finally, arrangements were made for its admission to the Union as a state. A constitutional convention met in January 1796 at Knoxville, the first capital, and drafted the constitution, which Thomas Jefferson described as “the least imperfect and most republican” of any state. It went into effect without submission to a popular vote, and on June 1, 1796, Tennessee, with substantially its present borders, became the 16th state of the Union. John Sevier, having been pardoned and restored to favor, became the first governor of the state and served several terms.

Settlers flocked into Tennessee by land and water, especially through the Cumberland Gap over the famous Wilderness Road hacked out by Daniel Boone. The state's population numbered over 100,000 by 1800, and prosperous centers such as Memphis, soon a leading town of the cotton -growing delta, sprang into existence during the next half century. The state nurtured many famous fighters, including Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett. It gained its nickname “the Volunteer State” from the high number of volunteers who answered the call to service when the Mexican War broke out in 1846.

After the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States in 1860, and the subsequent formation of the Confederacy, the people of Tennessee, in February 1861, voted down a proposal to summon a convention to consider the question of secession. Public opinion shifted rapidly, however, with the firing on Fort Sumter in the spring of 1861, the beginning of the Civil War. A second popular referendum, held on June 8, 1861, saw the victory of the pro-Confederate faction as secession was approved by two-thirds of the voters, those against the move being East Tennesseans who owned few slaves and were loyal Unionists. On June 24 the governor of Tennessee issued a proclamation declaring the state's independence of the federal government, thus making Tennessee the last of the 11 Southern states to leave the Union.

In the meantime, a pro-Union convention of delegates representing all the eastern and some of the middle counties had been held on June 17 and had petitioned the United States Congress for admission of their area to the Union as an independent state. The request was denied.

Home to an extensive river network that provided ideal invasion routes during the conflict, Tennessee was, after Virginia, the second bloodiest battlefied of the Civil War. According to one historian, over 450 minor skirmishes and major encounters took place within Tennessee's boundaries.

In February 1865 an amendment to the Tennessee state constitution of 1834 liberated the slaves. In 1866 Tennessee became the first of the former Confederate states to have its statehood privileges restored, thereby escaping the congressional Reconstruction. However, radical Republicans in power enforced Reconstruction-like measures in Tennessee, and the postwar era was marked by bitter feelings.

Starting in the late 19th century Tennessee developed its mining, manufacturing, and other industrial assets. A landmark in American economic history was the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), an independent government corporate agency, by Congress in 1933. The TVA contributed to the development of the entire Tennessee River basin and stimulated the state's industrial and tourist potentialities in a variety of ways: furnishing cheap hydroelectric power, improving river navigation, preventing floods, and planning forest and soil conservation projects.