Tennessee State Facts, Symbols and History

Tennessee is a state in the eastern United States, one of the so-called states of the Southeast Center. Population 6,403,353 (2013 data). The capital is Nashville, the largest city is Memphis. Became part of the state 16th in a row. See cities and towns in Tennessee.

The official nickname is “The Volunteer State”. Tennessee received this nickname during the Anglo-American War of 1812-1815. thanks to their volunteers who played a big role, especially in the battle of New Orleans.

Tennessee borders eight other states: Kentucky and Virginia to the north; North Carolina in the east; Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to the south; Arkansas and Missouri on the Mississippi River to the west.

The state is divided by the Tennessee River into 3 parts: East, Middle and West Tennessee.

• AbbreviationFinder: Demonstrates how the two-letter acronym of TN stands for Tennessee and a list of frequently used abbreviations related to the state of Tennessee.

East Tennessee is located in a mountainous area, it is there that the highest point of the state is located – Mount Clingmans Dome (2025 m), which is also the highest point of the path on the Appalachian Trail. The Tennessee River originates in this part of the state. This area is covered with fertile valleys separated by wooded mountain ranges. The cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga are located in East Tennessee.

Middle Tennessee is located on the Cumberland Plateau, the average height of which is 450 – 500 meters above sea level.

The Tennessee Territory has been inhabited for at least 12,000 years. The names of the ethnic groups that lived in these parts before the advent of Europeans are unknown, but archaeologists identify several main cultures: archaic (before the 10th century BC), forest (10th century BC – 10th century AD) .) and Mississippi (X – XV centuries), which were the forerunners of the Muscogee Indians, who occupied the Tennessee River valley before the arrival of the Cherokee tribes.

The first Europeans to come here were the Spanish conquistadors of the Hernando de Soto detachment (1540). They still found the Muscogee population here and, probably, became one of the reasons for the depopulation of the region, unwittingly infecting the Indians with European diseases. The liberated lands were soon occupied by the Cherokee, who had migrated from Virginia. As the white colonists penetrated, the local Indian population was pushed further south and west.

The first British permanent settlement in Tennessee was Fort Loudon, located near the modern town of Vonore in the eastern part of the state. In 1756 it was the extreme western outpost of the English colonies. In 1760, the fort was captured by the Indians, and its garrison was completely killed. In the 1760s the valley was gradually mastered by the colonists, who at first were looking only for new territories for hunting. At the end of the same decade, a permanent white population began to reappear in the east. During the American Revolution, it was planned to create a colony of Transylvania here, but the Cherokee Indians, who had made an alliance with the Loyalists, still actively resisted colonization. By 1780, the only remaining white population was in the Fort Watagua region on the Virginia frontier, which had become a center of struggle against both the Indians and the British forces. In the mid 1780s. Watagua and the entire western part of North Carolina separated from the United States into an independent state, but without support from the east, they could not organize a defense against the Indians and four years later reunited with North Carolina. However, in 1790 the state ceded the territory to the control of the federal government, which administered it as part of the Southwest Territory until the formation of the new state of Tennessee in 1796.

The eastern border of the state, separating it from North Carolina, passed through the Appalachian mountains, and in the west, the territory of Tennessee reached the Mississippi River, which at that time was the border with the Spanish colonies. The colonization of the western territories ended in the 1830s. eviction of the Cherokee to Arkansas. On the long journey to the new places of settlement, about 4,000 Indians died. The Cherokee called this deportation the Wailing Road. Other Indian tribes were subjected to a similar eviction, so the expression road of tears is also applied to them. It is especially popular among the Indians of the five civilized tribes.

In 1861, the state of Tennessee joined the confederacy of the South and became a theater of war. The troops of General Grant and the fleet of the northerners by 1862 completely controlled the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, but in the mountains of the eastern part of the state the southerners held positions until 1865, from where they launched counterattacks in the direction of Chattanooga and Nashville. During this time, President Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson, his future successor, as Governor of Tennessee.

The Tennessee Legislature approved a constitutional amendment to outlaw slavery on February 22, 1865, and on April 7 of the same year ratified a corresponding amendment to the U.S. Constitution, making Tennessee the only state in the former Confederacy that did not have a military governor appointed during the Reconstruction period. In 1864, Governor Johnson was elected vice president of the United States, and after the assassination of Lincoln in 1865, he became president. At the end of Reconstruction, Tennessee, like the rest of the southern states, passed laws restricting the rights of African Americans, and in 1889 the State General Assembly passed four more laws that effectively became suffrage reform that prevented the poorest sections of the population, including African Americans, from voting.. At the end of the 19th century, Tennessee also passed racial segregation laws. In total, these laws affected about 24% of the state’s population, or 480,430 people. Most of them remained in force until 1965.

Tennessee is the only US state where the production of a special type of American corn whiskey, named after the state, is officially allowed – Tennessee whiskey. Tennessee is distinguished from bourbon (produced mostly in Kentucky) by especially careful treatment with sugar maple charcoal: the alcohol obtained after distillation is filtered drop by drop through barrels more than three meters high clogged with maple charcoal. As a result, whiskey is especially soft. The most famous brand of Tennessee whiskey is Jack Daniels.