Tennessee

The earliest known inhabitants of present-day Tennessee were Ice Age peoples descended from Asians who crossed the Bering land bridge more than 20,000 years ago. They were followed by Archaic peoples who lived mainly by hunting, then by the Woodland culture and the Mississippian culture, which developed agriculture. By the 1700s the Chickasaw lived mainly in the west and the Cherokee in the east; the Shawnee also lived in the region.⁠[1][2]

In 1540 the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto entered the region in search of gold, at a time when Mississippian peoples were dominant. Spanish, French and English explorers visited the area in the 16th and 17th centuries.⁠[1][2]

During the French and Indian War, the Cherokee at first allied with English traders from VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and South Carolina. As settlers pushed onto their lands, relations soured, leading to intermittent conflict.⁠[1]

The first permanent settlement in the region dates from about 1770. In 1772 the Watauga Association was formed in upper East Tennessee, setting a precedent for self-government; the Cumberland Compact, signed at the site of Nashville, later followed its example.⁠[2][1]

During the American Revolution, men from the region helped defeat loyalist forces at the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina in 1780.⁠[1]

After the Revolution the region was part of North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry. In 1785 settlers broke away and formed the free state of Franklin; its bid for statehood was rejected by Congress because North Carolina had rescinded its cession of western lands. In 1789 North Carolina relinquished its claim to the region.⁠[2][1]

Congress then organized the region under the federal Constitution as the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio. President George Washington appointed William Blount as territorial governor, and in 1791 Blount negotiated the Treaty of the Holston with the Cherokee.⁠[3][1]

A census in 1795 counted 77,262 people in the territory, above the federal requirement of 60,000 for statehood. Delegates from every county then met in Knoxville and drafted a state constitution; Tennessee’s first constitution was enacted in 1796.⁠[3][4]

Tennessee was the third state admitted after the original thirteen and the first admitted from territorial status. Knoxville was its first capital, John Sevier, chosen by the voters, became its first governor, and Andrew Jackson its first congressman.⁠[5][1][3]

After a Creek attack on Fort Mims in AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a U.S. state in the Southeast on the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at Montgomery. It was admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819, as the 22nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,024,279 residents.Open the full entry, the Creek War (1813–1814) followed and ended at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama; Tennessee volunteers, including Davy Crockett, were key participants. In 1815 Andrew Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans and became a national hero.⁠[1]

The first steamboats reached Nashville by 1820, and roads such as the Natchez Trace radiated from Nashville, linking Middle Tennessee with the lower Mississippi River. After the Jackson Purchase, Memphis grew into a river port shipping cotton to New Orleans, and in 1828 the steamboat Atlas reached Knoxville. The state had no railroad mileage in 1850 but had 1,200 miles of track by 1860, mostly in East Tennessee.⁠[6]

In 1840 Tennessee was the nation’s largest corn producer, and in 1850 it raised more hogs than any other state.⁠[6]

Andrew Jackson won the most popular votes in 1824, but the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as president; Jackson won landslide victories in 1828 and 1832. Opposition to Jackson produced the Whig Party, led in Tennessee by John Bell and Hugh Lawson White, and between 1836 and 1852 the Whigs won six of nine gubernatorial elections.⁠[6][1]

Georgia’s pursuit of Cherokee land drove the removal policy; after the Supreme Court ruled for the Cherokee, Jackson refused to enforce the decision. A small group of Cherokee signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. In 1838–1839 the U.S. Army forcibly removed most Cherokee of East Tennessee to present-day OklahomaOklahomaOklahoma is a U.S. state whose capital is Oklahoma City. It was admitted to the Union on November 16, 1907, as the 46th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,959,353.Open the full entry on the “Trail of Tears,” on which thousands died; a small band escaped into the Smoky Mountains. Land taken from the Cherokee became Chattanooga.⁠[6][1]

In 1836 David Crockett and Sam Houston fought for Texan independence; Crockett died at the Alamo and Houston led TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry to victory at San Jacinto. In 1844 James K. Polk of Maury County was elected president, although most Tennesseans voted against him, and he annexed Texas as his first act.⁠[6][1]

Enslaved people rose from 22.1 percent of Tennessee’s population in 1840 to 24.8 percent in 1860; in 1860 only 4.5 percent of white Tennesseans were slaveholders. After Nat Turner’s uprising in Virginia in the early 1830s, Tennessee tightened restrictions on enslaved people. From 1848 slavery dominated state politics, and a Southern convention met in Nashville in 1850.⁠[6]

In 1845 the Philadelphia architect William Strickland came to Nashville to design a new capitol; the building, modeled on ancient Greek architecture, was completed in 1859.⁠[6]

After Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry’s election in 1860, most Tennesseans at first remained loyal to the Union. In a referendum in February 1861 voters rejected a secession convention by about 69,000 to 58,000. After the Civil War began, on June 8, 1861, about 105,000 voted for secession and about 47,000 against, with East Tennessee voting about 33,000 to 14,000 to remain in the Union. The state then joined the Confederacy.⁠[7][8]

Fort Henry fell on February 6, 1862, Fort Donelson surrendered on February 16 with about 13,000 soldiers, and Nashville fell on February 23. The Battle of Shiloh (April 6–7, 1862) was then the bloodiest battle yet fought on North American soil, and Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was killed there; Memphis fell on June 6. Union forces took Chattanooga in late November 1863. At Franklin on November 30, 1864, the Army of Tennessee suffered about 6,300 casualties, and the Battle of Nashville (December 15–16, 1864) effectively ended major fighting in the state.⁠[7]

About 31,000 Tennesseans joined the Federal forces, more than all the other Confederate states together, while more than 120,000 served the Confederacy. Union occupation effectively ended slavery in the state, and some 20,000 African Americans from Tennessee fought for the Union. More battles were fought in Tennessee than in any state except Virginia. Andrew Johnson, a prewar governor and U.S. senator, served as military governor during the war, was chosen as Lincoln’s running mate in 1864 and became president after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.⁠[7][8]

In January 1865 Unionists in Nashville began restoring Tennessee to the Union, and about 25,000 voters approved the amendment abolishing slavery. On July 18, 1866, the General Assembly ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, the third state to do so, and that year Tennessee became the first state readmitted to the Union.⁠[9][2]

Under Governor William G. Brownlow (1865–1869), the state went through a brief period of Radical Reconstruction; in February 1867 the General Assembly backed voting rights for Black men, two years before the Fifteenth Amendment. In 1870 delegates rewrote the state constitution, adding a poll tax, and in 1871 conservative, pro-Confederate Democrats regained control of the state.⁠[8][9]

The state began leasing convicts in 1871 and signed an exclusive lease with TCI in 1884. Trouble erupted in the mines in 1891, and the Coal Creek War peaked in the summer of 1892; more than 500 miners were arrested and 27 people were killed. Convict leasing ended in 1895. Manufactured goods reached $72 million in 1890, compared with about $700,000 a year before the war.⁠[9]

Sampson Keeble was elected to the legislature in 1872, and thirteen Black legislators served in all; McElwee, Hutchins and Gooden, elected in 1887, were the last until the 1960s. Jim Crow laws began in the 1870s, and in 1883 Ida B. Wells challenged segregation on the railroad.⁠[9]

Yellow fever struck Memphis three times in the 1870s; the 1878 epidemic killed 7,750 people in all.⁠[9]

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897 marked the state’s 100th birthday; the six-month event drew nearly two million visitors. In 1900, 16 percent of the state’s roughly two million people lived in cities, and Memphis had 102,300 residents.⁠[9]

The prohibition and women’s rights movements polarized the state, and the rise of Governor Austin Peay in 1922 brought effective government reform. In the Scopes Trial at Dayton in East Tennessee in 1925, a biology teacher was convicted under the state’s anti-evolution law.⁠[8]

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was established in 1933 and began building hydroelectric dams; it is among the largest electric-power systems in the country and stimulated the economy of East Tennessee into the 21st century. The Great Depression and party factionalism slowed reform in the early 1930s; Gordon Browning, elected governor in 1936, overhauled state finances to reduce debt and added social programs.⁠[8][10]

During World War II a nuclear-materials facility at Oak Ridge supported the Manhattan Project. After the war the Atomic Energy Commission facilities at Oak Ridge and the Arnold Engineering Center at Tullahoma remained open, and by the Korean War more than half of TVA’s power went to the uranium enrichment plants at Oak Ridge.⁠[8][11]

After the war tractors spread rapidly, increasing nearly tenfold from 1940 to 1960, and soybeans, dairy cattle and burley tobacco replaced cotton, corn and hogs. The farm population fell from 1.2 million in 1930 to 317,000 in 1970, and by 1980 fewer than 6 percent of Tennesseans earned their main income from farming. In 1960 urban residents outnumbered rural residents for the first time, and by 1963 Tennessee ranked as the 16th-largest industrial state.⁠[11]

The Columbia Race Riot of February 1946 drew national attention to violence against African Americans. In Clinton a lawsuit filed in 1950 led to a desegregation order in 1956; twelve African American students enrolled that fall, Governor Frank G. Clement called out 600 National Guardsmen, and Bobby Cain graduated in May 1957. In Nashville the Hattie Cotton School was dynamited on September 9, 1957.⁠[11]

Veterans helped end the old political order: the “Battle of Athens” took place on August 1, 1946, and in 1948 Estes Kefauver won a U.S. Senate seat and Gordon Browning regained the governorship, ending Ed Crump’s statewide influence. The constitutional convention of 1953 repealed the poll tax.⁠[11]

In late 1959 the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference held two test sit-ins at downtown stores. The first sit-in of the campaign took place on February 13, 1960; on April 19 the home of attorney Z. Alexander Looby was bombed; and on May 10 some downtown lunch counters integrated, making Nashville the first major Southern city to begin desegregating public facilities. Sit-ins in Knoxville began in June 1960, and businesses there desegregated in mid-July.⁠[11][12]

In 1968 Memphis sanitation workers went on strike over discriminatory pay and work rules. Martin Luther King Jr. supported the strike and was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.⁠[11][12]

In 1980 Nissan announced a truck assembly plant in Smyrna; by 1994, 69 Japanese manufacturers had invested more than $4 billion in the state and employed more than 27,000 people. General MotorsGeneral MotorsGeneral Motors Company is a Detroit-based American automaker selling Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC vehicles; the current company was incorporated in Delaware in 2009.Open the full entry’ $2.1 billion plant near Spring Hill was completed in 1987. Volkswagen announced its Chattanooga plant in 2008 and the first cars rolled out in 2011; in January 2019 the company announced an $800 million investment to build electric SUVs, expected to create up to 1,000 jobs.⁠[11]

A new Tennessee State Museum opened in October 2018, the National Museum of African American Music opened in Nashville on January 18, 2021, and the new Tennessee State Library and Archives opened on April 13, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 forced many closures and caused illness and deaths across the state.⁠[11]

On April 26, 2021, the Census Bureau delivered the 2020 census apportionment results to the President. Tennessee kept its 9 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, unchanged from 2010, with an average of 768,544 people per seat, and accordingly has 11 electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[13][14][15]

Tennessee has had three constitutions; the second was adopted in 1835, and the current one was revised several times in the 20th century. State government has executive, legislative and judicial branches; the governor is elected statewide and appoints the heads of major departments and important state commissions. The legislature, the Tennessee General Assembly, is bicameral, with a 33-member Senate whose members serve four-year terms and a 99-member House of Representatives whose members serve two-year terms.⁠[4]

As of November 2026 the governor is Bill Lee, the 50th governor of Tennessee, who took office in 2019. He grew up in Franklin, studied mechanical engineering at Auburn University and in 1992 became president of the family mechanical construction services company his grandfather founded in 1944.⁠[16][17]

Tennessee is bordered by KentuckyKentuckyKentucky is a U.S. state bordered by Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to the north, West Virginia and Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south and Missouri to the west; its capital is Frankfort and its largest city is Louisville. It entered the Union on June 1, 1792, as the 15th state and the first state west of the Appalachian Mountains, and had a population of 4,505,836 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama and MississippiMississippiMississippi is a state of the United States on the Gulf of Mexico; Jackson is both its capital and its largest city. It was admitted to the Union on December 10, 1817, as the 20th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 2,961,279.Open the full entry to the south, and Arkansas and MissouriMissouriMissouri is a state of the United States bounded on the east by the Mississippi River; its capital is Jefferson City, its largest city is Kansas City, and its second-largest is St. Louis. It was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821, as the 24th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 6,154,913.Open the full entry to the west. The Great Smoky Mountains edge the east, the Mississippi River forms the western boundary, and the Tennessee River valley dominates much of the state; about half of the state is forested.⁠[18][2]

On a 2010 census basis, Tennessee has a total area of 42,144 square miles (109,153 km²), of which 41,235 square miles (106,798 km²) is land and 909 square miles (2,355 km²) is water. The highest point is Clingmans Dome in Sevier County at 6,643 feet (about 2,025 m), and the lowest is the Mississippi River in Shelby County at 178 feet (about 54 m).⁠[19][20]

Winters are cool but not cold and summers warm, with temperatures rising noticeably from east to west as elevation drops. In Nashville, July highs average in the upper 80s °F (about 32 °C), January highs in the mid-40s °F (about 8 °C) and January lows around 30 °F (−1 °C). The growing season ranges from 130 days in the mountainous east to nearly 240 days at Memphis, and annual precipitation of about 51 inches (1,300 mm) is spread fairly evenly across seasons and regions.⁠[21]

Census Bureau Vintage 2025 estimates put Tennessee’s population at 7,315,076 on July 1, 2025, up 63,785 from 7,251,291 on July 1, 2024; the numeric gain ranked 8th among the states and the growth rate of 0.9 percent ranked 10th.⁠[22]

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data put Tennessee’s nominal GDP at $586,210.1 million in 2025, $558,792.4 million in 2024 and $528,546.3 million in 2023.⁠[23]

In the early 21st century, services (government, trade and transportation, finance, professional services, education, health care, and leisure and hospitality) accounted for well over half of GDP and provided the vast majority of new jobs, and tourism draws on the state’s scenery, parks, historic sites and entertainment facilities. Major manufactured products include computers and electronics, transportation equipment, foods, chemicals and metal products, and automobile manufacturing has been one of the fastest-growing segments since the late 20th century. Agriculture and forestry make up only a small share of GDP; leading crops are cotton, soybeans, hay, tobacco and corn, and livestock is led by broiler chickens, eggs, cattle and milk.⁠[10]

Coal is the chief fuel mineral, with large deposits in the Cumberland Mountains; nuclear power is also significant, and hydroelectric power is prevalent in the east. The Tennessee River carries heavy barge traffic, and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, connected in 1985, provides a direct route to the Gulf of Mexico. Nashville and Memphis offer international air service and are regional hubs.⁠[10]

By the 1850s the University of Nashville was a leading medical school. Fisk and other colleges were founded during Reconstruction; in the 1870s Vanderbilt was chartered and Meharry Medical College was founded, and an educational reform act was passed in 1873. Vanderbilt faculty members Earl Sutherland and Stanley Cohen won Nobel PrizesNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry in 1971 and 1987, and in 1985 Margaret Rhea Seddon became the first Tennessean in space.⁠[6][9][11]

Music publishing in the state began in 1824 and helped preserve traditional American tunes. Elvis Presley’s mid-1950s recordings for Sun Records in Memphis opened a new era in popular music, the Stax “Memphis sound” won worldwide renown, and Graceland is the most visited celebrity museum in the country. Dolly Parton started her Imagination Library in 1990.⁠[6][11]

In professional sports, the Tennessee TitansTennessee TitansThe Tennessee Titans are an NFL professional American football team in the AFC South, playing at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded as the Houston Oilers, they began AFL play in 1960 and won the league’s first two championships. They moved to Tennessee in 1997, adopted the Titans name in 1999 and won the AFC championship that season. Amy Adams Strunk is controlling owner, and Robert Saleh became head coach in 2026.Open the full entry reached two AFC Championship games and a Super Bowl between 1998 and 2003; the Nashville PredatorsNashville PredatorsThe Nashville Predators are a professional ice hockey team based in Nashville, Tennessee. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) and play at Bridgestone Arena.Open the full entry reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2017 and won their first division title and the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018; and Nashville Soccer ClubNashville SCNashville SC is an MLS club in Nashville, Tennessee, with its home at GEODIS Park.Open the full entry began play in 2020.⁠[11]

The state’s name comes from the Cherokee village of Tanasi. Its nickname, the “Volunteer State,” arose from Tennesseans’ part in the nation’s wars of expansion, including the War of 1812, the Texas Revolution, the Seminole Wars and the Mexican War.⁠[1][18][6]

The state flag, adopted in 1905, has three stars representing the East, Middle and West grand divisions, joined by an unending white band; two official salutes to the flag, written by Lucy Steele Harrison and Miss John Bostick, were adopted in 1981 and 1987. The state seal, adopted in 1987, bears the Roman numerals XVI for the state’s order of admission, together with a plow, a sheaf of wheat, a cotton stalk and a riverboat representing agriculture and river commerce.⁠[24]

The state bird is the mockingbird (1933); the cultivated state flower is the iris and the state wildflowers are the passion flower and the Tennessee coneflower (2012). The state tree is the tulip poplar (1947, the first state tree designation) and the state evergreen tree the eastern red cedar (2012); the state wild animal is the raccoon (1971), the state horse the Tennessee Walking Horse (2000) and the state beverage milk (2009), and the state tartan was adopted in 1999.⁠[24]

Tennessee has several official state songs, among them “My Homeland, Tennessee” (1925), “When It’s Iris Time in Tennessee” (1935), “Tennessee Waltz” (1965), “Rocky Top” (1982), “Smoky Mountain Rain” (2010) and “Under A Tennessee Moon” (2024).⁠[25]

State of Tennessee: Official website: https://www.tn.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[26]

Tennessee Governor’s Office: Official website: https://www.tn.gov/governor.html (opens in a new window).⁠[27]