Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Tennessee has diverse terrain and landforms, and from east to west, contains a mix of cultural features characteristic of Appalachia, the Upland South, and the Deep South. The Blue Ridge Mountains along the eastern border reach some of the highest elevations in eastern North America, and the Cumberland Plateau contains many scenic valleys and waterfalls. The central part of the state is marked by cavernous bedrock and irregular rolling hills, and level, fertile plains define West Tennessee. The state is twice bisected by the Tennessee River, and the Mississippi River forms its western border. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited national park, is in eastern Tennessee.
Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachian Mountains. Its name derives from Tanasi (ᏔᎾᏏ), a Cherokee town preceding the first European American settlement. Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later the Southwest Territory, before its admission to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. It earned the nickname "The Volunteer State" due to a strong tradition of military service. A slave state until the American Civil War, Tennessee was politically divided, with most of its western and middle parts supporting the Confederacy, and most of the eastern region harboring pro-Union sentiment. As a result, Tennessee was the last state to officially secede from the Union and join the Confederacy, and the first former Confederate state readmitted to the Union after the war had ended during the Reconstruction era. (Full article...)
Johnson was born into poverty and never attended school. He was apprenticed as a tailor and worked in several frontier towns before settling in Greeneville, Tennessee, serving as an alderman and mayor before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835. After briefly serving in the Tennessee Senate, Johnson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843, where he served five two-year terms. He was the governor of Tennessee for four years, and was elected by the legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1857. During his congressional service, he sought passage of the Homestead Bill, which was enacted soon after he left his Senate seat in 1862. Slave states in the Southern U.S., including Tennessee, seceded to form the Confederate States of America, but Johnson remained firmly with the Union. He was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not promptly resign his seat upon learning of his state's secession. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as Military Governor of Tennessee after most of it had been retaken. In 1864, Johnson was a logical choice as running mate for Lincoln, who wished to send a message of national unity in his re-election campaign, and became vice president after a victorious election in 1864. (Full article...)
West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists primarily of flat lands with rich soil and vast floodplain areas of the Mississippi River. Of the three regions, West Tennessee is the most sharply defined geographically, and is the lowest-lying. It is both the least populous and smallest, in land area, of the three Grand Divisions. Its largest city is Memphis, the state's second most populous city.
West Tennessee was originally inhabited by the Chickasaw, and was the last of the three Grand Divisions to be settled by Europeans. The region officially became part of the United States with the Jackson Purchase in 1818, 22 years after Tennessee's statehood. As part of the Mississippi River basin, West Tennessee enjoys rich soil that led to large-scale cotton farming during the antebellum period that was heavily dependent on slave labor. As a result, it forms the northwestern tip of the Black Belt. (Full article...)
... that William Jenkins Wilcox Jr. was given a Citizen Archivist award at a symposium titled "Secret City in the Tennessee Hills: From Dogpatch to Nuclear Power"?
... that portions of Tennessee State Route 158 have been called "Front Street", "Front Avenue", "Lakefront Drive", "Neyland Drive", and "James White Parkway"?
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