Lick (so called from a French trading post established there) early in 1779, and in the same year a number of settlers from Virginia and South Carolina arrived. Another party led by John Donelson arrived in 1780, and after the close of the War of Independence, the immigrants came in a steady stream. A form of government similar to the Watauga Association was devised, and block-houses were built for defence against the Indians. Robertson was sent as a delegate to the North Carolina legislature in 1783 and through his instrumentality the settlements became Davidson county. Nashville, which had been founded as Nashborough in 1780, became the county seat. Finally, in 1843, it became the state capital. Robertson, the dominant figure in the early years, struggled to counteract the efforts of Spanish intriguers among the Indians, and when diplomacy failed led the settlers against the Indian towns.
On the 25th of February 1790 North Carolina again ceded the territory to the general government, stipulating that all the general provisions of the Ordinance of 1787 should apply except that forbidding slavery. Congress accepted the cession and, on the 26th of May 1790, passed an act for the government of the “Territory south of the River Ohio.” William Blount was appointed the first governor, and in 1792 Knoxville became the seat of government. The chief events of Blount's administration were the contests with the Indians, the purchase of their lands, and the struggle against Spanish influence. A census ordered by the Territorial legislature in 1795 showed more than 60,000 free inhabitants (the number prescribed before the Territory could become a state), and accordingly a convention to draft a state constitution met in Knoxville on the 11th of January 1796. The instrument, which closely followed the constitution of North Carolina, was proclaimed without submission to popular vote. John Sevier was elected governor, and William Blount and William Cocke United States senators. In spite of the opposition of the Federalist party, whose leaders foresaw that Tennessee would be Republican, it was admitted to the Union as the sixteenth state on the 1st of June 1796.
With the rapid increase of population, the dread of Indian and Spaniard declined. Churches and schools were built, and soon many of the comforts and some of the luxuries of life made their appearance. The public school system was inaugurated in 1830, but not until 1845 was the principle of taxation for support fully recognized. As in all new states, the question of a circulating medium was acute during the first half of the 19th century, and state banks were organized, which suspended specie payments in times of financial stringency. The Bank of Tennessee, organized in 1838, had behind it the credit of the state, and it was hoped that money for education and for internal improvements might be secured from its profits. The management became a question of party politics, and during the Civil War its funds were used to advance the Confederate cause. The development of the western section along the Mississippi was rapid after the beginning of the century. Memphis, founded in 1819, was thought as late as 1832 to be in Mississippi, and not until 1837 was the southern boundary, which according to the North Carolina cession was 35°, finally established.[1] In common with other river towns, the disorderly element in Memphis was large, and the gamblers, robbers and horse thieves were only suppressed by local vigilance committees. The peculiar topographical conditions made the three sections of the state almost separate commonwealths, and demand for better means of communication was insistent.
The policy of state aid to internal improvements found advocates very early in spite of the Republican affiliations of the state, but a definite programme was not laid out until 1829, when commissioners for internal improvements were appointed and an expenditure of $150,000 was authorized. In 1835 the state agreed to subscribe one-third to the capital stock of companies organized to lay out turnpikes, railways, &c., and four years later the proportion became one-half. Though these agreements were soon repealed, the general policy was continued, and in 1861 more than $17,000,000 of the state debt was due to these subscriptions, from which there was little return.
Though President Andrew Jackson was for many years practically a dictator in Tennessee politics, his arbitrary methods and his intolerance of any sort of independence on the part of his followers led to a revolt in 1836, when the electoral vote of the state was given to Hugh Lawson White, then United States senator from Tennessee, who had been one of Jackson's most devoted adherents. White's followers called themselves Anti-Van Buren Democrats, but the proscription which they suffered drove most of them into the Whig party, which carried the state in presidential elections until 1856, when the vote was cast for James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate. The Whig party was so strong that James K. Polk (Democrat), a resident of the state, lost its electoral vote in 1844. With the disintegration of the Whig party, the state again became nominally Democratic, though Union sentiment was strong, particularly in East Tennessee. There were few large plantations and fewer slaves in that mountainous region, while the middle and western sections were more in harmony with the sentiment in Mississippi and Alabama. In 1850 representatives of nine Southern states met in a convention at Nashville (q.v.) to consider the questions at issue between the North and the South. The vote of the state was given for Bell and Everett in 1860, and the people as a whole were opposed to secession.
The proposition to call a convention to vote on the question of secession was voted down on the 9th of February 1861, but after President Lincoln's call for troops the legislature submitted the question of secession directly to the people, and meanwhile, on the 7th of May 1861, entered into a “Military League” with the Confederacy. An overwhelming vote was cast on the 8th of June in favour of secession, and on the 24th Governor I. G. Harris (1818-1897) issued a proclamation declaring Tennessee out of the Union. Andrew Johnson, then a United States senator from Tennessee, refused to resign his seat, and was supported by a large element in East Tennessee. A Union convention, including representatives from all the eastern and a few of the middle counties, met on the 17th of June 1861 and petitioned Congress to be admitted as a separate state. The request was ignored, but the section was strongly Unionist in sentiment during the war, and has since been strongly Republican.
The state was, next to Virginia, the chief battleground during the Civil War, and one historian has counted 454 battles and skirmishes which took place within its borders. In February 1862, General U.S. Grant and Commodore A. H. Foote captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee river, and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. The Confederate line of defence was broken and General D. C. Buell occupied Nashville. Grant next ascended the Tennessee river to Pittsburg Landing with the intention of capturing the Memphis & Charleston railway, and on the 6th-7th of April defeated the Confederates in the battle of Shiloh. The capture of Island No. 10 in the Mississippi on the 7th of April opened the river as far south as Memphis, which was captured in June. On the 31st of December and the 2nd of January General William S. Rosecrans (Federal) fought with General Braxton Bragg (Confederate) the bloody but indecisive battle of Stone River (Murfreesboro). In June 1863 Rosecrans forced Bragg to evacuate Chattanooga. Bragg, however, turned upon his pursuer, and on the 19th and 20th of September one of the bloodiest battles of the war was fought at Chickamauga. General Grant now assumed command, and on the 24th and 25th of November defeated Bragg at Chattanooga, thus opening the way into East Tennessee. There General A. E. Burnside at first met with success, but was shut up in Knoxville by General James Longstreet, who was not able, however, to capture the city, and on the approach of General W. T. Sherman retired into Virginia. Almost the whole state was now held by Federal troops, and no considerable military movement occurred until after the fall of Atlanta in September 1864. Then General J. B. Hood moved into Tennessee, expecting Sherman
