Tennessee

Tennessee is a Southern state of the United States.

History

The area now known as Tennessee was first settled by Paleo-Indians nearly 11,000 years ago. The names of the cultural groups that inhabited the area between first settlement and the time of European contact are unknown, but several distinct cultural phases have been named by archaeologists, including Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian whose chiefdoms were the cultural predecessors of the Muscogee people who inhabited the Tennessee River Valley prior to Cherokee migration into the river's headwaters.

Related Topics:
Paleo-Indians - Archaic - Woodland - Mississippian - Muscogee people - Tennessee River

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When Spanish explorers first visited the area, led by Hernando de Soto in 1539–43, it was inhabited by tribes of Muscogee and Yuchi people. For unknown reasons, possibly due to expanding European settlement in the north, the Cherokee, an Iroquoian tribe, moved south from the area now called Virginia. As European colonists spread into the area, the native populations were forcibly displaced to the south and west, including all Muscogee and Yuchi peoples, including the Chickasaw and Choctaw. From 1838 to 1839, nearly 17,000 Cherokees were forced to march from Eastern Tennessee to Indian Territory west of Arkansas. This came to be known as the Trail of Tears, as an estimated 4,000 Cherokees died along the way.1

Related Topics:
Spanish explorers - Hernando de Soto - Yuchi - Cherokee - Chickasaw - Choctaw - 1838 - 1839 - Indian Territory - Arkansas - Trail of Tears - 1

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Tennessee was admitted to the Union in 1796 as the 16th state, and was created by taking the north and south borders of North Carolina and extending them with only one small deviation to the Mississippi River, Tennessee's western boundary. Tennessee was the last Confederate state to secede from the Union when it did so on June 8, 1861. After the American Civil War, Tennessee adopted a new constitution that abolished slavery (February 22, 1865), ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 18, 1866, and was the first state readmitted to the Union (July 24 of the same year).

Related Topics:
1796 - Mississippi River - June 8 - 1861 - American Civil War - Constitution - Slavery - February 22 - 1865 - Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution - July 18 - 1866 - July 24

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Tennessee was the only state that seceded from the Union that did not have a military governor after the American Civil War, mostly due to the influence of President Andrew Johnson, a native of the state, who was Lincoln's vice president and succeeded him as president, due to the assassination.

Related Topics:
American Civil War - Andrew Johnson

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In 1897, the state celebrated its centennial of statehood (albeit one year late) with a great exposition.

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The need to create work for the unemployed during the Depression, the desire for rural electrification, and the desire to control the annual spring floods on the Tennessee River drove the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public utility, in 1933.

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During World War II, Oak Ridge was selected as a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory, one of the principal sites for the Manhattan Project's production and isolation of weapons-grade fissile material.

Related Topics:
Department of Energy - Manhattan Project - Fissile

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Tennessee celebrated its bicentennial in 1996 after a yearlong statewide celebration entitled "Tennessee 200" by opening a new state park (Bicentennial Mall) at the foot of Capitol Hill in Nashville.

Related Topics:
1996 - Bicentennial Mall - Nashville

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