Tennessee History

HISTORY OF TENNESSEE

The Antebellum Years

*Tennessee really enjoyed a rise in national prominence with the military and political campaigns of Andrew Jackson, culminating in his election to the Presidency in 1828. The national reputation of men such as Davy Crockett, whose almanacs of tall tales and legends were best-sellers in their day, also made Tennessee famous nationally and even internationally. The Age of Jackson was at hand, the Era of the Common Man, and democracy in America was changed forever, as, at last, almost everyone could take part, for good or ill.

*While Andrew Jackson was enjoying his long and bloody rise to prominence, Tennessee as a whole was experiencing a profound religious revival. Although there had been a few churches and preachers in the area in the 18th century, the state exploded in religious fervour around 1800.

*This was not entirely unique to Tennessee: much of the country experienced a period of religious revival sometimes referred to as the Second Great Awakening between 1800 and 1840.

*The revivals of the early 19th century in Tennessee were spectacular. The largest were camp meetings, lasting a period of several days and attracting people from miles around, who had to be provided with food and shelter (so that they were also called tent meetings) because they were so far from home. Probably the larges was held at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, where 25,000 attended.

*Although they were begun by charismatic preachers, and often attended by important ministers such as Bishop Francis Asbury, the real attraction was how many common people were moved by the Holy Spirit into all kinds of wild antics. Sometimes called ‘acrobatic Christianity’ or ‘the jerks,’ this caused people to jump around, shout, bark, seem to be knocked off their feet, shake their heads or bodies around, run, shout, laugh, and generally carry on. Some preachers condemned this, saying it was mere showmanship, and certainly many people probably did come for the social aspects of such large meetings, but in time even most of the opponents were silenced (sometimes because, as with Rev. Doak, they were hit with ‘the jerks’ themselves).

*Ultimately, the wild and crazy Methodists benefited the most early on from the revival (although it was begun by the Presbyterians), and the Baptists benefited almost as much—possibly more, in terms of percentage of growth (it just took them a while to catch on, because they were so reluctant to co-operate with one another).

*In any event, Tennessee (and much of Appalachia) experienced a vast expansion of religion in people’s lives, and this affected politics, too.

*In 1821, William Carroll was elected governor, despite Jackson’s opposition to him (although it was not serious opposition—Jackson liked both Carroll and his opponent, Ward). Carroll had fought the Creek with Jackson, and had been at New Orleans. He was presently major-general of the state militia, and he won easily. He would serve longer in the governorship than any other Tennessean, even John Sevier, whose first term was cut short by Tennessee becoming a state in June rather than on the typical inauguration day. Carroll served just over 12 years, with a 2-year interlude of Governor Sam Houston, before he got to drunk to serve when his wife left him.

*The religious fervour that swept the United States in the first part of the 19th Century encouraged people to try to improve the lot of their fellow man, and Carroll’s years in office would be an age of reform.

*Under Carroll, Tennessee revised the penal code, making it less harsh, including eliminating imprisonment for debt. In 1829, the death penalty was abolished, except for first-degree murder, and the branding iron, whip, and pillory were all replaced with prison terms

*To rehabilitate all these new prisoners, Carroll’s administration built a new state prison, which, although small and cramped by to-day standards, and prisoners were still locked away in solitary confinement at night, during the day they received education, health care, decent food and clothing, and religious instruction. For the first time ever, prisons were meant to be places where people where helped to become better people, not just another means of punishment.

*In 1832, the legislature approved the state’s first insane asylum (although it wasn’t finished until 1840). Although it was well-intended, it ended up not being very well-designed, and it was replaced in the 1850s with a much better, more modern, facility.

*Tennessee even tried to improve its educational system. In the 1820s, the state created a common school fund out of money made from the sale of public land. A state board of school commissioners was created in the 1830s to oversee this money and spend it. It was not William Carroll who truly created Tennessee’s education system, though, but Governor Andrew Johnson, sometimes called the Father of Tennessee Public Eduction, under whom, in 1854, the legislature approved a statewide poll tax and property tax earmarked for education, that nearly doubled the state’s education budget, and free public schools were soon available in every county. The number of schools and pupils went up, and the illiteracy rate fell. Still, attendance was not mandatory, and, by modern standards, or even contemporary northern standards, Tennessee’s school system was not extremely good—typically less than half of the state’s eligible population attended, and only in Nashville and Memphis was secondary education publicly available, because only those cities were willing to raise extra taxes to fund it.

*The same religious imperatives that had demanded more merciful treatment of prisoners and the insane, and that had wanted education for the young, also often motivated people towards temperance, and this was harder to reconcile with politics.

*Politics often happened in taverns, and election days was notoriously hard-drinking events. Temperance people pointed out how much work was missed, how many fights were started, and how many problems were caused by alcohol, and they discouraged its use, condemning ‘that infernal demon’ and the saloons that served it, which some held responsible for all the ‘murders, manslaughters, burglaries, riots, tumults, and all the other enormities with which the country abounds.’ Eventually saloons were outlawed in 1838, although that law was repealed 8 years later. Some temperance supporters demanded a total ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol, but most depended on moral suasion to convince people not to ruin their lives with the demon.

*Most radical of all, perhaps, was the attitude among a growing number of people about slavery. By 1860, slaves made up 25% of Tennessee’s overall population (and 29% of Middle Tennessee, 34% of West Tennessee, and 9% of East Tennessee).

*Slaves were mostly used for agricultural work, especially in the big plantations of West Tennessee, but some did other labour; in fact, the largest single slave-owner in Tennessee, Montgomery Bell, employed most of his slaves in his iron works, one of the few industries in which Tennessee got an early start.

*Although most white Tennesseans could put aside their own social and political differences to at least be glad they weren’t slaves, and to agree that the social order and their own safety required that they be kept down, a growing number felt otherwise.

*In fact, the anti-slavery movement began in Tennessee before almost any other reform, although it was probably the least effective of them all. In 1815, a number of small anti-slavery societies, meeting in Greene County, formed the Tennessee Manumission Society.

*In 1819, a Quaker in Jonesborough, Elihu Embree, began publishing one of the nation’s first anti-slavery newspapers, the Manumission Intelligencer, although he later renamed it the Emancipator. Another Quaker, Benjamin Lundy, this one from the north, began publishing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Greeneville in 1822.

*As anti-slavery people went, Embry, Lundy, and friends were fairly moderate. They wanted a state-legislated gradual emancipation plan combined with moral suasion to convince the slave-owners that slavery was un-Christian and un-American, and ought to be ended voluntarily. Admitting that many whites and blacks would not want to live together as emancipation, most of Tennessee’s anti-slavery people supported the Tennessee Colonization Society (founded in 1829), which meant to colonise freed slaves to Haiti or Liberia.

*The wildest of all anti-slavery notions was Fanny Wright’s Nashoba community in West Tennessee. Founded in 1825, 13 miles north of Memphis, Nashoba was meant to be a place where freed slaves could be educated in preparation for making their way in the world. The community also believed in full racial equality, free love, and atheism, which won it few friends, and its finances were poorly managed, so that it collapsed within a few years (and it 31 blacks were sent to Haiti).

*Tennesseans supported slavery in part because it gave everyone someone to look down on, and for middling sorts of people the possibility of buying a few slaves (and at different times most middle-class people did own a slave or two, although at any given time, the number of slave-owners in Tennessee was a minority of the population), which conferred a social status, and, above all, as expensive investments, slaves could not simply be turned loose, because they were too valuably, both intrinsically and for the labour they could do.

*Ultimately the anti-slavery movement accomplished little in Tennessee. In part it collapse of itself—Fanny Wright and her assistants did not manage Nashoba well, Embree died in 1820 and his paper went with him, and Lundy gave up after three years, heading north. By 1830 the Tennessee Manumission Society was essentially defunct. Still, what gave the anti-slavery movement the greatest setback of all occurred in Southern Virginia.

*In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave revolt, killing 55 white men, women, and children before being captured and hanged along with many of his followers. This greatly increased the fears of white slave-owners, and whites in general, and it hurt the cause of equality in much of the south (although Virginia briefly considered dealing with the problem of slavery by abolishing it, rather than toughening it up). Southern states tightened up their laws regarding slaves (and even free blacks), as well as anti-slavery literature (going so far as to tamper with the mail to keep pamphlets out of certain states) and speech, and Tennessee was no exception.

*In 1796, Tennessee had one of the most liberal constitutions in the nation, but in the Age of Jackson, many states adopted new constitutions that were even more so, offering complete legal equality to white men, and Tennessee decided to do so as well. The state had considered holding constitutional conventions in 1819 and 1831, but did not have the support. In 1834, sixty delegates arrived in Nashville on 19 May, and worked for over 14 months to complete the 1835 Constitution.

*The convention created a supreme court with three justices, one from each region.

*Legislative districts were re-apportioned based on the number of qualified voters, not on the number of taxable inhabitants (which hurt East Tennessee, as more of its taxable inhabitants were also free men who could vote.

*The property qualifications for state offices were removed, and the right to vote was given to all white men. Previously they had to own land, although it didn’t matter how much. In response to Nat Turner’s Rebellion, blacks were no longer allowed to vote, even if they were free adult males.

*The convention did consider abolishing slavery, but finally did not, and, by a narrow margin, inserted a clause into the constitution that prohibited the General Assembly from passing laws for the emancipation of slaves. In the years to come, laws meant to control slaves and free blacks would grow increasingly harsh, partly out of fear of another uprising like Nat Turner’s.

*The 1835 Constitution also made the governor’s office more powerful, as it had previously been sort of a figurehead. Overall, the new Constitution was very popular, and of the states 64 counties, only 4 opposed its adoption.

*Politics in Tennessee, and the nation, were defined by Andrew Jackson in the 1820s and 1830s. Those who were with him were Democrats and, eventually, most of those who opposed them became Whigs, a party united around the common fact that all of them hated Jackson.

*As Jackson’s second term drew to a close, many Tennesseans fought for prominent positions that might let them follow in his footsteps.

*Two Tennesseans in Congress fought for the position of Speaker of the House. These were John Bell, a wealthy lawyer and owner of ironworks from Nashville, and James K. Polk, a lawyer and planter from Columbia, already so famous for his fiery speeches that he was called ‘Napoleon of the Stump. Both supported Andrew Jackson, but Bell sought support from the anti-Jackson factions as well (and became speaker in 1834), and Jackson turned against him, so that in 1835, Polk was made Speaker of the House and Bell became a Whig. Polk had become so connected to Jackson that people began calling him Young Hickory.

*The next year, though, was a tough one. The Whigs ultimately decided to run three different presidential candidates, hoping to split the electoral vote and throw it into the House of Representatives again. One of the men they chose was Hugh Lawson White, of Tennessee (who had personally been a pro-Jackson man), and many people who had opposed Jackson rallied around him. They did this in hopes of defeating Martin van Buren, Jackson’s vice-president and chosen successor. Eventually Tennessee would vote for White (who lost) despite the best efforts of Jackson, Polk, Carroll, and the Democratic Party, who supported van Buren (who won).

*In the same year, Governor Carroll tried to run for the governorship again against Newton Cannon, despite having just served three terms. He argued that since the new constitution had just been ratified, that he got to start over. No-one stopped him from running, and he ran as a Democrat supporting van Buren. Between the excitement of him running for an unprecedented fourth term and the heat of the presidential race, about 80% of Tennessee’s eligible voters turned out and, to everyone’s surprise, neither van Buren nor Carroll won.

*Although Tennesseans loved Jackson, some were also tired of his dominance, and their love for him did not always stretch to all his friends, especially when his old friend White was running for the presidency and he was not supporting him.

*In the late 1830s, the economy collapsed, partly because of Jackson’s bad banking policies. Many people blamed Jackson, and the Democrats declined in popularity in Tennessee, until only one man could save them: James K Polk.

*Polk was a hard-working, fiery campaigner. He travelled over 1,300 miles in the 1839 governor’s campaign, visiting over half the counties of Tennessee and working himself sick. His wife, Sarah Childress Polk, managed much of the campaign from Columbia. Three days before the election, Polk and Cannon met up in Rogersville, and harsh words were exchanged, but Polk took charge of the situation, opening a barrel of whiskey for his followers. Despite supporting the unpopular van Buren (who would lose in 1840), Polk won the governorship, and the loyalty of his party on the national level.

*Polk’s support for van Buren would come back to haunt him, when Harrison beat van Buren badly in 1840. It was perhaps the most popular campaign to date, with wild promises and wild stories of log cabins and hard cider replacing policy debates with a popularity contest in which almost everything that was said was false. Eventually the hero of the War of 1812 would win, then die, leaving Tyler in office. Despite working even harder than before, making himself sick with the effort, Polk would be defeated in 1841 and 1843 when he ran for governor, because he still supported van Buren.

*In 1844 The Republic of Texas, still an independent nation, was in danger from Mexico, who did not fully recognise her independence, signed under duress at San Jacinto. Texas turned to Britain and France for aid, testing the Monroe Doctrine at a time the US could not afford to do so. Britain in particular wanted an independent Texas to thwart American expansion to the Southwest, as a market for British goods, and as a source of cotton. The French had their own interests in the region. By 1840, Texas had concluded treaties with France, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

*The great issue of the election of 1844 was Manifest Destiny—the idea that God had obviously ordained that the American people spread from sea to shining sea, starting by annexing Texas or Oregon or both.

*The Whigs opposed annexation of anything, for several reasons. The possibility of war was very real if either Texas or Oregon was annexed. The money spent subduing and settling the new territory would be money that would be better spent on internal improvements or possibly returned to the states. New western territories would serve to further spread and dilute the American population, which Clay’s followers hoped to unite into one nation through the improvements of the American System. Finally, any expansion would further the sectional disputes highlighted by the Missouri Compromise—Northerners would be offended at the annexation of Texas below the 36o30’ line, and Southerners would be concerned by the acquisition of Oregon.

*The Democrats had also expected to take annexation out of the election as a political issue, as most national politicians saw it for the divisive issue that it was. The Democratic leadership intended to nominate Martin van Buren again. Van Buren by this point was a Free-Soil man, opposed to the expansion of slavery, and he would not support the annexation of Texas on moral grounds or the annexation of Oregon for political reasons.

*Although van Buren had a great deal of support in the nominating convention, it was not enough to secure the nomination, and on succeeding ballots it declined each time as more and more competitors arose. Eventually van Buren’s anti-Texas attitudes became well known, which sealed his fate. He was opposed by, among others, Lewis Cass, a brigadier general in the War of 1812, former governor of Michigan, James Buchanan, a career politician and pro-Southern Pennsylvanian (and a future President), John C Calhoun of South Carolina, a former Vice-President, and James K Polk, former Governor of Tennessee and former Speaker of the House of Representatives.

*Ultimately Polk was chosen, in part because, although very well known in Tennessee, he, like Harrison four years before, had few enemies on the national level. Because he was a relative unknown and something of a surprise nomination, Polk was called a ‘dark horse’ candidate, a term that still exists.

*Polk was also a friend and neighbour of Andrew Jackson, still alive and offering direction to the Democratic Party, and so Polk was presented as ‘Young Hickory,’ the natural successor to Jackson.

*The Whigs, on the other hand, jeered at this dark horse, and asked ‘Who is James K Polk?’

*Polk ran on an expansionist campaign, calling for the reannexation of Texas and the reoccupation of Orgegon, while the Whigs said that the choices were ‘Polk, Slavery, and Texas’ or ‘Clay, Liberty, and Union.’

*Polk won with 170 electoral votes to 105. Aged 49, he was the youngest man to be elected president at that point, but it was a close election in the popular vote, and he did not even carry Tennessee.

*Tyler, who had wanted an excuse to annex Texas, announced that the victory of Polk was a mandate from the people to do so, and he convinced Congress to do so through a join resolution during the last days of his presidency in 1845. He retired to Virginia, a political outcaste who renamed his plantation ‘Sherwood Forest.’ He would later vote for secession from the Union in 1861, and his plantation would be burned by the US Army.

*Polk was a short, thin man, supposedly a great orator and known as the ‘Napoleon of the stump,’ a successful politician and loyal party man in Tennessee, but in private not very interesting. He was a serious man who took his job seriously and worked himself to death. During his campaign and presidency, he created and pursued a four-point plan, and promised to retire and not seek a second term if he accomplished it all. He said 'there are four great measures which are to be the measures of my administration one, a reduction of the tariff; another the independent treasury; a third, the settlement of the Oregon boundary question; and lastly, the acquisition of California.’

1. A revenue tariff: Robert J. Walker, Polk’s Secretary of the Treasury, lowered the tariff from 32% to 25%. New Englanders and the Middle States opposed it but could not stop it, and were surprised to see that it was successful, thanks in large part to a concomitant economic boom period.

2. An independent treasury: This revived van Buren’s old plan for treasuries and subtreasuries that were essentially strongboxes for the government’s gold, and had no business affiliations or direct influence on the economy.

3. Settle the Oregon dispute: With all of Texas to digest, the clamour of ‘54o40’ or Fight!’ died away, although some Northerners asked why the South got all of Texas while the North only got as much of Oregon as lay south of an extension of the old US-Canadian border, the 49th parallel, over 5 degrees short of what some wanted. However, most were satisfied to have gotten so much, including land occupied by British forts, without a war.

4. Acquire California: Like Texas, California had seen an influx of American immigrants, and some of them wanted to rejoin the US, and many Americans, including Polk, wanted to help them.

*Although the Oregon dispute was settled without a war, the annexation of Texas and the desire for California would not be.

*13 January, 1846, Polk sends General Zachary Taylor across the Rio Nueces with 4,000 men. Expecting an incident, Polk was disappointed with nothing happened, and he began to prepare a proposal for war based on the unpaid debt and the insult to Slidell. Even his cabinet felt this was a bit far-fetched. Before he presented it to Congress, however, word arrived that 16 America soldiers had been killed or wounded in a skirmish with Mexicans. Now that they had shed ‘American blood on American soil,’ the Mexicans would face war with the United States.

*Congressman Abraham Lincoln (W-IL) called this trickery. He introduced resolutions in Congress demanding to see the spot where American blood was spilt; these were known as the ‘spot resolutions.’ Lincoln was praised by anti-slavery and Free Soil men, and by conscientious objectors throughout the country who accused Polk of unjustly provoking a war, but most Americans supported the war, and said that as far as they were concerned, ‘spotty Lincoln’ could die of the ‘spotted fever.’ Most Americans at the time felt that Mexico was the aggressor and the US the wronged party (and many Mexicans had wanted war, hoping to avenge their loss a decade before).

*In Mexico, the US Army had a two-part strategy: distract the main Mexican army in the North, and invade Mexico from the sea in the South, marching to Mexico City if possible.

*In northern Mexico, General Zachary Taylor, called ‘Old Rough and Ready,’ won a number of victories for the United States. At Buena Vista on 22-23 February, 1847, his 5,000 men were attacked by 20,000 Mexicans led by Santa Anna, and, though vastly outnumbered, defeated them, preventing Santa Anna from invading Texas or any of the other United States.

*On 9 March, 1847, American forces landed at Vera Cruz on the Mexican coast, and began to march towards Mexico City. This campaign was commanded by General Winfield Scott, also known as ‘Old Fuss and Feathers.’ This is one of the most brilliant campaigns in American military history, constantly advancing through hostile and mountainous terrain, in the face of a more numerous enemy fighting on his own land, while enduring expiring enlistments, disease, and political infighting back home. This campaign was planned in part by a young captain in the Army Corps of Engineers, Robert E. Lee. This campaign is very important for America, not only because of its success, but because it gives field experience to a whole generation of young West Point graduates, many of whom would go on to fight in the Civil War on both sides.

*American troops entered Mexico City on the 14th and completely possessed it by the 15th. When the Marine Corps sings of the Halls of Montezuma, this campaign, and particularly the investment of Mexico City, is the inspiration.

*With the capture of Mexico City and the independence of California, Polk was ready to end the War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, was concluded on 2 February, 1848.

*In 1848, Polk, worn out from his term of office, stood by his pledge not to run for re-election. He went home and died three months later, the youngest president to die of natural causes. On his deathbed, the former president's last words were: "I love you, Sarah. For all eternity, I love you."

*Play the James K Polk song.

*The problem with the Mexican War and the Oregon cession was that they opened up new land to settlement, which revived the old argument over whether new territories ought to be slave states or free states, which mattered most in terms of the US Senate, where the states were traditionally supposed to be balanced.

*In 1850, Congress held a join session in which its gratest orators addressed the problem. Shortly afterwards, the Compromise of 1850 was created.

*California entered the Union as a free state, making it 32 to 30 in the Senate. In return, both the New Mexico and Utah territories, such as they were, were opened the popular sovereignty—their inhabitants could decide if they were to be slave or free states when the time came.

*Texas gave up its large area of disputed land, almost a third of the total area it claimed, and in return got a $10 million credit towards its debts to the Union.

*Slavery remained legal in the District of Columbia, but the slave trade was outlawed, an apparently reasonable concession that cleaned up the city, as even Southerners considered actual slave auctions a bit uncouth, but it was another step towards the ending of slavery.

*The great concession to the South, which got the short end of the stick on most of the Compromise, was the Fugitive Slave Act, although that too hurt the South in the end. The Act not only jailed suspected runaways and tried them without a jury, it paid the judge more to find against the slave than for him, and could force local law enforcement officials in the North to help Southern slave catchers.

*Northerners were offended and disgusted. Many moderates turned against the South and towards abolitionism. Northerners, even officers of the law, often refused to assist, and even obstructed Southern slave catchers when they could, and support for the Underground Railroad grew. Massachusetts even made it illegal to help the slave catchers or the Federal government in the enforcement of this Act.

*The Fugitive Slave Act embittered both North and South against one another. Northerners hated it, and Southerners hated the North for failing to co-operate in good faith. The Compromise only delayed the Civil War for ten years—long enough for the North to grow strong enough to win it.

*In the 1850s, the issues surrounding slavery became so intense that the Whig party collapsed. Without Jackson around to hate any more (he died in 1845), they didn’t entirely know what to do with one another, as some supported slavery and some opposed it, some liked tariffs and others didn’t, some liked government spending and others didn’t. They had never been as well-organised as the Democrats, and at last they couldn’t stand the strain. In 1856 they ran their last Presidential candidate, who lost, and in 1857 they ran their last candidate for the governorship of Tennessee, who also lost.

*Overall, the collapse of the Whig party was bad for East Tennessee, where it had been the most popular party, but it affected people across the state, as Tennessee had often voted Whig in presidential elections.

*Tennessee began the 1850s with a Whig governor, but soon Andrew Johnson and Isham Harris took over. Johnson served as governor from 1853-1857, when he went to the US Senate, and Harris won the next governor’s race.

*The Whigs were replaced nationally by the Know-Nothing Party, an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic group, who ran a Tennessean (Andrew Donelson) for the Vice-Presidency with Millard Fillmore in 1856, and the Republicans, who ran John C Fremont for president in that year. The Know-Nothings picked up a great deal of the former Whig vote in Tennessee, especially East Tennessee, but the Republican Party, seen as a Northern party, did not.

*Overall, the great political issues of the 1850s surrounded slavery--how it ought to expand (or if it should), if it could be ended, and, more and more, just how many differences between the culture and society of the North and South there really were, thanks to slavery. Of course, Tennessee could worry about slavery in the 1850s, and even vote for the Whigs, who tended to oppose slavery more than the Democrats, because Tennessee had already eliminated her other racial issue.

*Indian Wars had defined much of Tennessee’s history, and, indeed, much of America’s history up to the 1830s (and beyond—the US Army would fight wars with the Indians into the early 1890s). By the 1820s, though, Tennessee had largely come to live peacefully with her Indian population.

*The Cherokee were the main Indian group still in Tennessee after the Chickasaw Purchase of 1818, and they were confined to a reservation in the southeast corner of the state, that was part of a larger reservation covering parts of North Carolina and Georgia.

*The Cherokee, most of all the Five Civilized Tribes, had lived up to that name. About 1809 a Cherokee named Sequoyah began working on a writing system for the Cherokee people. This took him 12 years to finish, but is an amazing accomplishment because he had never known how to read or write in any language. He created a syllabary, in which each character (there were 85) stood for one sound. By 1825 his syllabary was the official language of the Cherokee nation.

*With a language of their own, the Cherokee created a written constitution, published their own newspaper (the Cherokee Phoenix), and, more and more, tried to live as their white neighbours did, partly to prosper and partly to survive, as they hoped that ‘taking the white man’s path’ would cause the white man to leave them alone.

*The Cherokee began to farm as white men did, to own slaves, to take up any number of trades, and to do fairly well for themselves by any standards (except perhaps those of the Cherokee women, who found their role in the tribe, formally more or less equal to that of men, and in some ways superior, being supplanted by a traditional European male-dominated world).

*Still, white settlers wanted the Indian lands, and in 1829 gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia. This created the first gold rush in American history.

*As pressure from white settlers increased against the southern Indians, most tried armed resistance, but the Cherokee went to court. Suing Georgia before the Supreme Court, they received a positive ruling from Chief Justice John Marshall. However, Andrew Jackson supposedly declared that “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

*In 1830 the Indian Removal Act gave Jackson the authority to negotiate treaties with the Indians, exchanging their lands in the East for other land beyond the Mississippi River. During the 1830s he and his successors would put pressure on the Indians to do this, and, one by one, all the eastern tribes gave in, except for some of the Seminole, who retreated so far into the Everglades that no-one ever got them out.

*In 1835 many prominent Cherokee signed the Treaty of New Echota, although none of them were actually officials of the tribe at the tine. The treaty was ratified by Congress the next year, and some Cherokee began to move west. Most, though, refused to go, and in 1838, General Winfield Scott arrived to round up the Cherokee, place them temporarily in fortified camps, and eventually march them from the Appalachian Mountains to Oklahoma.

*Although a few escaped, and made deals which let them maintain a small reservation in Western North Carolina, 17,000 Cherokee (and about 2,000 of their black slaves) were marched across the country, covering 1,200 miles, much of it on foot.

*Of the 19,000 Indians and slaves who went, between 2,000 and 8,000 died (although at the time the official government estimate was 424 deaths), so that this is remembered as the Trail of Tears.

*Encourage students to read the sections in their books on People, Agriculture, Transportation, and Industry, p.110-118. Understanding the state’s demographic makeup, her economy, and the transportation routes that made the economy work will be helpful in understanding the next phase in Tennessee’s history, when sectional disputes in the nation and the question of slavery will be settled, but regional differences in Tennessee will be exacerbated by the Civil War.