Portal:Tennessee
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The Tennessee Portal
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Tennessee is a state located in the Southern United States. Tennessee borders eight other states: Kentucky and Virginia to the north; North Carolina to the east; Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi on the south; and Arkansas and Missouri on the Mississippi River to the west.
Tennessee attained statehood in 1796, becoming the sixteenth state to join the Union.
The state is divided geographically and by law into three Grand Divisions: East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and West Tennessee. Physiographically, East Tennessee includes the Blue Ridge area characterized by high mountains, including the Great Smoky Mountains and the Ridge and Valley region, in which numerous tributaries join to form the Tennessee River in the Tennessee Valley. The state's third- and fourth-largest cities, Knoxville and Chattanooga, are located in the Tennessee Valley.
To the west of East Tennessee lies the Cumberland Plateau, a region of flat-topped mountains separated by sharp valleys. West of the Cumberland Plateau in Middle Tennessee is the Highland Rim, an elevated plain that surrounds the Nashville Basin, characterized by rich, fertile farm country and high natural wildlife diversity. Nashville, the state's capital and second largest city, is in Middle Tennessee.
The landscape of West Tennessee is formed on the Gulf Coastal Plain, ranging from rolling hills just west of the Tennessee River to the region of lowlands, floodplains, and swamp land referred to as the Mississippi Delta region. Memphis, Tennessee's largest city, is on the banks of the Mississippi River in the southwestern corner of the state.
Tennessee is known as the "Volunteer State", a nickname earned during the War of 1812 because of the prominent role played by volunteer soldiers from Tennessee.
Selected article
The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought on April 6 and April 7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack against the Union Army of Major General Ulysses S. Grant and came very close to defeating his army.
On the first day of battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the Tennessee River and into the swamps to the west, hoping to defeat Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with Major General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fierce fighting, and Grant's men instead fell back in the direction of Pittsburg Landing to the northeast. A position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the "Hornet's Nest", defended by the men of Brigadier Generals Benjamin M. Prentiss's and W.H.L. Wallace's divisions, provided critical time for the rest of the Union line to stabilize under the protection of numerous artillery batteries. General Johnston was killed during the first day's fighting, and Beauregard, his second in command, decided against assaulting the final Union position that night.
Reinforcements from General Buell arrived in the evening and turned the tide the next morning, when Buell and Grant launched a counterattack along the entire line. The Confederates were forced to retreat, ending their hopes that they could block the Union invasion of northern Mississippi.
The two-day battle was the bloodiest in U.S. history up to that time. Union casualties were 13,047 (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, and 2,885 missing). Confederate casualties were 10,699 (1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, and 959 missing or captured). Both sides were shocked at the carnage.
The battlefield is now part of the Shiloh National Military Park. (Read more...)
Selected biography
Sequoyah (about 1767 - about 1843), also known as George Guess, Guest or Gist, was a Cherokee who invented the Cherokee syllabary, thus earning him a place on the list of inventors of writing systems.
The exact place and date of Sequoyah's birth are unknown, since no written record exists. However, James Mooney, a prominent anthropologist and historian of the Cherokee people, quoted a cousin in saying that Sequoyah spent his early years with his mother in the Overhill Cherokee village of Tuskegee, Tennessee. His mother, Wut-teh, is known to have been a Cherokee. Mooney states that she was the niece of a tribal chief. Sequoyah's father was either white or part-white and part Native American.
Some time before 1809, Sequoyah moved to the Willstown settlement in Alabama and established his trade as a silversmith. As a silversmith, he dealt regularly with white settlers in the area. Native Americans were often impressed by the writing used by white settlers, referring to their correspondence as "talking leaves."
Around 1809, Sequoyah began to create a system of writing for the Cherokee language. After attempting to create a character for each word, Sequoyah decided to divide each word into syllables and create one character for each syllable. Utilizing the Roman alphabet and possibly the Cyrillic alphabet, he created 86 characters to represent the various syllables. This work took Sequoyah 12 years to complete.
At first, his fellow Cherokee doubted the value of his syllabary. In order to prove his creation, Sequoyah taught his daughter Ah-yo-ka how to read and write in Cherokee. After amazing locals with his new writing, Sequoyah attempted to display his feat to tribal medicine men who rebuffed him for being possessed by evil spirits. Sequoyah finally proved his feat to a gathering of Chickamaugan warriors. Quickly news of the syllabary spread and the Cherokee were filling schools in order to learn the new written language. By 1823 the syllabary was in full use by the Cherokee Nation. The writing system was made official by the Cherokee Nation in 1825. From 1828 to 1834 the language was used in the Cherokee Phoenix which represented the Cherokee Nation. It is still used today by many Cherokee speakers. (Read more...)
Did you know...
- ...that the city of Harriman was developed as a planned community with no alcoholic beverages permitted?
- ...that travelers entering Paris, Tennessee, from the south on U.S. Highway 79 can see a welcome sign that features a 20-foot-long model of a catfish?
- ...that the Music City Star is a commuter rail line between Nashville and Lebanon, Tennessee that uses three rebuilt Amtrak locomotives and seven passenger coaches from Chicago?
Selected picture
Highway directional sign in Crossville, photographed in 1937. It helped travelers find their way to other Tennessee cities and towns.
Image credit: Ben Shahn (1937)
Selected anniversaries in February
- February 4, 1810 - The Cumberland Presbyterian denomination was formed in Dickson County in a log cabin that is now part of Montgomery Bell State Park.
- February 5-6 2008 - The Super Tuesday tornado outbreak causes 59 deaths across the Southern U.S.; including 32 deaths in West and Middle Tennessee.
- February 7, 1812 - The New Madrid Earthquake occurred, the largest earthquake ever recorded in the contiguous United States, creating Reelfoot Lake.
- February 13, 1919 - Tennessee Ernie Ford, country and western, pop, and gospel music recording artist and television host, was born in Bristol.
- February 13, 1960 - Students stage the first in a series of sit-ins at lunch counters in Nashville in a campaign against racial segregation.
- February 14, 1983 - After three months of intensive investigation by federal bank regulators into massive fraud at financial institutions operated by Jake Butcher and his brother C.H. Butcher, Butcher's United American Bank collapsed. The fourth-largest bank failure in U.S. history up to that time marked the end of Butcher's East Tennessee financial empire and political career.
- February 22, 1865 - Tennessee's legislature approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting slavery.
- February 24, 1868 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson, the third Tennessean to serve as U.S. President.
In the news
- December 22, 2008: Failure of a fly ash pond at a power plant in Kingston destroyed several homes and released a large volume of material into the Emory and Clinch Rivers. Learn more...
- August 7, 2008: Primary elections in Tennessee led to defeat for first-term incumbent Congressman David Davis (R), while first-term Congressman Steve Cohen (D) easily won renomination. Learn more...
- July 27, 2008: A gunman entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville and opened fire on the congregation during a youth performance of a musical, killing two people and wounding seven others. Learn more...
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