Tennesseeconstituent state of the United States of America. Located It is located in the upper South of the eastern United States , it and became the 16th state of the Union in 1796. The geography of Tennessee , an area of 42,144 square miles (109,153 square kilometres) is unique. Its extreme breadth of 432 miles (695 kilometreskm) stretches from the Appalachian Mountain boundary with North Carolina in the east to the Mississippi River borders with Missouri and Arkansas in the west. Its ; its narrow width, only 112 miles (180 km), separates its northern neighbours, Kentucky and Virginia, from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi on , to the south. Nashville is the capital and Memphis the largest city.

Tennessee embodies so many diverse elements of the nation that it constitutes a virtual microcosm of the country. Early pioneers in East and Middle Tennessee, far removed from established authority, set precedents of self-government that are identified with the frontier tradition. From the beginning, Tennesseans, despite loyalty to the larger society, found that they had to rely on themselves for security. This nurtured a spirit of independence that persists today. Furthermore, the geographic diversity has created The geographic diversity of Tennessee has generated a variety of economic, social, and cultural patterns within the state. While the East is well known for its mountain tradition, the Bluegrass area of Middle Tennessee is that have led residents to perceive the state in terms of three “grand divisions”: East, Middle, and West Tennessee. East Tennessee, dominated geographically by the Great Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau (also called Cumberland Mountains), is the home of the state’s well-known mountain traditions. Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Kingsport are East Tennessee’s major population centres. Middle Tennessee has level, fertile land interrupted regularly by gently rolling hills; it traditionally has been a balanced agricultural and commercial region, and the West has with Nashville as its main urban centre. West Tennessee is mainly flat land with rich soil and long has had an economy based largely on plantation agriculture, notably cotton. Memphis is by far the region’s dominant urban centre.

Tennessee enjoys a rich Native American heritage, mainly from the Cherokee and the Mississippi River, with closer ties to the Deep South.Even though Tennessean Andrew Jackson long symbolized the Democratic Party of the common people, the rival Whig Party carried the state for many years. Strongly divided by the Chickasaw, who populated the area at the time of white settlement in the 1770s. The Cherokee, who lived in the Smoky Mountains area, left a palpable legacy in East Tennessee, despite white encroachment. In response to the challenges on the frontier, white settlers in Tennessee developed a strongly independent attitude that has revealed itself often in state and national politics. Tennessean Andrew Jackson, hero of the War of 1812 and seventh president of the United States, led the Democratic Party of the 1830s to become the party of the common people, a path similarly pursued by his fellow Tennessean and U.S. president in the 1840s, James K. Polk. Strongly divided by the American Civil War and its own version of Reconstruction, Tennessee became a part of the solid Democratic South, lagging in wealth and prestige and, like much of that region, it lagged behind the rest of the nationcountry in wealth and prestige. The dreams of the industrialists of the late 19th century were not realized until the second part of the 20th. In the 1970s, with the return of the Republicans to prominence, later in the 20th, when World War II and spending by the national government fueled new kinds of industrial activity. By the early 21st century, a strong service sector had developed. Also by this time, the Republican Party had won the favour of many Tennesseans, and Tennessee became once again a two-party state. As the South has become a part of the Sunbelt, the state has shared in this emerging prosperity.

Physical and human geographyThe landReliefThe state

Although still diverse within its own borders, Tennessee had clearly begun to merge economically and politically with the rest of the country. Area 42,143 square miles (109,150 square km). Pop. (2000) 5,689,283; (2006 est.) 6,038,803.





The Great Valley









low-banked streams

. In the extreme west, the plain ends



Mississippi River.

Drainage and soilsThe land drains directly into



coastal plain


Approximately one-third

Although a substantial portion of the state’s soils

of the state

are unfit for any kind of cultivation,

but four



or other agricultural products.



The average high temperature is 85° F (29° C); the average low temperature is 30° F (-1° C



51 inches (1,

321 millimetres

300 mm) a year, rather evenly distributed over the seasons and regions.

Plant and animal life


United States and its diverse elevations



United States are found in

the state




some 60


Settlement patterns

The first white settlers found their way to river valleys in upper East Tennessee and then to Middle Tennessee north of the Cumberland River. In the early part of the 19th century, pioneers moved south in these regions. West Tennessee was purchased from the Chickasaw in 1818, but the Cherokee retained a small portion of lower East Tennessee until their removal in 1838.

Unlike the Deep South, in which huge plantations were the symbol of the cotton empire, Tennessee developed largely as an agglomeration of smaller farms. Small farms and small towns still characterize much of the landscape of the state. Six of the state’s major cities and their surrounding counties have attained metropolitan size, reflecting Tennessee’s growth in population, industry, and urbanization at a generally more rapid pace than that of its neighbours. Knoxville, the site of the oldest and largest campus of the University of Tennessee, and Chattanooga, where in 1863 Confederate and Union soldiers clashed on Lookout Mountain, are the major centres of East Tennessee. Nashville, the state capital and the cultural centre of Middle Tennessee, is perhaps best known as the national capital of country music. Clarksville, 50 miles northwest of Nashville, is the centre for dark-fired tobacco and the home of the 101st Airborne, which is based at nearby Fort Campbell, Ky. Jackson, an old frontier town and transportation centre, is in the heart of West Tennessee, a region acquired from the Chickasaw in 1818 as the “Jackson Purchase.” Memphis is the hub of West Tennessee, and its history includes its major role in the Mississippi River steamboat traffic and its prominent and colourful position in the development of jazz. Three smaller cities in northeastern Tennessee are considered together as the state’s seventh metropolitan area.

The people

The original white settlers were of predominantly Scotch-Irish and English stock, although Germans were well represented. Black slaves were present from the beginning of white settlement, enduring with their masters the privations of frontier life. Initially few in number, slaves and free blacks had a measure of liberty. Antislavery societies and journals flourished in the eastern part of the state until the opening of plantations in Middle and West Tennessee brought increasing numbers of slaves to the state. During the Civil War blacks defended the Union as civilian workers and as soldiers. They served in the state legislature during Reconstruction but were given few positions of leadership by the Republicans. Losing political power after Reconstruction, blacks played only a limited role in politics until the 1960s.

The Cherokee, the only Indian people who actually lived in Tennessee during most of the 18th century, were originally allies of the English traders, but they eventually began to resist the flood of settlers that poured into the area. Ceding bits and pieces of land in a series of treaties, the Cherokee adopted ways of the whites in the hope that they could live in peace. One leader, Sequoyah, created an alphabet for his people, enabling them to write and read their language for the first time. They became farmers, and, in some cases, slave owners, prospering in ways that aroused the envy of their white neighbours. Thus, the pressure for Indian land increased. A minority faction ceded their remaining land in Tennessee in a treaty that was enforced by the U.S. government. The result was the forcible removal of most of the remaining Cherokee to Oklahoma in the tragic Trail of Tears in 1838–39.

Women have played a prominent role in the life of the state from early pioneer times. Long active in religious and cultural pursuits, women began to organize in the latter part of the 19th century to gain the vote. These efforts accelerated in the 20th century and were crowned with success in 1920, when Tennessee’s approval of the Nineteenth Amendment gave the vote to all American women. In recent years women in the state have become increasingly prominent in business, politics, education, literature, entertainment, and the arts.

People from other regions and nations have come into Tennessee in recent years because of increased economic opportunities. They have generally found a warm welcome, and have, in turn, enriched the state through their energies and varied cultural patterns.

Religion has been important in Tennessee from the days of early pioneers. Presbyterian ministers reinforced a belief in divine Providence as settlers faced the hazards of nature, Indians, and internal divisions. Baptists soon outnumbered Presbyterians in Tennessee, and the Methodist circuit rider became a significant figure in the area. The Great Revival of 1800, spawned in nearby Kentucky, intensified the importance of religion in the state, where two new denominations emerged: the Cumberland Presbyterians and the Disciples of Christ, or Christian church. As immigration increased, so did religious diversity. Episcopalians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Jews were all strong in the state before the Civil War. North–South division of denominations preceded the division of the Union. In the late 19th century the concern over the prohibition crusade caused denominations to join forces to combat the evils of drink. While this issue was still important in the early decades of the 20th century, churches also turned their attention to missions, urban problems, and church organization. Still, the popularity of itinerant evangelists signified the persistence of the revivalist tradition in Tennessee. In addition, churches concerned themselves with social needs during the Great Depression and in World War II, with the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, and, later, with the homeless.

In recent years the most rapid growth in the state has been in East and Middle Tennessee and the West Tennessee county of Tipton. The highest increases in population have been in fringe areas around the largest cities. While Tennessee exchanges population with other states, more people come from Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia than go from Tennessee to these states. Tennessee’s percentage of native-born citizens is higher than the national average, although a significant number have lived outside the state for a time. In Tennessee, as in the nation as a whole, the number of households has increased, particularly single-person households. While the median age has increased, the distribution of population by race has remained extremely stable since 1970.

The economy

Manufacturing dominates the state’s economy, accounting for nearly a third of the total state product.


The major products manufactured in the state are chemicals, foods, aluminum, rubber products, nylon, and whiskey. Because of the dependence on manufacturing, recent administrations have sought to attract industry to Tennessee. As a result, many firms, some from Japan, have located plants in the state. Tourism is an important industry because of the scenery, the facilities in parks, the abundance of historic sites, and entertainment facilities. Tennessee is also a centre for insurance, printing, and the recording of music. There has been an increase in service jobs in the state.

Agriculture, mining, and energyThe main crops are soybeans, tobacco, cotton, corn


Population composition




Settlement patterns




Agriculture and forestry


The leading products in forestry are from oak, hickory, poplar, elm, pine, and cedar. Coal is the major mineral resource, followed by stone, zinc, phosphate rock, copper, and marble. Long known for Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dams and nuclear research at Oak Ridge, Tennessee has made important contributions in energy production. The TVA was


Resources and power



. The nation’s

, is among the largest electric-power

generating system, it has also improved navigation and controlled flooding on the Tennessee River and has aided industrial development throughout the Tennessee River valley.

-generating systems in the country.







The most notable recent addition to the highway system has been the

A network of interstate




; these two cities also serve as important regional transportation

centres, not only in highways but also in air travel.Administration and social conditionsGovernment

The constitution of 1870, drawn up after Reconstruction, closely resembled the original document of 1796. Despite the recognized need for revision in the following decades, the amendment process itself remained difficult. Hence, it was not until 1953 that the document was actually amended, although the government had been reorganized by statute in the 1920s and ’30s. The 1953 and subsequent amendments helped to modernize the state government.

Among the changes effected were clauses that simplified the complicated amendment procedure, increased the terms of the governor and state senators from two to four years, increased the pay of state legislators, provided for annual rather than biennial meetings of the state legislature, abolished the poll tax, and increased the power of cities to govern themselves independently of the state.

The structure of the


Government and society
Constitutional framework


of government in Tennessee resembles that of many other states

. The governor, chosen through statewide elections, is the

only executive official elected statewide. The speaker of the state Senate serves as lieutenant governor. Other executive officers are elected by the legislature, while the attorney general is appointed by the Supreme Court. Executives


are appointed by the governor

. The


General Assembly




Senators are elected

for two




The judicial system

consists, on the local level, of general sessions judges who act as committing magistrates and enjoy limited civil jurisdiction. Above these is a complex of inferior courts—chancery, circuit, criminal, and probate—that try various types of cases. The Court of Appeals,


and the Supreme Court have their judges apportioned among the three “grand divisions” of the state (


). Judges on the local level

, and they are elected by the

voters of their respective counties. On the next level, judges


chancery divisions and circuits. The members of the Court of Appeals and of the Court of Criminal Appeals are elected by the state at large under the Missouri Plan. The members of the Supreme Court are elected by the voters of the state at large. All terms are for eight years.

counties of jurisdiction. There also are juvenile and family courts.

Local government follows the national pattern. A county commission



council–manager, mayor–council

council-manager, mayor-council, and commissioner systems.

In 1962

The city of Nashville and Davidson county

merged into


This experiment has been considered a success in solving problems of overlapping or conflicting authority in city and county governments.
EducationAlmost half Health and welfare




in the state. One notable innovation has been the




In the elementary schools there


, while on the secondary level requirements in math and science have been increased


The Tennessee Higher Education Commission coordinates the work of two

boards, the


system consists of

has campuses




several regional public universities

: Austin Peay (Clarksville), East Tennessee (Johnson City), Memphis State, Middle Tennessee State (Murfreesboro), Tennessee State (Nashville), and Tennessee Technological (Cookeville). There are several community colleges and


of which

Vanderbilt and Fisk universities, both


in Nashville, and the University of the South


in Sewanee are perhaps the best known.

Health and welfare

The increased longevity of Tennesseans is in part attributable to improved health facilities, characterized by outstanding medical centres in the major cities. The Department of Human Services has expanded its program in an attempt to meet the growing needs of the underpriviledged in society. In addition to basic welfare services, the state concerns itself with foster care, adoptions, licensing of day-care centres, prevention of child abuse, and provision of services for the handicapped.

Fisk is among the country’s most highly regarded historically black universities.

Cultural life

The geographic, economic, and social divisions of

the state

Tennessee are reflected in a

diversified culture. The self-reliance of the


the slave heritage of West Tennessee blacks gave rise to the blues. Memphis has long been a centre for the arts, with special emphasis on music and the theatre. Middle Tennesseans brought


cultural institutions into their region to mitigate the crudeness of frontier life. In more recent times Nashville has become the cultural as well as the political capital of the state, weaving traditional patterns of the three “grand divisions” with contemporary trends in music and literature. Beginning in


The arts




country music

the performance,


recording, and publishing

. Modern literature also has important ties to Nashville






This theme persists in the work of a number of distinguished Tennessee writers, of whom Peter Taylor is probably the best known.The completion of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville has led to a flowering of cultural life in music, theatre, and dance. Exhibits of


Cultural institutions

Of Tennessee’s many historical sites, the Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson, near Nashville, and the Civil War battlefield of Shiloh are the most famous. The Tennessee State Museum (1937) in Nashville exhibits contemporary and earlier art as well as historical artifacts at the Tennessee State Museum, also in Nashville, demonstrate the that document the cultural richness and vitality of the state. Large numbers of vacationers visit the state each year. Opryland USA, a musical theme park featuring the Grand Ole Opry, is a major attraction. The natural beauty of the region draws In East Tennessee the Museum of Appalachia (1967) near Norris displays the life and material culture of the Appalachian people; the American Museum of Science and Energy (1949) at Oak Ridge chronicles the development and applications of atomic energy; and Rock City Gardens and the Tennessee Aquarium, both in Chattanooga, are popular attractions. In West Tennessee the former Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, site of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., now draws many visitors as the National Civil Rights Museum.

Sports and recreation


The natural beauty of East Tennessee draws many visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park (shared with North Carolina), one of the largest national park protected areas in the eastern United States and among the most heavily visited national parks in the country. At Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, also in the eastern mountains, a wide variety of entertainment facilities, such as campgrounds, riding stables, and to Tennessee’s 51 amusement parks, have emerged since the late 20th century to serve the millions of tourists who visit the area annually. Tennessee also has dozens of state parks, many most of which encompass man-made lakes. In addition, there are many historic sites, of which the Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson, near Nashville, and the Civil War battlefield of Shiloh are the most famous.

Prehistory and settlement

The first are located near the lakes and mountains of the middle and eastern regions.

Media and publishing


Prehistory and European settlement

The earliest inhabitants of Tennessee are believed to have been Ice Age hunters peoples descended from Asians who crossed the former Bering Strait land bridge more than 20,000 years ago. They were succeeded by various groups, who These peoples were of Paleo-Indian culture, and, like their Archaic successors, they lived primarily by hunting. The Archaic culture was succeeded by the Woodland culture and later by the Mississippian culture, both of which refined hunting methods and ultimately developed a life based on agriculture. The European explorers, beginning with the Spaniard an agricultural livelihood. The Mississippian peoples were dominant when the first known European in the area, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, arrived in 1540 , found several groups of Indian peoples in Tennessee, the most powerful of whom were the Cherokee, who succeeded in driving the other Indians out of the state by the early part of the 18th centuryin search of gold. By the time Europeans returned to the area for further exploration in the 1700s, the principal indigenous groups were the Chickasaw, in the west, and the Cherokee, in the east.

The name Tennessee derives from that of the Cherokee village Tanasi. The Cherokee developed warm relations with English traders from Virginia and South Carolina and were initially their allies in the French and Indian War of the 1750s and ’60s. As However, as English traders and hunters became land-hungry settlers, the Cherokee came to see them as a threat. Thus began a long period of intermittent conflict, which ended with the final removal of the Cherokee from the state in 1838–39the 19th century.

As for the English settlers, a group in upper East Tennessee, learning that they were not under royal authority, set a precedent for self-government in the Watauga Association in 1772, the example of which was later followed by the signers of the Cumberland Compact on the site of Nashville. An important group of Tennesseans showed their support for independence during the American Revolution (1775–83) by contributing to the defeat of the Tories in loyalists (Tories)—those who supported Great Britain—in the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina in 1780. This was one of several encounters that encouraged British leaders to withdraw their forces.At first

Early statehood and the Jackson era

Initially a part of the new state of North Carolina following the Revolution, Tennessee made a bid for admission to the Union as “the a state of named Franklin. Because North Carolina had rescinded its original cession of western lands, however, the Continental Congress turned Congress—the governing body of the early United States—turned down this petition for statehood. Under the new federal Constitutionconstitution, the region was organized as the Territory South of the River Ohio. In 1796 Tennessee became a state, the first admitted from territorial status.

The Jackson era

With the coming of the War of 1812, , with Knoxville as its first capital, John Sevier as its first governor, and Gen. Andrew Jackson as its first congressman.

Tennesseans played a decisive role as volunteers under the leadership of General Andrew Jackson , whose victory at New Orleans discouraged the British from renewing hostilities. While the Democrat Jackson, in the Creek War, which erupted in 1813 and ended in 1814 at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. In response to a devastating attack by Creek warriors on Fort Mims, Alabama, such Tennessee volunteers as Davy Crockett led the destruction of many Muskogee (Upper Creek) towns and people. Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans in 1815 made him a national hero of the War of 1812. Jackson, perceived as a champion of the common people, in part because of his success in fighting the indigenous populations, was elected president in 1828 and again in 1832, became the hero of the common man, he was opposed in Tennessee, as in other parts of the country, by the growing commercial faction. His . As president he was the leader of the Democratic Party, an opponent of the national bank, and an advocate of the removal of all native peoples in the eastern United States to the western regions.

Despite their efforts to assimilate into the dominant white culture, most of the Cherokee of East Tennessee were forcibly removed from the state by the U.S. government in 1838–39. Together with other indigenous peoples of the southeastern United States, Tennessee’s native populations were routed via the so-called Trail of Tears to reservations in what is now Oklahoma.

The growing commercial interests in the country—in national politics led by Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun—opposed the policies of so-called “King Andrew” Jackson. Out of this opposition emerged the Whig Party, led in Tennessee by John Bell and Hugh Lawson White. The Whigs controlled state politics at the very time Jackson was president. Jackson’s champion in the U.S. House of Representatives, Tennessean James K. Polk, was elected president in 1844, although the majority of Tennesseans, sympathetic to the commercially oriented Whig Party, voted against him.

The Civil War and Reconstruction

As the Civil War approached, the With growing tension between the states of the North and those of the South over the issue of slavery, many Southern states considered the 1860 election of emancipation advocate Abraham Lincoln as president to be their signal to secede from the United States; initially, though, the majority of Tennesseans remained loyal to the Union, until Lincoln’s call for volunteers indicated that he would hold the Union together by force. Then . However, when the American Civil War finally broke out in 1861, Tennessee, like other states in the upper South, voted for secession and joined the new Confederate States of America (Confederacy). Only Virginia was the scene of saw more fighting than Tennessee during the Civil Warwar. Names Engagements such as those at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Stones River, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Franklin, and Nashville evoke images of extreme sacrifice, both Union and Confederatedestroyed much of the state’s property and population; the Union army won most of the encounters and occupied much of Tennessee by 1864.

While Middle and West Tennessee were sympathetic to the South, the majority of East Tennesseans remained loyal to the Union, and some attempted to form a separate, pro-Union state. This turmoil was reflected in the career of Andrew Johnson, a popular Democratic governor and U.S. senator before the war. His Johnson’s loyalty to the Union during the war and Republican-dominated Union, his marked disregard of plantation owners and their interests, and his position as military governor of Tennessee during the war subjected him to threats (including assassination) by many people in the state. He became a hero once again when he, as president,

After the war, Tennessee experienced a relatively brief period of Radical Reconstruction, distinguished mainly by the tenure of the Radical Republican governor William G. Brownlow, a Knoxville minister and newspaper editor who served from 1865 to 1869. Like Johnson, Brownlow was resolutely unreceptive to the concerns of the plantation aristocracy.

Having been selected as Lincoln’s vice president in 1864, Johnson took office as president of the United States following the assassination of Lincoln in 1865. When Johnson was impeached by a House of Representatives dominated by Radicals, who believed that he was too sympathetic to Southern interests, he became a hero to many Tennesseans who had formerly disliked him. (The Senate, however, fell one vote short of the majority needed to remove him from office.) During In 1871 the Reconstruction era, Tennessee provided its own Radical governor, William G. Brownlow, who expressed his hatred for former rebels in vituperative rhetoric. Radical Reconstruction lost popularity in Tennessee as it subsequently did in the North. However, former Confederates regained their rights, and blacks lost the little political power they had gained.

The modern period

conservative, pro-Confederate Democrats regained control of the state and used their power to reinstitute pro-plantation, antiblack politics.

Tennessee, c. 1900 through World War II

Factionalism within the ascendant Democratic Party and popular crusades such as prohibition (a movement to restrict the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages) and women’s rights captured public attention and worked to polarize Tennessean society in the early 20th century. The preoccupation with prohibition delayed effective reform of state government until the ascendancy of Governor Gov. Austin Peay in 1922. Also indicative of the state’s ideological fracture was the 1925 Scopes Trial in the small town of Dayton in East Tennessee. In this highly publicized proceeding, a local biology teacher was convicted of having broken the state’s law against the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The event underscored the emerging division among Americans between modernist thought and more fundamentalist values.

Plagued by the Great Depression and ongoing party factionalism in the early 1930s, Tennessee resumed its reform program under Gordon Browning, who was elected governor in 1936. Prentice Cooper was the frugal but efficient governor of the wartime years. After World War II; among Browning’s most notable reforms were the overhaul of the state’s financial structure (to reduce debt) and the implementation of various social programs. National initiatives of the 1930s and ’40s, such as the development of the social security system, also helped to rebuild and reshape Tennessee’s economy. Especially important was the federal government’s establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which in 1933 began building a large network of hydroelectric dams on the Tennessee River and its many tributaries in East Tennessee and western North Carolina. The TVA stimulated economic activity in East Tennessee into the 21st century. During World War II a nuclear-materials production facility at Oak Ridge was integral to the U.S. wartime atomic energy program known as the Manhattan Project.

Tennessee since the mid-20th century

After the war, under the leadership of governors Governors Frank G. Clement and Buford Ellington, the state gave increased attention to education, mental health, highways, and constitutional reform, and Tennessee became a testing ground for breaking the barriers of racial segregation in schools and in other public facilities. A small minority of white extremists used violence in opposing integration. In the 1970s and ’80s, with Republicans twice winning the gubernatorial chair, Tennessee once again became a two-party state. Tennesseans have been increasingly concerned with improving educational opportunities and attracting outside Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis were sites of important protests by African Americans against segregation. The sit-ins in Nashville in 1959–61 gained national attention for the civil rights movement, as did the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in 1968. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers when he was assassinated on April 4 of that year; a Tennessee court subsequently convicted James Earl Ray of the murder.

After the 1960s, Tennesseans experienced the revitalization of two-party politics. Republicans, who after Reconstruction typically held strength only in East Tennessee, began to acquire more supporters among Middle and West Tennesseans. Democrats have won most of the elections for governor since the 1960s, while the two parties have been fairly well balanced in both houses of Congress; one Democrat, Al Gore, was first elected U.S. senator in the 1980s and was elected vice president in the 1990s.

Since the turn of the 21st century, Tennessee has experienced moderate population growth, concentrated heavily in the suburban areas of the major cities. The overall ethnic composition of the state generally has been maintained, although the Hispanic community has expanded significantly. The service sector of the economy has performed strongly in the areas of shipping, hotels and entertainment, and health care, while the production of automobiles has bolstered the state’s manufacturing industry.

Basic physical geography is presented in Ralph O. Fullerton and John B. Ray (eds.), Tennessee: Geographical Patterns and Regions (1977); and Edward T. Luther, Our Restless Earth: The Geologic Regions of Tennessee (1977). Federal Writers’ Project, Tennessee: A Guide to the State (1939, reissued as The WPA Guide to Tennessee, 1986), is still a useful survey of many aspects of the state’s geography and culture. DeLorme Mapping Company, Tennessee Atlas & Gazetteer, 4th 8th ed. (19972007), contains topographic and other maps as well as information on various recreation sites. Ralph O. Fullerton, Place Names of Tennessee (1974), combines geography and local history. Marguerite Owen, The Tennessee Valley Authority (1973), gives recounts the history and details of the programs of this important agency. Of special interest are Works dealing with various cultural matters include Lester C. Lamon, Blacks in Tennessee, 1790–1970 (19801981, reissued 1996); Ronald N. Satz, Tennessee’s Indian Peoples: From White Contact to Removal, 1540–1840 (1979); Herman A. Norton, Religion in Tennessee, 1777–1945 (1981); and Charles K. Wolfe, Tennessee Strings: The Story of Country Music in Tennessee (1977).

A good valuable history of the state is Robert E. Corlew, Tennessee: A Short History, 2nd updated ed. (19811990), which contains excellent chapter bibliographies. Sam B. Smith (ed. and compiler), Tennessee History: A Bibliography (1974), is also useful in this regard. Wilma Dykeman, Tennessee (1975, reissued 1993), is an introduction. Thomas L. Connelly, Civil War Tennessee: Battles and Leaders (1979), provides insight on this important period. The Tennessee Historical Quarterly has articles and book reviews on a wide variety of relevant topics.A fine account of Tennessee’s history through the late 1990s is rendered by Paul H. Bergeron, Stephen V. Ash, and Jeanette Keith, Tennesseans and Their History (1999).