Tennessee History

1. Tennessee History

2. Andrew Jackson • In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected President. • Jackson was born in a log cabin and did not come from wealth. • He studied and became a lawyer. • He was a war hero in the Revolutionary war at age 13! • Jackson fought against the Creek Indians in the area of Tennessee and helped the government take over this land. • He was a strict leader. His soldiers said that he was “tough as old hickory wood”. That is how he got his nickname, Old Hickory.

3. Trail of Tears • Andrew Jackson did not help protect the American Indians. • He supported the Indian Removal Act that called for moving all Native Americans in the Southeastern states to new lands west of the Mississippi River. This area is now Oklahoma. • This movement was called the Trail of Tears. • It was a year long march to new land. • The Indians suffered a terrible injustice.

4. Sam Houston • Sam Houston was a soldier, politician and a key figure in both Texas and Tennessee. • As a teenager, Houston ran away from home and was adopted by a Cherokee village. • He fought for the Cherokee to keep their land. • He was elected as governor of Tennessee in 1827. • Houston later moved to Texas and was elected governor in 1859.

5. Davy Crockett • Crockett did not believe it was right to force the Cherokee and other Indian groups to leave their land. • He fought against settlers that wanted the Indians land. • Tennessee elected Crockett to Congress where he served for three years. • Crocket was well liked liked in Congress for his easy going personality. • Crocket signed on as a volunteer in the Texas Revolution where he fought and died at the Battle of the Alamo.

6. Nancy Ward • Nancy Ward was also a Tennessean who fought for the Cherokee to keep their land. • She believe the Cherokee could live peacefully with white people and was involved in the peace talks between the two groups.

7. Civil War • In 1861 the United States was torn in half by the Civil War. • The North and South had become divided over the question of slavery, or practice of making on person the property of another. • Enslaved Africans were force to work for no pay. • Indentured servants , however, agreed to work for a certain period of time in exchange for their trip to America. • The North wanted to end slavery while the South did not. • Tennessee was a southern state that fought defending slavery.

8. Plantations • Most Tennessee slaves worked on plantations filling sacks with cotton. • Wealthy plantation owners and farmers in the South became rich by growing cotton and tobacco. The owners needed workers that they did not have to pay. • The North did not have the big farms. They manufactured products by machines. • Many people in both the North and South worked for abolition, or an end to slavery. • During this time another famous Tennessean became President, James K. Polk.

9. Secession and War • In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President. • At this time there were more free states, states that did not have slaves, than slave states. • Southern states were afraid slavery would become against the law so the seceded, or break away from the United States.

10. Confederacy • The slaves states that broke away, formed a new government called the Confederacy, or Confederate States. • The free states that remained a part of the United States were called the Union. • Confederate soldiers fired on a Union camp at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. • This began the Civil War.

11. Civil War Battles in Tennessee • Because Tennessee was on the border of the North and the South, many battles were fought here. Look at the map on page 95. • One of the most violent battle of the Civil War was fought at Camp Shiloh in West Tennessee. Look at the map on page 98.

12. Reconstruction • The Civil War lasted from 1861-1865. • Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, officially ending the practice of slavery. • Another Tennessean, Andrew Johnson, was elected President. • He led the country during the reconstruction, or time when the Southern states were brought back into the Union.