Tennessee

Three distinct regions inside one state, which nearly split it in two in 1861. The mountainous east, the middle basin around Nashville and the western flatland along the Mississippi differ in soil, settlement and economy, and the state constitution recognises the three grand divisions formally. The east had few enslaved people and voted heavily against secession; when the state seceded anyway, east Tennessee unionists burned bridges, sent thousands of men to the Union army, and petitioned to form a separate state as West Virginia had. Tennessee was the last state to leave and the first readmitted. It had been admitted in 1796 after existing briefly as the unrecognised State of Franklin. Andrew Jackson's rise, and the Cherokee removal his administration carried out from this region, both belong to it. The Scopes trial at Dayton in 1925 tested a law against teaching evolution. The Tennessee Valley Authority from 1933 electrified the region and remade its rivers. Memphis and Nashville produced blues, soul, country and rock, and Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. Oak Ridge enriched uranium for the first atomic bombs. Nashville is the capital. Memphis and Nashville are the largest cities. The state borders eight others, tied with Missouri for the most. Its name comes from a Cherokee town, Tanasi. Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited national park in the country. Tennessee's flag carries three stars for the grand divisions. Its highest and lowest points differ by nearly two thousand metres, from Clingmans Dome in the east to the Mississippi at Memphis.

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