Middle Tennessee
Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the state's capital and largest city, Nashville, as well as Clarksville, the state's fifth largest city, and Murfreesboro, the state's sixth largest city and largest suburb of Nashville. The Nashville metropolitan area, located entirely within the region, is the most populous metropolitan area in the state, and the Clarksville metropolitan area is the state's sixth most populous. Middle Tennessee is both the largest, in terms of land area, and the most populous of the state's three Grand Divisions.
Geographically, Middle Tennessee is composed of the Highland Rim, which completely surrounds the Nashville Basin. The Cumberland Plateau is located in the eastern part of the region. Culturally, Middle Tennessee is considered part of the Upland South. Commodity crops such as cotton and tobacco were cultivated by migrant settlers in the region in the antebellum era, who were largely dependent on the labor of enslaved African Americans. In addition, planters bred and trained livestock, such as the world-famous Tennessee Walking Horse, which was developed as a breed in the region during this time.
Middle Tennessee was a crucial region during the American Civil War. Tennessee was occupied by Federal troops from 1862 through the end of the war. Many battles and campaigns were waged by Confederates in this region, especially in efforts to control the major rivers. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest conducted extensive raids through this area, destroying many Union assets in the 1864 Battle of Johnsonville. The bloodiest major battle of the American Civil War by the proportion of engaged soldiers who became casualties, the Battle of Stones River, was also fought here.
In the 20th century, the Grand Ole Opry was established in Nashville, enhancing the city as the home of country music. Since the early 1970s, the region has been transformed by the entry of many new economic sectors, including automotive manufacturing, healthcare, finance, technology, tourism, and professional services. Both the Nashville and Clarksville metropolitan areas are among the fastest-growing regions in the nation.
History
Native Americans
Throughout the past 10,000 years, a number of different Native peoples are believed to have inhabited what is now Middle Tennessee. The region is believed to have been rich in game animals favored by Ice Age hunter-gatherers. During the Mississippian period, Native Americans established chiefdoms and constructed numerous earthwork mounds in the region, such as Mound Bottom in Cheatham County and the Castalian Springs site in Sumner County. By the late 17th century, for unknown reasons, there were few Native Americans left in Middle Tennessee, but the Cherokee and the Chickasaw claimed the region as their hunting grounds. Natives that had occupied what is now Middle Tennessee prior to this time may have died as a result of new infectious diseases indirectly introduced by European explorers.Exploration and colonization
The first Europeans to reach what is now Middle Tennessee were probably an expedition in 1540–1541 led by Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto. By the late 17th century, the French had begun to explore the Cumberland River valley in Middle Tennessee. In 1714, a group of French traders constructed a trading post at a site along the Cumberland River in modern-day Nashville that became known as French Lick. These settlers quickly established an extensive fur trading network with the local Native Americans, but by the 1740s the settlement had largely been abandoned. In the 1750s and 1760s, longhunters from Virginia explored much of Middle Tennessee, especially the Cumberland Plateau. In 1769, French-born fur trader Timothy Demonbreun established residence along the Cumberland River in present-day Nashville.In 1779, James Robertson and John Donelson led two groups of settlers from the Washington District in what is now East Tennessee to the French Lick. These settlers constructed Fort Nashborough, which they named for Francis Nash, a brigadier general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. The next year, the settlers signed the Cumberland Compact, which established the Cumberland Association, a representative form of government based on the government known as the Watauga Association that had been established by the settlers of East Tennessee. Fort Nashborough later developed as the city of Nashville, and a number of other settlements were established nearby in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first settlements in Middle Tennessee became known as the Cumberland Settlements. In 1790, what is now Tennessee became the Southwest Territory, and the settlements in Middle Tennessee were organized into the Mero District, named after Spanish territorial governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró.
In 1795, a survey conducted by the territorial legislature found that the majority of residents of Middle Tennessee were opposed to statehood, while the majority of residents of East Tennessee, of which there were approximately three times more, were in favor. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state the following year. During the antebellum era, a slavery-based agrarian economy took hold in Middle Tennessee, especially in the fertile soils of the Nashville Basin. Planters primarily grew cotton in the Nashville Basin, and tobacco and corn were cultivated in the Highland Rim. By 1860, enslaved African Americans composed about 29% of the population of Middle Tennessee. After the election of Abraham Lincoln that year, a majority of Middle Tennesseans voted against the state's ordinance of secession in February 1861. Many of these white voters supported the continuation of slavery but were skeptical about leaving the Union.
Civil War and Reconstruction
Following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, which started the Civil War, and President Lincoln's call to raise federal troops in response, many Middle Tennesseans changed their opinions about secession. In June 1861, Middle Tennessee voted in favor of Tennessee's second ordnance of secession, which resulted in Tennessee joining the Confederate States of America, although a few counties in the extreme southwest and northeast continued to favor the Union.A number of crucial campaigns and battles of the Civil War took place in Middle Tennessee. General Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S. Navy captured control of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in February 1862 at the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, essentially establishing Union control of Middle Tennessee. Union troops occupied the state for the duration of the war.
Union strength in the area, however, was tested by a series of Confederate offensives beginning in the summer of 1862, which culminated in Union General William Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland routing Confederate General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee at the Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro in December 1862 and January 1863. This was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. In February, the Confederates took about 670 to 870 casualties in the Battle of Dover when Colonel Abner C. Harding defeated the 2500 Confederate troops with 800 Union soldiers. The next summer, Rosecrans's Tullahoma campaign forced Bragg's remaining troops in Middle Tennessee to flee to Chattanooga with little fighting. The last major battles in Middle Tennessee occurred during the Franklin–Nashville campaign in the fall of 1864, when the Army of Tennessee under the command of General John Bell Hood unsuccessfully tried to lure Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was conducting the Atlanta campaign in Georgia, back into the region. Hood was defeated at the Battle of Franklin in November, then completely dispersed from the state by General George Thomas at the Battle of Nashville the following month. The United States Colored Troops played a major role in this campaign.
During Reconstruction, Middle Tennessee's economy fell into a state of disrepair. The Ku Klux Klan was formed in Pulaski in December 1865 as a vigilante organization to advance the interests of former Confederates, including maintenance of white supremacy. In the years following the Civil War, African Americans and their White allies in Middle Tennessee were targeted with acts of violence by former Confederates. Many freedmen became sharecroppers following the end of slavery, and were often disadvantaged by the planters' recordkeeping and contracts.
Late 19th and earlier 20th century
The post-Reconstruction era in Middle Tennessee was characterized by continued White violence against African Americans, especially related to elections, and many were lynched in a cycle often related to economic tensions and settlement of finances after harvest. In the late 19th century, African Americans began fleeing Middle Tennessee to booming industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest. This mass migration, which occurred in every Southern state and accelerated between 1915 and 1930, became known as the first wave of the Great Migration. It continued until 1970.The region's economy continued to be based primarily on agriculture, but coal mining expanded extensively in the Cumberland Plateau in Middle Tennessee in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1897, Tennessee celebrated its centennial of statehood one year late with the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in Nashville. A full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Athens was designed by architect William Crawford Smith and constructed for the celebration The site of the exposition is now a city park called Centennial Park.
The worst rail accident in U.S. history occurred on July 9, 1918, in Nashville when two passenger trains collided head on, killing 101 people and injuring 171. Human error was ultimately deemed to be the main cause of the accident.
The Grand Ole Opry was first broadcast in 1925 in Nashville, and remains the longest-running radio program in the nation. This radio program helped establish Nashville as the national home of country music.
During World War II Camp Forrest, located in Tullahoma, was one of the U.S. Army's largest training bases. It was also used to house German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war. After the war, it was adapted as Arnold Air Force Base. The Vultee Aircraft Corporation operated a plant in Nashville during the war, employing mostly women.
On February 25 and 26, 1946, a civil disturbance known as the "Columbia Race Riot" occurred in Columbia, instigated by a fight between a Black Navy veteran and a White repair apprentice. Described by the press as the "first major racial confrontation" following World War II, the event garnered national attention. It marked a new era of resistance by African-American veterans and others following their participation in World War II, which they believed had earned them their full rights as citizens.