West Tennessee
West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists primarily of flat lands with rich soil and vast floodplain areas of the Mississippi River. Of the three regions, West Tennessee is the most sharply defined geographically, and is the lowest-lying. It is both the least populous and smallest, in land area, of the three Grand Divisions. Its largest city is Memphis, the state's second most populous city.
West Tennessee was originally inhabited by the Chickasaw, and was the last of the three Grand Divisions to be settled by Europeans. The region officially became part of the United States with the Jackson Purchase in 1818, 22 years after Tennessee's statehood. As part of the Mississippi River basin, West Tennessee enjoys rich soil that led to large-scale cotton farming during the antebellum period that was heavily dependent on slave labor. As a result, it forms the northwestern tip of the Black Belt.
History
Early history
The first Europeans to reach what is now West Tennessee were part of an expedition led by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, who in 1541 became the first Europeans to reach the Mississippi River south of present-day Memphis. In 1673, a French expedition led by missionary Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet explored the Mississippi River, becoming the first Europeans to map the Mississippi Valley.In 1682, a French expedition led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle constructed Fort Prudhomme on the Chickasaw Bluffs along the Mississippi River north of present-day Memphis. In 1739, the French constructed Fort Assumption under the command of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on the Mississippi River at the present-day location of Memphis, which they used as a base against the Chickasaw during the 1739 Campaign of the Chickasaw Wars.
In 1795, Spanish Governor-General of Louisiana, Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet, sent his lieutenant governor, Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, to negotiate an agreement with the local Chickasaw so that a fort could be erected on the Chickasaw Bluffs in present-day Memphis. Fort San Fernando De Las Barrancas was established in May of that year to defend Spanish claims and prevent further westward expansion of the United States.
The part of Tennessee west of the Tennessee River was first recognized as Chickasaw territory by the 1786 Treaty of Hopewell, and continued to be after Tennessee's statehood in 1796. However, both the state's constitution and the legislative act that admitted Tennessee to the Union defined the region as part of the state. West Tennessee did not come under American control until it was obtained in a series of cessions by the Chickasaw in 1818, an acquisition known as the Jackson Purchase, which was negotiated by Andrew Jackson, who later became the 7th President of the United States, and former-Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby. This purchase also included the westernmost area of Kentucky as well as a part of northern Mississippi.
Although the vast majority of the purchase area lies in Tennessee, the term "Jackson Purchase" is used today mostly to refer solely to the Kentuckian portion of the acquisition. After West Tennessee was opened to European settlement in 1818, cotton planters began exploiting the fertile soils of the region in the 1820s, and an agrarian economy, heavily dependent on African American slave labor took hold in the region. West Tennessee quickly became one of the most productive cotton-producing regions in the nation, along with much of the Deep South and the largest cotton-farming region in Tennessee.
Civil War and Reconstruction
After the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, most West Tennesseans favored joining the Confederacy in order to preserve the slavery-based economy of the region. This was true throughout most of West Tennessee, with the exception of the southeastern parts of the region along the Tennessee River, where the terrains and soils did not allow for large plantations as in most of West Tennessee. As a result, most residents of this area were Unionists. In 1860, slaves composed more than one third of West Tennessee's population, compared to about one fourth statewide. This was the highest percentage of the state's three Grand Divisions, although Middle Tennessee had more slaves.A number of crucial battles and events took place in West Tennessee during the Civil War. In February 1862, the U.S. Navy, under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, captured the Tennessee River in February 1862 at the Battle of Fort Henry near the Kentucky border. Grant then proceeded south to Pittsburg Landing, and two months later held off a Confederate counterattack, led by Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard at the Battle of Shiloh, which was the bloodiest battle of the war at the time. This battle claimed the life of Johnston, and remained one of the most costly engagements of the entire war. Memphis fell to the Union in June after a naval battle on the Mississippi River, which effectively resulted in the Union gaining control of West Tennessee. In an effort to disrupt Grant's campaign southward along the Mississippi River, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest launched a series of offensives into West Tennessee between December 1862 and January 1863, which resulted in Confederate victories in minor battles at Lexington and Jackson, as well as a disputed outcome at Parker's Crossroads. The raids failed to completely stop Grant's movement southward. One of the most notorious events of the war occurred in April 1864 in Lauderdale County, when Confederate troops under Forrest's command massacred hundreds of surrendering Union soldiers, most of whom were Black.
Like most of the South, West Tennessee was greatly devastated by the effects of the Civil War. After the War and during the beginning of Reconstruction, most large cotton plantations were divided into smaller farms. Most freed slaves were forced into sharecropping, and many also worked as agricultural wage laborers. The region was characterized by racial tension between former slaves and their White allies and former Confederates, which often resulted in violence and lynchings perpetrated by the latter, and continued for many decades afterwards. One of the worst acts of racial violence in the Reconstruction era occurred in Memphis in 1866, when White mobs attacked and looted Black neighborhoods in the city, killing 46.
A number of deadly epidemics swept though the region during this time, including yellow fever, which killed more than one-tenth of Memphis' residents in 1878 and caused the city to temporarily lose its charter. Many rural West Tennesseans relocated to Memphis and other cities during the latter 19th century. While the region remained predominantly rural, Memphis experienced modest industrialization, and became known as the "Cotton Capitol of the World" during the late 19th century.
20th century
As part of the first wave of the Great Migration, many African American West Tennesseans relocated to industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest for better economic opportunities and to escape increasing racial segregation imposed by Jim Crow laws passed by the state legislature.During this time, many West Tennessee residents, Black and White, also relocated from rural areas to Memphis and other cities in the state. Beginning during this time and lasting until the latter 20th century, Memphis experienced an explosive population and economic boom, whereas the population of most West Tennessee counties remained relatively stagnant or declined. Smaller cities such as Jackson and Dyersburg also experienced modest industrialization during this time.
West Tennessee was particularly devastated by the Great Depression, even by national standards. The Tennessee Valley Authority played a much lesser role in the region than in the rest of the state, but constructed Pickwick Landing Dam on the Tennessee River in Hardin County, and resulted in the electrification of many rural parts of the region. During World War II, the U.S. Army constructed an ammunition plant in Milan, which also later produced ammunition for the Korean War and Vietnam War. As part of the second wave of the Great Migration, African Americans fled West Tennessee in greater numbers than before, which further exacerbated population decline in rural counties.
In 1960, a number of African American sharecroppers in majority-Black Fayette and Haywood counties were evicted from their lands in retaliation for registering to vote. In response, they formed a makeshift encampment called Tent City with the assistance of Black landowners, which lasted until 1962. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis by James Earl Ray. King had traveled to Memphis days before to support striking African American sanitation workers. The construction of Interstate 40 through Memphis became a national talking point on the issue of eminent domain and grassroots lobbying when the Tennessee Department of Transportation attempted to construct the highway through the city's Overton Park. A local activist group began fighting the project in 1957, and in 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the group and established the framework for judicial review of government agencies in the landmark case of Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe. The group's efforts eventually resulted in TDOT cancelling the route in 1981.