History of Nashville, Tennessee
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This article pertains to the history of Nashville, Tennessee, the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee.
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[edit] Early history
The first known settlers in the area of modern Nashville were Native Americans of the Mississippian culture, who lived in the area from about 1000 to 1400 CE. They sowed and harvested corn, made great earthen mounds, and painted richly decorated pottery. They then mysteriously disappeared. Other Native Americans, the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Shawnee, followed and used the area as a hunting ground.
[edit] First Europeans
The Spaniard Hernando DeSoto came through the area on his explorations in the 16th century but made no settlement. French fur traders were the earliest tradesmen in Middle Tennessee, establishing a trading post around 1717. The first of these fur traders to appear was a young trapper from New Orleans named Charles Charleville who, in 1714, built his post on a mound near the present site of Nashville. Extensive trade was carried on with Native American tribes frequenting the hunting ground. However, Charleville's station did not remain, and by 1740, Middle Tennessee was again without a single white resident. The establishment of this and subsequent posts by men of French descent gave the locality around Nashville the name "French Lick", by which it was known to early historians. In 1769, French-Canadian hunter Timothy Demonbreun built a cabin near a natural sulfur spring (the area would eventually be called Sulphur Dell) to use as a base of operations for fur trapping during his visits to the area.
[edit] Fort Nashborough
The first permanent community of pioneers, however, was not established until 1779. A group of about two hundred settlers, led by James Robertson, left the Watauga settlement in northwestern North Carolina, traveled overland for two months, and arrived on the banks of the Cumberland River near the center of present downtown Nashville on Christmas Day, 1779.[1] They cleared the land and built a log stockade they called Fort Nashborough in honor of General Francis Nash, who won acclaim in the American Revolution. Robertson's friend and fellow Watauga settler John Donelson, along with some 60 families, including women and children, came in 30 flatboats and several pirogues down the Tennessee River and up the Cumberland, arriving April 23, 1780.[2] They founded a new community that was then a part of the state of North Carolina. It was renamed Nashville in 1784 when it was incorporated as a town by the North Carolina legislature.
As the northern terminus of the Natchez Trace, the town developed early as a cotton center and river port and later as a railroad hub.
[edit] Andrew Jackson
After the disastrous secession of the State of Franklin, North Carolina ceded its land from the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi River to the federal government. In 1796, that area was admitted to the union as the state of Tennessee. Nashville at that time was still a tiny settlement in a vast wilderness, but soon, one of its citizens emerged as a national hero. In 1814, at the close of the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson, a Nashville lawyer and son-in-law to John Donelson, led a contingent of Tennessee militiamen in the Battle of New Orleans. The British were soundly defeated, and Jackson became a hero. A political career soon followed, and in 1829, Jackson was elected the seventh President of the United States.
[edit] Capital of Tennessee
In 1806, Nashville was chartered as a city, and it was selected as the permanent capital of Tennessee on October 7, 1843. Several towns across Tennessee were nominated; all received votes, but Nashville and Charlotte were the top contenders. Nashville won by only one vote. Previously, the cities of Kingston, Knoxville and Murfreesboro had all served as the temporary capital.
The Tennessee State Capitol building was constructed over a period of ten years from 1845 to 1855. It was designed by Philadelphia architect William Strickland, who modeled it after a Greek Ionic temple. It houses the Tennessee legislature and the governor's office.
[edit] Civil War
Tennessee was the last state to join the Confederacy on June 24, 1861, when Governor Isham G. Harris proclaimed “all connections by the State of Tennessee with the Federal Union dissolved, and that Tennessee is a free, independent government, free from all obligations to or connection with the Federal Government of the United States of America.”[3] Nashville was an immediate target of Union forces. The city's significance as a shipping port and its symbolic importance as the capital of Tennessee made it a desirable prize.
The General Assembly was in session at Nashville when Fort Donelson fell on February 16, 1862, and Federal occupation of Nashville soon followed. At the end of the month, Nashville became the first state capital to fall to the Union troops. Governor Harris issued a call for the legislature to assemble at Memphis, and the executive office was moved to that city. In the meantime President Abraham Lincoln appointed future President Andrew Johnson Military Governor of Tennessee and he set up offices in the capitol at Nashville. Confederate uprisings and guerrilla attacks continued in the city sporadically.
On December 2, 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee arrived south of the city and set up fortifications facing the Union Army. After a lengthy stand-off, the Union forces attacked on December 15, starting the Battle of Nashville. The outnumbered Confederate forces were badly defeated and retreated south to the Tennessee River. This effectively ended large-scale fighting in the Western Theater of the war.
[edit] After the Civil War
After the Civil War, Nashville quickly grew into an important trade center. Its population rose from 16,988 in 1860 to 80,865 by 1900.[4]
In 1897, Nashville hosted the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition, a World's Fair celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tennessee's entry into the Union. A replica of the Parthenon was built for the event. The Parthenon replica is now the centerpiece of Centennial Park.
An interesting sidenote occurred during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt visited Nashville and took his lodging at the Maxwell House Hotel. Joel Cheek, proprietor thereof, had served a special blend of coffee at the hotel's restaurant, and after drinking a cup of this coffee, Roosevelt proclaimed it "good to the last drop!" Cheek subsequently sold the blend to General Foods and to this day, Maxwell House coffee is enjoyed by millions.
The Great train wreck of 1918 occurred on July 9, 1918, in Nashville when an inbound local train collided with an outbound express, killing 101 people. This was one of the most deadly rail accidents in U.S. history.
Tennessee was the state that put the 19th Amendment, allowing women to vote, over the top, and the ratification struggle convulsed the city in August 1920.
On March 1, 1941, W47NV (now known as WSM-FM) began operations in Nashville, becoming the first FM radio station in the U.S.
[edit] Recent history (post-WWII)
Nashville played a prominent role in the U.S. civil rights movement. On February 13, 1960, hundreds of college students launched a sit-in campaign to desegregate lunch counters throughout the city. Although initially met with violence and arrests, the protesters were eventually successful in pressuring local businesses to end the practice of racial segregation. Many of the activists involved in the Nashville sit-ins went on to organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which emerged as one of the most influential organizations of the civil rights movement.
Nashville has had a metropolitan government of a consolidated city-county since 1963; it was the first large U.S. city to adopt this structure. Although a similar proposal had failed in 1958, Davidson County voters approved consolidation in a referendum on June 28, 1962.[5]
The Nashville Tornado of 1998 struck the downtown area on April 16, 1998, at around 3:30 pm, causing serious damage and blowing out hundreds of windows from skyscrapers, raining shattered glass on the streets and closing the business district for nearly four days. Over 300 homes were damaged, and three cranes at the then-incomplete Adelphia Coliseum were toppled. Though only one person was killed, it was one of the most serious urban tornados on record in the U.S.
As the 21st century opened, a Nashville native rose to national political prominence when Dr. Bill Frist, formerly a transplant surgeon at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, became majority leader of the U.S. Senate.
[edit] References
- ^ Albright, Edward (1909). Early History of Middle Tennessee.
- ^ Crabb, Alfred Leland (1957). Journey to Nashville: A Story of the Founding. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
- ^ Biography of Isham Green Harris
- ^ U.S. Census Bureau data for 50 largest cities, 1850 to 1990
- ^ Hawkins, Brett W. (1966). Nashville Metro: The Politics of City-County Consolidation. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
[edit] External links
- Nashville Civic Design Center
- The Plan of Nashville
- Davidson County / Nashville Historical Markers
- “Old Nashville” stories from NashvillePost.com (historical articles on business and politics in Nashville, as well as recent news involving “old Nashville” topics and institutions)
