TENNESSEE Statehood

UNIT 5: New Nation

Lesson: Tennessee Statehood

Tennessee State Standard:

8.28 Identify how westward expansion led to the statehood of Tennessee and the importance of the first state constitution (1796). (T.C.A. § 49-6- 1028)

TENNESSEE STATEHOOD

By 1795, the population in Tennessee was great enough for statehood. In 1796, delegates met in Knoxville at the First Tennessee Constitutional Convention. There, the delegates wrote the Tennessee State Constitution. The delegates at the Tennessee Constitutional Convention modeled the Tennessee State Constitution after the constitutions of North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Tennessee State Constitution, 1796

TENNESSEE STATE CONSTITUTION

The Tennessee State Constitution included a Preamble and 11 Articles. The Articles deal with topics such as Separation of Powers within the Tennessee Government, elections, impeachment, the Legislative Branch, Executive Branch, Judicial Branch, and State and County Officers. According to one historian, Thomas Jefferson described the Tennessee State Constitution as "the least imperfect and most republican of the state constitutions."

JOHN SEVIER BECOMES GOVERNOR OF TENNESSEE

Voters elected John Sevier as the first Tennessee Governor. He had been a governor of the failed State of Franklin. They also selected two US senators, one of the Senators was former Southwest Territory Governor, William Blount. They also selected future President Andrew Jackson as their US House Representative.

Now that they had everything in place, they applied to Congress for admission as a state. On June 1, 1796, Congress gave the approval and Tennessee entered as the 16th state of the Union.

John Sevier

Tennessee was the third state added to the US after the original 13 states, being admitted after Vermont (14) in 1791 and Kentucky (15) in 1792.

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