This article pertains to the history of Nashville, the state capital of Tennessee. What is now Nashville was the center of civilization for the Mississippian culture around 1300. In 1779, Fort Nashborough was built here in 1779 by pioneers from North Carolina. In 1784 it was incorporated as a town by the North Carolina legislature. The Southwest Territory became the state of Tennessee in 1796 and Nashville became an incorporated city in 1806. In 1843 it became the state capital of Tennessee. In the Civil War Nashville was seized by Federal troops in 1862 and became a major Union military base. Confederate General J. B. Hood was decisively defeated in the Battle of Nashville in 1864. The city became the political, transportation, business and cultural center of the Middle Tennessee region. Besides the state government, it is best known for its educational, musical and religious establishments. In 1963 Nashville and Davidson County were consolidated under a single charter and are administered by a mayor and a council.
Prehistory
The first known settlers in the area of modern Nashville were Native Americans who arrived in the region by at least 13,000 BC during the Paleoindian period of regional prehistory. For millennia the descendants of these first Tennesseans continued to live along the river terraces and uplands overlooking the Cumberland River, leaving behind a dense archaeological record spanning the Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods. The final prehistoric Native American culture to inhabit what would become Nashville was a regional manifestation of the Mississippian culture known as Middle Cumberland Mississippian, identified by archaeologists based on the specific combination of burial practices, artistic style, and ceramic styles. Recent studies suggest that Middle Cumberland Mississippian culture may be the result of interactions between local populations and outsiders from the American Bottom who moved into the western portion of the Nashville Basin around AD 1000, settling at the site of Mound Bottom. The archaeological footprint of the Middle Cumberland Mississippian culture appears throughout Nashville as the many platform mounds, extensive stone box cemeteries, palisaded villages, and small prehistoric farmsteads that have been destroyed by antiquarian scholars, relic hunters, and urban development. All archaeological evidence for Mississippian culture appears to vanish from the Nashville area by around AD 1475–1500. Archaeologists believe this regional collapse may have been the result of extreme pressures brought on by rapid population growth and dwindling resource availability following prolonged droughts leading to increased occurrences of disease, nutritional deficiencies, and warfare.
Early history
There is no reliable historical or archaeological evidence for Native American presence in the Nashville area from 1500 through the late 1600s. The region between the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers was a hunting ground for many tribes, and while the Shawnee occupied the area in the later part of the 17th century, by 1700 they were being challenged by the Cherokee and Chickasaw.
The first Europeans to enter what would become Tennessee were part of the expedition led by Hernando de Soto in the 16th century. Although the exact route of the Desoto expedition is unclear, they do not appear to have reached Middle Tennessee or the Nashville area. Instead, the earliest Europeans in what would become Nashville were French fur traders such as Martin Chartier, who established a trading post in 1689 on the Cumberland River, near the present-day site of the city.Robert Trail, "Livingston County, Kentucky: Stepping Stone to Illinois," The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 69, No. 3 (July, 1971), pp. 239-272.Chartier Family Association family tree Sherman Day, Historical Collections of the State of Pennsylvania: Containing a Copious Selection of the Most Interesting Facts, Traditions, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, Etc., Relating to Its History and Antiquities, Both General and Local, with Topographical Descriptions of Pennsylvania county and regional histories, G. W. Gorton, 1843; p. 391. Jean du Charleville (aka Charles Charleville) established a trading post in 1710 at a natural sulfur and saline spring near what is now Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. The natural salt lick attracted animals, which in turn attracted Native American hunters with whom the French could trade, and the area became known as "French Lick." This same portion of Nashville would later be known as Sulphur Spring Bottom and Sulphur Dell. In 1769, French-Canadian hunter Timothy DeMonbreun began a series of trips up the Cumberland to Nashville and built a cabin near the lick to use as a base of operations for fur trapping during his visits to the area. DeMonbreun settled in Nashville permanently in 1788, and ran a tavern and mercantile business.
Fort Nashborough
John Buchanan Sr., born in either Scotland or Ireland, migrated with his family from their home in Cumberland Co., Pennsylvania, to the Watauga Valley, Washington District of North Carolina. Afterward, they took a long horseback trek to Kentucky, left their women and traveled down to the Cumberland Settlements in late 1778, building a station on the southern side of the Cumberland River above the French Lick, on the high ground where Nashville now stands, in the early spring of 1779. His son, Major John Buchanan, known for the siege of Buchanan's Station, is considered to be one of the founders of Nashville, Tennessee.Flowering of the Cumberland, Harriette Simpson Arnow, pp. 10-1 Another settlement arrived when 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. They cleared the land and built a log stockade they called the Bluff station. Richard Henderson had planned to call the settlement Nashborough in honor of General Francis Nash, who won acclaim in the American Revolution. For a brief time, court records did use the Nashborough designation but there is no evidence that any of the settlers did. 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. They founded a new community that was then a part of the state of North Carolina. The town was officially created and named Nashville in 1784, by an act of the North Carolina legislature.
As the northern terminus of the Natchez Trace, the town quickly developed as a cotton center and river port and later as a railroad hub. It soon became the commercial center of the entire Middle Tennessee region.Creighton, Wilbur (1969). Building of Nashville. By 1800, the city had 345 residents, including 136 enslaved Blacks and 14 free Blacks.
Early statehood After the failed experiment 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 territory was admitted to the union as the state of Tennessee. Nashville at that time was still a small settlement in a vast wilderness, but its central location and status as the state capital made it the political, commercial, financial and religious center of the state.
In 1806, Nashville was chartered as a city. The city's first debt and first large-scale public works project was the building of the Nashville Water Works, centered around the reservoir located on a bluff south of the city, now known as Rolling Mill Hill. The money was loaned by Philadelphia businessmen, and part of the amount was used to purchase around 12 enslaved Black men in Virginia to work on the project. The $50,000 loan was insufficient to cover the $55,000 cost of construction, but the rising value of the slaves purchased by the city covered the difference when all but one or two were sold at the end of the project. Water from the Cumberland River is pumped by steam engine into the reservoir, which remains in use today.
Andrew Jackson In the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson, a Nashville lawyer and politician, defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and the British invasion army at the Battle of New Orleans, becoming a national hero, thanks in large part to the fighting skills of the Tennessee militia. Jackson became a western hero, and building on his militia connections,Charles Grier Sellers, Jr. "Jackson Men with Feet of Clay," American Historical Review Vol. 62, No. 3 (Apr., 1957), pp. 537–551 Jackson built a strong political base, and in 1828 Jackson was elected president.Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson (1999)
Capital of Tennessee More than 30 years after receiving its charter, Nashville 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 (for one day) and Knoxville in Eastern Tennessee, and Murfreesboro, like Nashville located in Middle Tennessee, had each served as the temporary capital.
The Tennessee State Capitol building was constructed over a period of fourteen years from 1845 to 1859.tnmuseum.org It was designed by Philadelphia architect William Strickland, who modeled it after a Greek Ionic temple. Commercial, convict, and slave labor were used in the project. Fifteen enslaved Black men worked on carving the Capitol's limestone cellar from 1845 to 1847; Nashville stonemason A.G. Payne was paid $18 a month for their labor. It is believed to be "the most significant project where the [Tennessee] state government rented slave labor." It houses the Tennessee legislature and the Governor's office.
For years Nashville was considered one of the wealthiest southern capitals and a large portion of its prominence was from the iron business. Nashville led the south for iron production.
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."Biography of Isham Green Harris Nashville was an immediate target of Union forces. The city's significance as a shipping port on the Cumberland River 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. Soon after at the end of the month, Nashville became the first state capital to fall to Union troops, under the command of Don Carlos Buell. Prior to that, Nashville was evacuated and Governor made a speech recommending the citizens burn their private property; retreating troops destroyed bridges crossing the Cumberland River. 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 Lincoln appointed future President Andrew Johnson Military Governor of Tennessee. He set up offices in the capital at Nashville. Confederate uprisings and guerrilla attacks continued sporadically in the city.
On December 2, 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee (not to be confused with the rival Union Army of the 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.