Unionist regions covering almost all of East Tennessee, Kentucky Pennyroyal-allied Macon County, and the five West Tennessee Highland Rim counties of Carroll, Henderson, McNairy, Hardin and Wayne[1] voted Republican – generally by landslide margins – as they saw the Democratic Party as the “war party” who had forced them into a war they did not wish to fight.

[2] Contrariwise, the rest of Middle and West Tennessee who had supported and driven the state's secession was equally fiercely Democratic as it associated the Republicans with Reconstruction.

[3] After the disfranchisement of the state's African-American population by a poll tax was largely complete in the 1890s,[4] the Democratic Party was certain of winning statewide elections if united,[5] although unlike the Deep South Republicans would almost always gain thirty to forty percent of the statewide vote from mountain and Highland Rim support.

Pollsters always conceded Tennessee to Democratic nominees Princeton University President Woodrow Wilson and governor of Indiana Thomas R.

[13] Despite the appeal of Roosevelt's lily-white policy in the many emerging sundown towns or counties of East Tennessee,[14] the “Bull Moose” candidate finished third in the state, 2.55 percentage points behind incumbent President Taft.