[5] 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.

[10] After the beginning of the Great Depression, however, for the next third of a century the Republicans would rarely contest statewide offices seriously despite continuing dominance of East Tennessee and half a dozen Unionist counties in the middle and west of the state.

[11] State GOP leader B. Carroll Reece is widely believed to have had agreements with E. H. Crump and later Frank G. Clement and Buford Ellington that Republicans would not contest offices statewide or outside their traditional pro-Union areas.

[12] The Crump machine would abruptly fall in 1948 after its leader supported Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond but his own subordinates dissented knowing that a Democratic split would hand the state to the Republicans:[13] even Crump’s long-time ally Senator Kenneth D. McKellar broke with him,[14] and a Middle Tennessee liberal, Estes Kefauver, won Tennessee's other Senate seat in 1948.

In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower, aided by acquisition of 1948 Dixiecrat votes in West Tennessee cotton counties,[22] would carry the state for the Republicans by an 0.28 percent margin.