Grand Divisions of Tennessee

Middle Tennessee, which includes the state's capital city of Nashville, is dominated by rolling hills and fertile stream valleys.

The plantation agricultural system associated with cotton production meant that slavery was very important to the economy of West Tennessee, where voters strongly supported secession.

In mountainous East Tennessee, where plantation agriculture was largely absent and slavery was not economically important, voters strongly opposed secession.

Although the entire state seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, East Tennessee remained an area of pro-Union sentiment and activity throughout the Civil War and afterward.

Before and during the Civil War, there was a movement in East Tennessee to counter-secede from the Confederacy and re-join the Union as the State of Nickajack, together with other Union-friendly Southern areas, such as North Alabama.

[10] Partly because of West Tennessee's history of slavery, it has had a higher concentration of African Americans in the population.

He explained the placement of the stars inside a blue circle as symbolic of "three bound together in one—an indissoluble trinity.

[15][16] The slogan was abandoned during the governorship of Winfield Dunn (who was from Memphis, but as a Republican got his strongest vote from East Tennessee), due to concerns that it might encourage sectionalism.