The East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad (ETV&G) was a rail transport system that operated in the southeastern United States during the late 19th century.

In the mid-1830s, several businessmen, among them Knoxville physician J. G. M. Ramsey, planned and promoted a line connecting Cincinnati and Charleston (which would have passed through East Tennessee), but the Panic of 1837 doomed this initiative.

[2] In 1844, the Charleston and Hamburg extension to Dalton was completed, and Knoxville and Athens businessmen again entertained the idea of building a rail line to Georgia.

[2] The railroads in East Tennessee provided a major supply route between Virginia and the Deep South, and thus both Confederate and Union forces considered the region of vital importance.

On November 8, 1861, East Tennessee Union loyalists destroyed five railroad bridges, forcing the Confederate government to invoke martial law in the region.

In 1869, the two lines were consolidated to form the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad, with Thomas Howard Callaway as president, and McGhee and Richard T. Wilson as agents.

As a nexus between northern financiers and local interests, McGhee was able to obtain for the ETV&G large amounts of capital, and the new company rapidly expanded.

[4] By 1890, the ETV&G controlled 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of tracks, stretching as far south as Meridian, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama, westward to Memphis, and eastward to Brunswick.