In the antebellum era, Jackson was the market city for an agricultural area based on cultivation of cotton, the major commodity crop.

Beginning in 1851, the city became a hub of railroad systems ultimately connecting to major markets in the north and south, as well as east and west.

Through the 1960s, the city was served by 15 passenger trains daily, but industry restructuring reduced such service and caused the loss of jobs.

They were pushed out by European-American settlers under various treaties with the United States, in actions authorized by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and ratified by the US Senate.

European-American settlement of Jackson began along the Forked Deer River before 1820, primarily by migrants from eastern areas of the Upper South, such as Virginia and Kentucky.

Free people of color and freedmen were not allowed to vote in the state until after passage of federal constitutional amendments following the Civil War that granted them citizenship and suffrage.

[11] This area was initially developed for agricultural purposes, especially cotton plantations for producing the chief commodity crop of the Mississippi Valley and Deep South.

Cotton plantations were dependent on the labor of Slavery in the United States/enslaved African Americans, and thousands were brought into the area as it was developed.

In 1862 Tennessee came under the control of Union forces and was occupied until General Ulysses S. Grant decided to concentrate his efforts to the South.

Between December 11, 1862, and January 1, 1863, an engagement at Jackson occurred during Confederate Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest's expedition into West Tennessee.

Forrest wanted to disrupt the rail supply line to Grant's army, which was campaigning along the route of the Mississippi Central Railroad.

If Forrest destroyed the Mobile & Ohio Railroad running south from Columbus, Kentucky through Jackson, Grant would have to curtail or halt his operations altogether.

Grant ordered a soldier concentration at Jackson under Brigadier General Jeremiah C. Sullivan and sent a cavalry force under Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll.

As Forrest continued his advance the following day, Sullivan ordered Colonel Adolph Englemann to take a small force northeast of Jackson.

At Old Salem Cemetery, acting on the defensive, Englemann's two infantry regiments repulsed a Confederate mounted attack, then withdrew a mile closer to the city.

The fight amounted to no more than a feint and show of force intended to hold Jackson's Union defenders in position, while two mounted Confederate columns destroyed railroad track to both the north and south of the town, then returned.

With the emancipation of slaves and passage of US constitutional amendments granting suffrage to African-American males, Jackson's freedmen and formerly free people of color began to participate in the political system.

But secret vigilante groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, developed chapters in Tennessee and throughout the South that intimidated and attacked freedmen in order to exercise white supremacy.

In 1886, Eliza Woods, an African-American woman, was lynched in Jackson after being accused of poisoning and killing her employer, Jessie Woolen.

[15] In 1915, Jackson was one of several cities in the state to adopt a commission form of government, changing its electoral scheme to at-large voting citywide for three designated positions: a mayor and two commissioners.

The City Charter was amended to include run-off elections within two weeks in cases of one candidate not receiving a majority of votes.

The dissolution of the former government in Jackson resulted in the need for an elected city school board, since one of the commissioners had previously managed education.

By the end of the 1960s, it sharply reduced passenger service to Jackson; there were related losses of associated industrial jobs supporting the railroads, causing economic problems in the region.

[23] On December 29, 1886, the Tennessee Midland Railway received a charter to build a railroad from Memphis to the Virginia state line.

Passengers had direct service to Memphis, Nashville, Meridian, Montgomery, Mobile, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Daytona, Miami, Centralia, Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans.

[23] From the 1930s to the 1960s, multiple regularly scheduled passenger trains of the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio and the Illinois Central made stops at Union Station.

[41] Jackson was the site of the now permanently closed International Rock-A-Billy Hall of Fame Museum, which recognized the contributions of Tennessee musicians to this genre.

In 1956, the city of Jackson purchased the Chester Street home of famed locomotive engineer, Casey Jones, to turn into a museum and tourist attraction.

[47] In addition to success in women's basketball, Union boasts NCCAA national titles in volleyball (2003), men's soccer (2004), and softball (2001, 2002, 2004, 2013).

U.S. Route 412 runs east from Lexington in Henderson County northwest to Dyersburg, Tennessee, and I-55 reaches westward to St. Louis.