The characters are reportedly based on the lives of Jason P. Chamberlain and James A. Chaffee, two inseparable friends, who settled in the California gold rush town Second Garrotte in 1852, and built a house, later referred to as Bret Harte's Cabin.
[2][3][4] Logan Scherer, writing about late-nineteenth-century literature in the Oxford American, notes that "Novels and stories about men exploring intimacy with each other abounded: [such as] Bret Harte’s 'Tennessee’s Partner' (1869).
Harte tells the story of surly frontier besties in the hushed language of inarticulate but star-crossed lovers.
Despite their disparate personalities, they share a strong friendship that did not fail even when Tennessee was responsible for his partner's bride estranging him.
In the same year the story was anthologized in London in George Augustus Sala's A 3rd Supply of Yankee Drolleries: The Most Recent Works of the Best American Humourists.