[17] A slave state until the American Civil War, Tennessee was politically divided, with most of its western and middle parts supporting the Confederacy, and most of the eastern region harboring pro-Union sentiment.

The state's economy is dominated by the health care, music, finance, automotive, chemical, electronics, and tourism sectors, and cattle, soybeans, poultry, corn, and cotton are its primary agricultural products.

In 1567, Spanish explorer Captain Juan Pardo and his party encountered a Native American village named "Tanasqui" in the area while traveling inland from modern-day South Carolina; however, it is unknown if this was the same settlement as Tanasi.

[31][32] The Chickasaw remained confined to West Tennessee, and the middle part of the state contained few Native Americans, although both the Cherokee and the Shawnee claimed the region as their hunting ground.

[56] Later that year, Daniel Boone, under Henderson's employment, blazed a trail from Fort Chiswell in Virginia through the Cumberland Gap, which became part of the Wilderness Road, a major thoroughfare into Tennessee and Kentucky.

[57] The Chickamauga, a Cherokee faction loyal to the British led by Dragging Canoe, opposed the settling of the Washington District and Transylvania Colony, and in 1776 attacked Fort Watauga at Sycamore Shoals.

[92] A strong abolition movement developed in East Tennessee, beginning as early as 1797, and in 1819, Elihu Embree of Jonesborough began publishing the Manumission Intelligencier (later The Emancipator), the nation's first exclusively anti-slavery newspaper.

[102] In the fall of 1861, Unionist guerrillas in East Tennessee burned bridges and attacked Confederate sympathizers, leading the Confederacy to invoke martial law in parts of the region.

A few days after the fall of Chattanooga, Confederates led by James Longstreet unsuccessfully campaigned to take control of Knoxville by attacking Union General Ambrose Burnside's Fort Sanders.

[114] On April 27, 1865, the worst maritime disaster in American history occurred when the Sultana steamboat, which was transporting freed Union prisoners, exploded in the Mississippi River north of Memphis, killing 1,168 people.

[126][127] A number of epidemics swept through Tennessee in the years after the Civil War, including cholera in 1873, which devastated the Nashville area,[128] and yellow fever in 1878, which killed more than one-tenth of Memphis's residents.

[138][139] Due to increasing racial segregation and poor standards of living, many black Tennesseans fled to industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest as part of the first wave of the Great Migration between 1915 and 1930.

[152][153] The agency quickly grew into the country's largest electric utility and initiated a period of dramatic economic growth and transformation that brought many new industries and employment opportunities to the state.

[162][163] The 1962 U.S. Supreme Court case Baker v. Carr arose out of a challenge to the longstanding rural bias of apportionment of seats in the Tennessee legislature and established the principle of "one man, one vote".

[176] On December 23, 2008, the largest industrial waste spill in United States history occurred at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant when more than 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry was accidentally released into the Emory and Clinch Rivers.

[205] The plateau's eastern edge is relatively distinct, but the western escarpment is irregular, containing several long, crooked stream valleys separated by rocky cliffs with numerous waterfalls.

[236] Middle Tennessee is home to many unusual and rare ecosystems known as cedar glades, which occur in areas with shallow limestone bedrock that is largely barren of overlying soil and contain many endemic plant species.

[237] Common mammals found throughout Tennessee include white-tailed deer, red and gray foxes, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, wild turkeys, rabbits, and squirrels.

[260] In recent years, Tennessee has been a top source of domestic migration, receiving an influx of people relocating from places such as California, the Northeast, and the Midwest due to the low cost of living and booming employment opportunities.

[268][269] The top languages spoken in Tennessee after English are Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, French, Laotian, Amharic, German, Gujarati, Japanese, Tagalog, Hindi, Russian, and Persian.

[318] Tennessee's commercial sector is dominated by a wide variety of companies, but its largest service industries include health care, transportation, music and entertainment, banking, and finance.

[332] Other major mineral products produced in Tennessee include sand, gravel, crushed stone, Portland cement, marble, sandstone, common clay, lime, and zinc.

[338] The park anchors a large tourism industry based primarily in nearby Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, which includes Dollywood, the most visited ticketed attraction in Tennessee.

[356] Tennessee has played a critical role in the development of many forms of American popular music, including blues, country, rock and roll, rockabilly, soul, bluegrass, Contemporary Christian, and gospel.

The University of Tennessee system operates four primary campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Martin, and Pulaski; a Health Sciences Center in Memphis; and an aerospace research facility in Tullahoma.

[371] The Tennessee Promise was created as part of then-governor Bill Haslam's "Drive to 55" program, which set a goal of increasing the number of college-educated residents to at least 55% of the state's population.

Following Reconstruction, Tennessee continued to have competitive party politics, but in the 1880s, the White-dominated state government passed Jim Crow laws, one of which imposed a poll tax requirement for voter registration.

In the early 1900s, the state legislature approved legislation allowing cities to adopt a commission form of government based on at-large voting as a means to limit African American political participation.

[429] During this time, Democratic presidential nominees from Southern states, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, tended to fare better in Tennessee than their Northern counterparts, especially among split-ticket voters outside the metropolitan areas.

[433] Beginning in the early 21st century, Tennessee transitioned into a solid Republican state, primarily due to rural white voters who have rejected the increasing liberalism of the Democratic Party.