Kaisha Esty demonstrates that during the American Civil War, laboring African American women and girls in Union-occupied territory embarked on their own war over the use of their bodies. As fugitives, “contraband,” and refugees, displaced Black women and girls of liminal status confronted gender violence in conditions that often resembled the systemic sexual violence of slavery. As this chapter argues, central to this gender violence was the assumption that Black women were always willing to negotiate sex as part of their (nonsexual) labor. The introduction of wartime legislation protecting women from sexual assault was pivotal. In race-neutral terms, such legislation created a powerful avenue for refugee Black women and girls not only to seek sexual justice but also to challenge and redefine existing cultural and legal understandings of sexual consent. Analysis of testimonies to wartime sexual violence in Tennessee and South Carolina uncovers how formerly enslaved African American women and girls located their violation in relation to their sense of virtue, respectability, and sexual sovereignty.

With Lincoln having issued preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Unionists in Tennessee and southern Louisiana undertake to organize congressional elections so as to gain exclusion from the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Lincoln encourages southern Unionists – and provides them military assistance – in their efforts. Lincoln’s Annual Message in December 1862 puts forward compensated abolition plan, providing for abolition in the rebellious states. Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, but exclusion of Tennessee and southern Louisiana do not comport with specifications in the preliminary version. Exclusions will provide opportunity for proslavery Unionists to salvage slavery, but proclamation also raises issue of how fate of slavery will factor into restoring rebellious states to the Union.

The Federal Red River campaign of spring 1864 is a military and political disaster, casting a pall over Louisiana’s constitutional convention and the inauguration of Arkansas’s Unionist government. Federal forces ostensibly control most of Arkansas, but such control tenuous in places, and the Arkansas government encounters much resistance to its authority. The Louisiana constitutional convention crafts a free-state constitution, but conservative Unionists contest it relentlessly, and the large majority of free-state delegates oppose black political and legal equality. The organization of a free-state government and constitution in Tennessee remains on hold, although Andrew Johnson nominated as Lincoln’s running-mate in the 1864 election. Confederate atrocities against black Union troops at Poison Spring and Marks’ Mill, Arkansas, and at Fort Pillow in Tennessee underscore the determination to preserve slavery.

The Union capture of Atlanta in early September 1864 reframes the presidential election and the war. Louisiana’s free-state constitution wins voter approval and becomes operative, formally abolishing slavery in Louisiana, although military–civilian conflict continues to hamper the Unionist government. Free-state radicals and black leaders call for political and legal equality, but the Louisiana government takes no action in defining black freedom. The Arkansas Unionist government faces difficulties in asserting its authority, and it receives limited assistance from Federal military officials. In Tennessee, free-state and conservative Unionists offer competing plans for the state to conduct a presidential election, and black Tennesseans in Nashville hold their own election, but Tennessee’s electoral votes ultimately not counted. Andrew Johnson delivers “Moses of the Colored Man” speech during the campaign, affirming commitment to abolition. Republican support for the Thirteenth Amendment muted during the campaign, but Lincoln wins reelection.

The success of the Federal military campaigns at Vicksburg and Port Hudson (Louisiana) give the Union control of the entire Mississippi River and alter the course of the war. The campaigns also bring about the first substantive combat experience of black soldiers in the war. Tennessee Unionists hold a convention in July 1863 that precipitates the split between free-state and conservative Unionists. In Louisiana, conservative Unionists petition Lincoln to recognize their efforts to organize a loyal, proslavery government, but Lincoln rejects the proposal. Free-state Unionists in Louisiana also develop plans for restoring the state predicated on abolishing slavery.

The lower Mississippi valley, as a distinct geopolitical region, is representative of the antebellum South. Arkansas and Tennessee represents the upper South and Louisiana and Mississippi the lower South. The region demonstrates much geographical diversity, but the main division is between the alluvial areas, where plantation agriculture and large slaveholdings predominate, and the uplands, which feature farming and small-scale slaveholding. The 1.16 million slaves of the region constitute more than a third of the Confederacy’s slave population. The slaveholders of the antebellum South are a distinct elite, especially in the lower Mississippi valley. The slave populations of the region also engender complex communities and a vibrant cultural life. Other than the South Carolina lowcountry and the Chesapeake, the lower Mississippi valley achieves the highest stage of historical development as a slave society within the antebellum South.

Under Andrew Johnson’s policy, Mississippi begins process of Reconstruction, while governments of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana extend and solidify their authority. Freedpeople mobilize and organize to articulate and instantiate freedom, underscored by black convention in Nashville in August 1865 that calls for political and legal equality. Mississippi Reconstruction convention in August is the first such convention held by unreconstructed state under Johnson’s policy. Convention highlighted by acrimonious debate over abolition of slavery. Some delegates express view – articulated by conservative Unionists – that Emancipation Proclamation had only freed slaves but had not abolished slavery, and that Mississippi is under no obligation to abolish slavery as a condition of restoration to the Union. Mississippi abolishes slavery, but process bodes ill for Johnson’s policy.

The organization of loyal governments on a free-state basis in Tennessee and Arkansas during early 1864. Unionists in Arkansas hold a constitutional convention in January and draft a state constitution prohibiting slavery. Despite logistical challenges, constitution gains approval by voters in Union-held Arkansas in March. In Tennessee, Andrew Johnson formulates plan to hold local elections before holding a state constitutional convention. Johnson’s plan includes a loyalty oath that imposes stricter requirements for voting than Lincoln’s ten-percent plan. Local elections take place and officials began assuming office, but the unsettled military situation in the state forces postponement of the plan to hold a state constitutional convention.

Contests between free-state and conservative Unionists in Tennessee and Louisiana continue through summer 1863. Tennessee conservatives conduct a gubernatorial convention that Lincoln refuses to recognize. Despite Lincoln’s rejection, Louisiana conservatives also plan elections for the fall, while free-state Unionists – despite Lincoln’s support – encounter various challenges. Free-state Unionism arises in Arkansas after Federal capture of Little Rock in September 1863. In North, debate over Reconstruction intensifies after Federal victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and antislavery advocates warn against any reunion that does not require rebellious states to abolish slavery in state constitutions, else slavery may survive war. Northern debate over Reconstruction intersects with contest between free-state and conservative Unionists in Louisiana and Tennessee.

The secession crisis of 1860-61 in the lower Mississippi valley represents the crisis in the South as a whole. Secession is more contentious, and southern Unionism more prevalent, in Arkansas and Tennessee than in Louisiana and Mississippi. Support for secession initially corresponds to areas of plantation agriculture and large slaveholdings, but the Confederacy receives overwhelming white support after secession. Events outside the region shape the Union’s initial approach to the rebellion and to the problem of fugitive slaves, though the region also experiences internal disruptions in mobilizing for war. The lower Mississippi valley initially experiences little direct effect from the war, but control of the Mississippi River soon becomes central to Union strategy. By early 1862, preparations were underway for Federal incursions into the region. Although the issue of slavery becomes unavoidable, notions of “Reconstruction” remain limited, and few Northerners envision a reunion predicated on the abolition of slavery.

Chapter 3 offers a brief history of The Farm community in Tennessee, from the commune period (1971–1983), when it exemplified the spirit of the communal 1960s era, to this day. Using books about The Farm and materials posted on various websites, this chapter also relies on the stories shared by the study participants. It thus provides a somewhat hybrid version of The Farm’s history that enables an understanding of what it was (and is) all about from the perspective of people who were there from the very beginning. Accordingly, it facilitates an understanding of their present realities. This chapter also examines The Farm’s characteristics vis-à-vis the hippie ethics and suggests that it makes a perfect springboard for research on aging hippies.

Tennessee represents a new trend in changing judicial selection: eliminating the constraint that appointees must be recommended by a nominating commission that is the central element of the Missouri Plan. In the 1970s, the Tennessee legislature adopted a version of the Missouri Plan for the state’s appellate courts; however, the Democratic majority in the legislature quickly repealed it for the Tennessee Supreme Court. It was readopted for the Supreme Court in the early 1990s. The Missouri Plan withstood court challenges asserting that the legislature had exceeded its constitutional power by implementing that system without a constitutional amendment. However, dissatisfaction with the system continued, and the Missouri Plan started to come under attack. In 2014, the Republican-controlled legislature submitted a constitutional amendment to the voters that provided for gubernatorial appointment of any person with the legal qualifications, confirmation by the General Assembly, and retention through retention elections. The amendment was approved.

In contrast to the “strong” Lily-White states discussed in Chapter 7, Lily-White groups that took control of the Republican state organizations in Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee never entirely excluded blacks from political participation within the party. To be sure, black GOP representation was minimized by these Lily-White leaders, but they did not engage in the type of exclusion that occurred in Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, and Alabama. Why did Lily-Whiteism play out so differently in these four states? As the cases presented in this chapter show, the “soft”" version of Lily-Whiteism was mostly the product of state-specific political contexts in which white party leaders sought to win control of the party but did not believe the complete exclusion of blacks was worth pursuing. In Arkansas and Louisiana, this was because – unlike in Virginia and North Carolina – there was no real expectation that electoral success was possible even as a white-dominated party. Thus, the goal was more to control federal patronage than to expel all blacks from the party. In Florida, which Herbert Hoover carried in the 1928 presidential election, white party leaders thought that a GOP resurgence might be possible, and they saw an opportunity to take control of the party. While blacks were kept from serving as delegates at the 1932 and 1936 national conventions, strict Lily-Whiteism would not last: after Florida repealed the poll tax in 1937, black Republicans began to organize politically again. And white Republicans in the state determined that it would be easier to provide these black Republicans with a small but consistent level of representation rather than to fight them on it. Finally, in Tennessee, the Republican party organization was long split between an eastern wing and a western wing. While the locus of state GOP power lay in the east and was led by whites, a Black-and-Tan organization was in power in the west. These Black-and-Tans cooperated with local Democratic leaders and remained in place until the 1952 convention – producing a small but consistent minority of black GOP delegates.

For the first twenty-five years or so of his career, Cormac McCarthy was considered a writer of “Southern literature” by most readers. This term designates a literary genre as much as it does a region of origination. Based on paradigms established by the works of earlier Southern writers such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, among many others, certain aspects of setting, plot, and character become the expected norm for writers from the region. As is the case with these other writers, understanding the cultural realities of McCarthy’s South helps readers understand his Southern works. This chapter discusses the context of McCarthy’s Knoxville, from its Civil War history through Reconstruction to the advent of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). It considers how McCarthy’s works reflect this milieu as well as that of the greater South at large, trying to place McCarthy within the context of other Southern writers, and the cultural trends and currents which influenced their writing as well as his.

This chapter argues that McCarthy’s first four novels, which are lumped together and called his “Tennessee period,” can be characterized by an engagement with the literary attributes of allusion and allegory, particularly allegories of and allusions to hallmarks of Western culture, such as classical drama, Judeo-Christian theology, pastoral idealism, and the symbolic allegory of Romanticism. This chapter further argues that one can see an evolution in these four novels in how McCarthy invokes allegory and allusion, an evolution that progresses from a modernist stance towards industrialism to a wider questioning of the stability of cultural meaning. In the first two novels, this chapter argues, McCarthy uses allusion to signal a simpler time lost in twentieth-century American modernity. In the second two novels, McCarthy uses the literary tropes of allegory and allusion to question meaning and authority more generally, as allusions and even rituals become simulations of meaning and artifacts become empty markers of a past significance that are stripped from their cultural foundation.