Stateside with Rosalea: Tennessee

Tennessee is home to the largest rhinestone mine in the US—Elvis Presley’s grave. Hey, put the guns down, folks, I loved the guy. Really! I meant “closet” not “grave”—in fact, I have a snippet of one of Elvis’s outfits (supposedly), one of those that were sold as mementoes after his death. No rhinestones, just mustard-colored polyester, which doesn’t seem to fit with the image I have of him, but might be the outfit he is wearing in one of the photos near the end of this fan-created video of Memphis Tennessee.

Speaking of guns, Tennessee has just passed a law called the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act, which “asserts that if a firearm and/or ammunition is made totally within the state of Tennessee, and stamped ‘Made in Tennessee,’ then the federal government has no jurisdiction over that item in any fashion so long as it remains in state and outside of interstate commerce. All state regulations applying to the possession of firearms in Tennessee would still be applicable and must be complied with.”

The above quote is from an article on chattanoogan.com that also quotes the bill’s sponsor, TN State Senator Mae Beavis, as saying “enough is enough” when it comes to “the federal government mandating changes in order for states to receive federal funds or the federal government telling us how to regulate commerce contained completely within this state.” The interstate commerce clause in the US Constitution, she feels, is being misinterpreted by activist Justices in order to lessen states’ rights.

In a succinct post on the “In 300 Words or Less” section of the Not Tucker Carlson news “bloggregator”, rightofcourse refers to a 1942 SCOTUS decision about wheat which, rightofcourse says, “sets up the defeat of the Firearm Freedom Acts”. He or she also asks if there are any takers for secession if the FF Acts end up in the Supreme Court and it rules that guns and ammunition made and used within the boundaries of a particular state are still subject to the interstate commerce clause. Montana already has an FFA—30 other states are reported to be considering them.

Secession is no new idea for Tennessee, of course. In the late 1780s, eight former counties of North Carolina tried to form their own State of Franklin, failed, and were then used as a bargaining chip between NC and the federal government. Those eight counties became part of the new state of Tennessee when it was admitted to the Union in 1796, after a brief existence as the Southwest Territories.

And then there was the Civil War. In the Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction submitted to Congress in 1866, then-Governor Brownlow of Tennessee’s 1865 message states:

Secession is an abomination that I cannot too strongly condemn, and one that you cannot legislate against with too much severity. What has it done for our country in the space of four years? It has plunged our country into civil war, paralyzed our commerce, destroyed our agricultural pursuits, suspended the whole trade and business of our country, lessened the value of our property, destroyed many of the pursuits of life, and has involved the South in irretrievable bankruptcy and ruin.

(That last phrase, it could be argued, was just exactly the desired outcome of the Civil War for the former railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln whose Northern allies were hell-bent on making sure the transcontinental railroad would be built via a northern, not a southern route.)

Tennessee was the last border state to secede, and then only after several earlier referendums on the matter had been defeated. As with other states whose territory includes the Appalachian Mountains, there was bitter division over the issue. People scratching a living by their own hands in the mountain hollers had little sympathy for slave owners. And many belonged to religious groupings that abhorred slavery. Nonetheless, they were caught up in the war and family loyalties were often split asunder.

That wasn’t the only issue that has divided Tennesseans over the years. According to the Montgomery County Historical Society’s website there were fierce and bloody battles arising from the reluctance of some tobacco farmers to join the Dark Tobacco District Planters Association, which had been formed to do something about low prices being paid by the American Snuff Company.

The farmers who refused to join were called the “Hill Billies,” says the website, and the Association formed a group called the Possum Hunters Organization, whose purpose was to intimidate the Hill Billies. Since “possum hunting” is naturally done at night, they were also known as the Night Riders:

They numbered in the thousands; their greatest activity was in 1906-1909, farmer against farmer. Factories and barns were burned, plant beds scraped of plants, men were beaten and killed, including one father of 11 children in Henrietta. In spite of the violence, little, if anything was accomplished.

Golly, I really don’t know how I got from Elvis to such gloomy subjects, even without writing about the Trail of Tears. That name is given to the forced relocation of Cherokees from the eastern, Appalachian, edge of the state to beyond the Missouri River, which forms its western border. At least 4,000 Cherokee died on the journey.

Elvis is claimed by Cherokee as one of their own. According to this website, The King’s great-great-great-grandmother, Morning White Dove, was a full-blooded Cherokee who married a Scotch-Irish settler, William Mansell, in 1818. That was just 12 years before President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, resulting in the Trail of Tears.

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--PEACE—

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