East Tennessee

===Antebellum period===
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a [[Cherokee treaties|series of land cessions]] were negotiated with the Cherokees as settlers pushed south of the Washington District.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.vanderbilt.edu/olli/class-materials/Spring2016CITWeek3.pdf |title=Treaties and Land Cessions Involving the Cherokee Nation |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=April 12, 2016 |publisher=Vanderbilt University |access-date=May 20, 2021}}</ref> The 1791 [[Treaty of Holston]], negotiated by William Blount, established terms of relations between the United States and the Cherokees. The [[Treaty of Tellico|First Treaty of Tellico]] established the boundaries of the Treaty of Holston, and a series of treaties over the next two decades ceded small amounts of Cherokee lands to the U.S. government. In the Calhoun Treaty of 1819, the U.S. government purchased Cherokee lands between the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. In anticipation of forced removal of the Cherokees, white settlers began moving into Cherokee lands in southeast Tennessee in the 1820s and 1830s.

East Tennessee was home to one of the nation's first [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] movements, which arose in the early 19th century. [[Quaker]]s, who had migrated to the region from Pennsylvania in the 1790s, formed the Manumission Society of Tennessee in 1814.  Notable supporters included [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]] clergyman [[Samuel Doak]], [[Tusculum College]] cofounder [[Hezekiah Balch]], and [[Maryville College]] president Isaac Anderson. In 1820, [[Elihu Embree]] established ''The Emancipator''— the nation's first exclusively abolitionist newspaper— in Jonesborough.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lamon |first=Lester C. |title=Blacks in Tennessee, 1791–1970 |url=https://archive.org/details/blacksintennesse0000lamo |url-access=registration |pages=7–9 |publisher=University of Tennessee Press |year=1980 |isbn=978-0-87049-324-9 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> After Embree's death, [[Benjamin Lundy]] established the ''Genius of Universal Emancipation'' in Greeneville in 1821 to continue Embree's work. By the 1830s, however, the region's abolitionist movement had declined in the face of fierce opposition.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Goodheart |first1=Lawrence B. |title=Tennessee's Antislavery Movement Reconsidered: The Example of Elihu Embree |journal=Tennessee Historical Quarterly |date=Fall 1982 |volume=41 |issue=3 |pages=224–238 |jstor=42626297 |publisher=Tennessee Historical Society |location=Nashville}}</ref> The geography of East Tennessee, unlike parts of Middle and West Tennessee, did not allow for large [[plantation complexes in the Southern United States|plantation complexes]], and as a result, slavery remained relatively uncommon in the region.{{sfn|Corlew|1981|p=210}}

In the 1820s, the Cherokees established a [[Cherokee Nation (1794–1907)|government modeled on the U.S. Constitution]], and located their capitol at [[New Echota]] in northern Georgia.<ref name=corn>{{cite book|last=Corn|first=James F.|date=1959|title=Red Clay and Rattlesnake Springs: A History of the Cherokee Indians of Bradley County, Tennessee|location=Marceline, Missouri|publisher=[[Walsworth Publishing Company]]|pages=67–70}}</ref> In response to restrictive laws passed by the Georgia legislature, the Cherokees in 1832 moved their capital to the [[Red Clay State Historic Park|Red Clay Council Grounds]] in what is now [[Bradley County, Tennessee|Bradley County]], a short distance north of the border with Georgia.<ref name=corn/> A total of eleven general councils were held at the site between 1832 and 1838, during which the Cherokees rejected multiple compromises to surrender their lands east of the [[Mississippi River]] and move west.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lillard|first=Roy G.|date=1980|title=Bradley County|url=https://archive.org/details/tennesseecountyh06lill|publisher=Memphis State University Press|isbn=0-87870-099-4|oclc=6934932|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> The 1835 [[Treaty of New Echota]] which was not approved by the National Council at Red Clay, stipulated that the Cherokee relocate to [[Indian Territory]] in present-day [[Oklahoma]], and provided a grace period until May 1838 for them to voluntarily migrate. In 1838 and 1839, U.S. troops [[Cherokee removal|forcibly removed]] nearly 17,000 Cherokees and about 2,000 Black people the Cherokees enslaved from their homes in southeastern Tennessee to Indian Territory. An estimated 4,000 died along the way.{{sfn|Satz|1979|p=103}} The operation was orchestrated from [[Fort Cass]] in [[Charleston, Tennessee|Charleston]], which was constructed on the site of the [[Indian agency]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mtsuhistpres.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Hiwassee-River-Heritage-Center-Phase-II-Exhibit-Final-Panels-merged-compressed.pdf|title=Fort Cass|author=<!--Not stated-->|date=2013|website=mtsuhistpress.org|publisher=[[Middle Tennessee State University]]|location=Murfreesboro, Tennessee|access-date=2020-11-07|archive-date=November 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108035059/https://www.mtsuhistpres.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Hiwassee-River-Heritage-Center-Phase-II-Exhibit-Final-Panels-merged-compressed.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> In the [[Cherokee language]], the event is called ''Nunna daul Isunyi'', meaning "the Trail Where We Cried", and it is commonly known as the [[Trail of Tears]].{{sfn|Satz|1979|p=103}}

The arrival of the railroad in the 1850s brought immediate economic benefits to East Tennessee, primarily to Chattanooga, which had been founded in 1839. Chattanooga quickly developed into a nexus between the mountain communities of Southern Appalachia and the cotton states of the Deep South, being referred to as the Gateway to the Deep South. In 1843, copper was discovered in the [[Copper Basin (Tennessee)|Copper Basin]] in the extreme southeast corner of the state, and by the 1850s, large [[copper mining in the United States|industrial-scale mining operations]] were taking place, making the Copper Basin one of the most productive copper mining districts in the nation.<ref name=waters>{{cite news|last=Waters|first=Jack|date=<!--Not given, probably 1990s-->|title=Mining the Copper Basin in Southeast Tennessee|url=http://www.telliquah.com/History2.htm|work=The Tellico Plains Mountain Press|location=Tellico Plains, Tennessee|access-date=2008-05-30}}</ref>