Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
History
Date of Award
5-2016
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Dr. Steven Nash
Committee Members
Dr. Andrew Slap, Dr. Tom Lee
Abstract
Antebellum political historians have long studied the era between Andrew Jackson’s election and the secession crisis through the colored knowledge of the Civil War. This project is an effort to reverse that trend. It explores northeast Tennessee’s political culture from the late 1830s through the start of the Civil War. It reveals that the Second American Party System, a wave of new enfranchised voters, and the area’s demographics mixed together to lay a foundation for the aggressive and populist political style that permeated the region from the 1830s through the 1850s. At the heart of these issues was the transition of power from East Tennessee to Middle Tennessee. As a way to analyze the region’s political culture, I look specifically at Democrats Andrew Johnson and Landon Carter Haynes and Whigs William Brownlow and Thomas Nelson.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Early, O.J., "“Mere Supplicants at the Gate”: Northeast Tennessee Politics in the Antebellum Era" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3023. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3023
Copyright
Copyright by the author.