Wilma Dykeman - Tennessee

Anyone seeking an acquaintance with Tennessees past would be wise to read A Guide to the Study and Reading of Tennessee History by William T. Alderson and Robert H. White (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1959), a succinct, selective 87 pages; and Tennessee History, A Bibliography, by Sam B. Smith (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1974), clear and comprehensive in 498 pages.

Of several multivolume histories of the state, one of the best is Tennessee: A History, 16731932, by Philip M. Hamer (New York: American Historical Society, 1933). Tennessee, A Short History, by Stanley J. Folmsbee, Robert E. Corlew, and Enoch L. Mitchell (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969, 1972) is the standard one-volume authority. In 1886 and 1887, the Goodspeed Publishing Company of Nashville issued, in six volumes, A History of Tennessee from the Earliest Times to the Present. A narrative of the state from frontier days to the Civil War and of selected groups of counties appears in each volume. Although there were deviations from total accuracy, the detailed accounts were of sufficient interest to be reprinted in the early 1970s by Charles and Randy Elder of Nashville.

Among works examining Tennessees prehistory and Indian past, three indispensable volumes are Tribes That Slumber: Indians of the Tennessee Region, by Thomas M. N. Lewis and Madeline Kneberg (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1958); The Cherokee Nation of Indians, by Charles C. Royce, included in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 18831884 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1887); and James Mooneys Myths of the Cherokee, American Indian History Series (1900; reprint edition, St. Clair, Mich., Scholarly Press, 1970), part of the nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Also interesting are John R. Swantons The Indians of the Southeastern United States, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 137 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946); and John P. Browns Old Frontiers (Kingsport: Southern, 1938).

Three important early historians are John Haywood, who wrote The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee up to the First Settlements Therein by the White People, in the Year 1768 (Nashville: G. Wilson, 1823) and Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from Its Earliest Settlement up to the Year 1796 Including the Boundaries of the State, First American Frontier Series (1823; reprint edition, New York: Arno Press, 1971); James G. M. Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century, First American Frontier Series (1853; reprint edition, New York: Arno Press, 1971); and A. W. Putnam, History of Middle Tennessee: Or, Life & Times of General James Robertson, Tennesseana Editions Series (1859; reprint edition, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971).

Samuel Cole Williams, called the most productive writer of Tennessee history, elicits from fellow historians both critical dismissal and professional acceptance. Among his books that taught me much about the state are Beginnings of West Tennessee, in the Land of the Chickasaws, 15411814 (Johnson City: Watauga, 1930); Dawn of Tennessee Valley and Tennessee History, 15411776 (Johnson City: Watauga, 1937); and History of the Lost State of Franklin, revised edition, Perspectives in American History Series, No. 23 (1924, 1933; reprint edition, Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1973).

Beyond debate is the value of several books on specific topics: Kings Mountain and Its Heroes: History of the Battle of Kings Mountain October 7th, 1780, & the Events Which Led to It, by Lyman C. Draper (1881; reprint edition, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1971); William Blount, by William Masterson (1954; reprint edition, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970); From Frontier to Plantation, by Thomas P. Abernethy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1932); John Sevier: Pioneer of the Old Southwest, by Carl S. Driver (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1932); Life of Andrew Jackson, by James Parton (1860; reprint edition, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1972); and The Life of Andrew Jackson, by John Spencer Bassett (Garden City, N.Y.: 1911); The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston, by Marquis James (Dun-woody, Ga.: Norman S. Berg, Publisher, 1968); The Army of Tennessee: A Military History, by Stanley F. Horn (1953; reprint edition, Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968); Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 18601869, by James W. Patton (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, Publisher, 1934); The Womans Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, by Antoinette Elizabeth Taylor (New York: Bookman, 1957); and Tennessee: A Guide to the State, compiled by the Federal Writers Project of the WPA (New York: Viking Press, 1939)a book both general and specific.

Concerning the states division into three distinctive regions, these books are interesting: The Biography of a River Town: Memphis: Its Heroic Age, by Gerald M. Capers, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939); Old Times in West Tennessee, by Joseph S. Williams (Memphis: W. G. Gheeney, 1873); Harriette Simpson Arnows Seedtime on the Cumberland and Flowering of the Cumberland (New York: Macmillan, 1960 and 1963); The Tennessee, The Old River: Frontier to Secession, Rivers of America Series (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1946); The Chattanooga Country, 15401951, by Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood (New York: Dutton, 1952);