Early history until 1818. From ''
Low's Encyclopaedia'' The first Europeans to reach what is now West Tennessee were part of an expedition led by Spanish explorer
Hernando de Soto, who in 1541 became the first Europeans to reach the Mississippi River south of present-day Memphis. In 1673, a French expedition led by missionary
Jacques Marquette and
Louis Jolliet explored the Mississippi River, becoming the first Europeans to map the Mississippi Valley. In 1682, a French expedition led by
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle constructed
Fort Prudhomme on the
Chickasaw Bluffs along the Mississippi River north of present-day Memphis. In 1739, the French constructed
Fort Assumption under the command of
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on the Mississippi River at the present-day location of Memphis, which they used as a base against the Chickasaw during the
1739 Campaign of the
Chickasaw Wars. In 1795, Spanish Governor-General of
Louisiana,
Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet, sent his lieutenant governor,
Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, to negotiate an agreement with the local Chickasaw so that a fort could be erected on the Chickasaw Bluffs in present-day Memphis.
Fort San Fernando De Las Barrancas was established in May of that year to defend Spanish claims and prevent further
westward expansion of the United States. The part of Tennessee west of the Tennessee River was first recognized as
Chickasaw territory by the 1786
Treaty of Hopewell, and continued to be after Tennessee's statehood in 1796. However, both the state's constitution and the legislative act that admitted Tennessee to the Union defined the region as part of the state. West Tennessee did not come under American control until it was obtained in a series of
cessions by the Chickasaw in 1818, an acquisition known as the
Jackson Purchase, which was negotiated by
Andrew Jackson, who later became the 7th President of the United States, and former-Kentucky governor
Isaac Shelby. This purchase also included the westernmost area of
Kentucky as well as a part of northern
Mississippi. Although the vast majority of the purchase area lies in Tennessee, the term "
Jackson Purchase" is used today mostly to refer solely to the Kentuckian portion of the acquisition. After West Tennessee was opened to European settlement in 1818,
cotton planters began exploiting the fertile soils of the region in the 1820s, and an
agrarian economy, heavily dependent on African American
slave labor took hold in the region. West Tennessee quickly became one of the most productive cotton-producing regions in the nation, along with much of the Deep South and the largest cotton-farming region in Tennessee.
Civil War and Reconstruction After the election of
Abraham Lincoln as president in
1860, most West Tennesseans favored joining the
Confederacy in order to preserve the slavery-based economy of the region. This was true throughout most of West Tennessee, with the exception of the southeastern parts of the region along the Tennessee River, where the terrains and soils did not allow for large plantations as in most of West Tennessee. As a result, most residents of this area were
Unionists. In 1860, slaves composed more than one third of West Tennessee's population, compared to about one fourth statewide. This was the highest percentage of the state's three Grand Divisions, although Middle Tennessee had more slaves. A number of crucial battles and events took place in West Tennessee during the Civil War. In February 1862, the
U.S. Navy, under the command of General
Ulysses S. Grant, captured the Tennessee River in February 1862 at the
Battle of Fort Henry near the Kentucky border. Grant then proceeded south to Pittsburg Landing, and two months later held off a Confederate counterattack, led by
Albert Sidney Johnston and
P. G. T. Beauregard at the
Battle of Shiloh, which was the bloodiest battle of the war at the time. This battle claimed the life of Johnston, and remained one of the most costly engagements of the entire war. Memphis fell to the Union in June after a
naval battle on the Mississippi River, which effectively resulted in the Union gaining control of West Tennessee. In an effort to disrupt Grant's campaign southward along the Mississippi River, Confederate General
Nathan Bedford Forrest launched
a series of offensives into West Tennessee between December 1862 and January 1863, which resulted in Confederate victories in minor battles at
Lexington and
Jackson, as well as a disputed outcome at
Parker's Crossroads. The raids failed to completely stop Grant's movement southward. One of the most notorious events of the war occurred in April 1864 in Lauderdale County, when Confederate troops under Forrest's command
massacred hundreds of surrendering Union soldiers, most of whom were Black. Like most of the South, West Tennessee was greatly devastated by the effects of the Civil War. After the War and during the beginning of
Reconstruction, most large cotton plantations were divided into smaller farms. Most freed slaves were forced into
sharecropping, and many also worked as agricultural wage laborers. The region was characterized by racial tension between former slaves and their White allies and former Confederates, which often resulted in violence and
lynchings perpetrated by the latter, and continued for many decades afterwards. One of the worst acts of racial violence in the Reconstruction era occurred in
Memphis in 1866, when White mobs attacked and looted Black neighborhoods in the city, killing 46. A number of deadly epidemics swept though the region during this time, including
yellow fever, which killed more than one-tenth of Memphis' residents in 1878 and caused the city to temporarily lose its charter. Many rural West Tennesseans relocated to Memphis and other cities during the latter 19th century. While the region remained predominantly rural, Memphis experienced modest industrialization, and became known as the "Cotton Capitol of the World" during the late 19th century.
20th century As part of the first wave of the
Great Migration, many African American West Tennesseans relocated to industrial cities in the
Northeast and
Midwest for better economic opportunities and to escape increasing racial segregation imposed by
Jim Crow laws passed by the state legislature. During this time, many West Tennessee residents, Black and White, also relocated from rural areas to Memphis and other cities in the state. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in Memphis by
James Earl Ray. King had traveled to Memphis days before to support
striking African American sanitation workers. The construction of
Interstate 40 through Memphis became a national talking point on the issue of
eminent domain and
grassroots lobbying when the
Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) attempted to construct the highway through the city's
Overton Park. A
local activist group began fighting the project in 1957, and in 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the group and established the framework for
judicial review of government agencies in the
landmark case of
Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe. The group's efforts eventually resulted in TDOT cancelling the route in 1981.
Recent history Since the 1960s, West Tennessee has seen cycles of population booms and stagnation. Agriculture has remained a central tenet of the region's economy, and despite the creation of new economic sectors and employment opportunities, the region has not overall benefitted from these changes as much as the entire state overall. ==Geography==