TENNESSEE, FLAG OF

U.S. state flag consisting of a red field (background) with a central white-bordered blue disk bearing three white stars; at the fly end are unequal vertical stripes of white and blue. During the Civil War (186165) a motion was submitted to the legislature calling for use of the Stars and Bars as the state flag, with the substitution of the Tennessee seal for the circle of stars in the Confederate national flag, but the motion appears not to have been acted upon. The first confirmed official flag was adopted in 1897. It had diagonal stripes of red-blue-white with the yellow inscription The Volunteer State (the state nickname) and the number 16, indicating the order of admission of Tennessee to statehood. The current design, created by Captain LeRoy Reeves of the Tennessee Infantry and approved on April 17, 1905, features three stripes and three stars. These were said by Reeves to refer to the three grand divisions of the State (perhaps meaning the lowland regions in the west, the central plateaus, and the Appalachian areas), but they have also been said to represent either the three presidents who lived in Tennessee (Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Andrew Johnson) or Tennessee's joining the Union as the third state after the original 13. The colours correspond to those in the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars. Tennessee and neighbouring Arkansas are the only states to have red backgrounds for their flags. Whitney Smith History Prehistory and settlement The first inhabitants of Tennessee are believed to have been Ice Age hunters descended from Asians who crossed the former Bering Strait land bridge more than 20,000 years ago. They were succeeded by various groups, who refined hunting methods and ultimately developed a life based on agriculture. The European explorers, beginning with the Spaniard Hernando de Soto in 1540, found several groups of Indian peoples in Tennessee, the most powerful of whom were the Cherokee, who succeeded in driving the other Indians out of the state by the early part of the 18th century. The name Tennessee derives from that of the Cherokee village Tanasi. The Cherokee developed warm relations with English traders from Virginia and South Carolina and were initially their allies in the French and Indian War of the 1750s. As English traders and hunters became land-hungry settlers, the Cherokee came to see them as a threat. Thus began a long period of intermittent conflict, which ended with the final removal of the Cherokee from the state in 183839. As for the English settlers, a group in upper East Tennessee, learning that they were not under royal authority, set a precedent for self-government in the Watauga Association in 1772, the example of which was later followed by the signers of the Cumberland Compact on the site of Nashville. An important group of Tennesseans showed their support for independence during the American Revolution by contributing to the defeat of the Tories in the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina in 1780. This was one of several encounters that encouraged British leaders to withdraw their forces. At first a part of the new state of North Carolina, Tennessee made a bid for admission as the state of Franklin. Because North Carolina had rescinded its original cession of western lands, however, the Continental Congress turned down this petition for statehood. Under the new federal Constitution, the region was organized as the Territory South of the River Ohio. In 1796 Tennessee became a state, the first admitted from territorial status. The Jackson era With the coming of the War of 1812, Tennesseans played a decisive role as volunteers under the leadership of General Andrew Jackson, whose victory at New Orleans discouraged the British from renewing hostilities. While the Democrat Jackson, elected president in 1828 and 1832, became the hero of the common man, he was opposed in Tennessee, as in other parts of the country, by the growing commercial faction. His champion in the U.S. House of Representatives, Tennessean James K. Polk, was elected president in 1844 although the majority of Tennesseans, sympathetic to the commercially oriented Whig Party, voted against him.