Nickname: The Volunteer State Date Ratified: June 1, 1796 (16th) Capital: Nashville [caption id="attachment_1838" align="aligncenter" width="210" caption="Map of Tennessee"] [/caption]

• Tennessee earned its nickname during the War of 1812 when volunteers from the state fought bravely at the Battle of New Orleans.
• Tennessee was the first of the Confederate states to have its elected members readmitted to Congress (July 24, 1866). Andrew Johnson, the president at the time, was from Tennessee (conincidence?).
• The capital of Tennessee was originally Knoxville. However, the capital was moved to Kingston on September 21, 1807 for one day, to fulfill the obligations of a treaty with the Cherokee Nation. The capital was then moved back to Knoxville before it was permanently moved to Nashville in 1843.
• Andrew Johnson held every elected office at the state, local, and federal level, including president. He would also be elected to the Senate after his presidency, too.
• The only person in American history to be both general and admiral is Samuel Powhatan Carter, who was born in Elizabethton.
• The Tennessee state flag was adopted in 1905, but first raised in 1911. The 3 stars represent the different regions of Tennessee (East, Middle, and West), and the blue circle around the stars represents the unity of the regions. The blue bar on the right is purely there out because of design considerations. Colonel Leroy Reeves, the flag's designer, had this to say about the bar:

  "The final blue bar relieves the sameness of the crimson field and prevents the flag from showing too much crimson when hanging limp."

[caption id="attachment_1839" align="aligncenter" width="210" caption="Flag of Tennessee"] [/caption] Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow EiH on Twitter or you could miss out on your chance to win How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein