On this day in 1866 Tennessee was readmitted into the Union after the Civil War, a week after it ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
That secession prompted representatives of 26 counties in East Tennessee to meet in Greeneville and then again in Knoxville where they voted to secede from Tennessee and form their own, Union, state. That move was halted by a Confederate force of 4,000 men sent to the area to keep it a part of Tennessee and the Confederacy.
Tennessee had been the last state to secede and the first state to rejoin the United States.
