Nashville became the permanent capital of Tennessee on October 7, 1843, and it won by a single vote. That margin tells you everything about how contested the decision was, and about the political geography of a state that has never stopped fighting about which part of it matters most.
Tennessee’s Wandering Capital
Before Nashville was named the permanent capital, Tennessee’s seat of government moved around like a traveling circus, as one account puts it, hitting Knoxville, Kingston, and Murfreesboro at various points. Each location reflected a political compromise between the state’s three distinct regions: East Tennessee, which was Unionist and mountainous; Middle Tennessee, which was wealthier, more plantation-based, and where Nashville sat; and West Tennessee, which was overwhelmingly agricultural and tied to Mississippi River trade.
Tennessee became the sixteenth state in 1796, and from the beginning the capital question was a site of regional jockeying. Knoxville held the capital first, reflecting East Tennessee’s early political dominance. The capital shifted to Nashville temporarily in 1812 as Middle Tennessee’s population and economic power grew. Over the next decades it bounced between locations. Murfreesboro served as capital for a period. Nashville hosted it again in 1826. The state legislature was tired of moving. By the early 1840s, there was genuine pressure to settle the question permanently.
The 1843 Decision
On October 7, 1843, the Tennessee General Assembly voted to make Nashville the permanent capital. The vote was close: Nashville and Charlotte, a small community in Middle Tennessee, were the top contenders. Nashville won by one vote.
Nashville’s case rested on geography and infrastructure. It sat at the center of the state’s population and commerce. The Cumberland River connected it to the Ohio River and from there to Pittsburgh and New Orleans. It was already the largest city in Tennessee. The northern terminus of the Natchez Trace ran through it. Five railroad lines converged on it by midcentury. For a state government that needed to communicate with all three regions, Nashville’s centrality was hard to argue against.
Nashville’s political leadership also made a concrete offer that sealed the deal: the city donated the land on top of Cedar Knob, the highest hill in downtown, to the state for construction of a new capitol building. The property changed hands for $1.
The Capitol Building
The city hired Philadelphia architect William Strickland, who had also designed Nashville’s Downtown Presbyterian Church, to design the new capitol. Strickland modeled it after a Greek Ionic temple with a prominent lantern above the roofline based on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens.
Construction ran from 1845 to 1859. The labor force included fifteen enslaved Black men who worked from 1845 to 1847 excavating the cellar and hauling away debris, paid to a white stonemason named A.G. Payne at $18 a month for their labor, with none of it reaching them. Historians have called this project the most significant instance of Tennessee state government directly renting enslaved labor.
Strickland died in 1854, five years before the building was finished. He had requested to be buried inside it, and was. His tomb is in the northeast wall. His son, F.W. Strickland, supervised completion. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1971.
President James K. Polk is buried on the capitol grounds.
Why It Mattered
The decision to make Nashville the permanent capital in 1843 locked in a feedback loop of institutional growth. State government brought state employees, state contracts, and state infrastructure spending. The capitol’s location on the highest hill in downtown gave Nashville a visual anchor and an architectural standard that influenced the Greek Revival buildings that followed across the city, contributing to Nashville’s other nickname: the Athens of the South.
After the Civil War, the capital’s presence in Nashville gave the city continuity that other Southern cities lacked. While Confederate state capitals like Richmond were physically destroyed and politically neutered, Nashville’s Union occupation had kept the city’s infrastructure intact, and the capital remained in place.
In 1963, Nashville consolidated its government with Davidson County, becoming the first major American city to form a metropolitan government. The capitol has stood at the top of Capitol Hill through all of it, through battles, through political convulsions, through the building of a honky-tonk city around its foundation.
Sources
- Wikipedia: “History of Nashville, Tennessee” (en.wikipedia.org)
- Wikipedia: “Nashville, Tennessee” (en.wikipedia.org)
- Wikipedia: “Tennessee State Capitol” (en.wikipedia.org)
- Tennessee Encyclopedia: “Nashville (Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County)” (tennesseeencyclopedia.net)
- Nashville Adventures: “How Nashville Became the Capital of Tennessee” (nashvilleadventures.com)
- Stache Blog: “The History of Nashville, TN: 1779-2020” (stache.com)
- Nashville.com: “History of Nashville” (nashville.com)