This dissertation investigates the whole state of Tennessee from the beginning of the Civil War to the end of Reconstruction. The state was divided into three regions: east, middle, and west. East Tennessee was the least reliant upon slave labor, Middle Tennessee owed its prosperity to diversified agriculture based on slave labor, and West Tennessee was part of the cotton kingdom. Differing degrees into slave economy brought about differing degrees of allegiance to the Union and Confederacy: Unionist East Tennessee, divided-allegiance region of Middle Tennessee, and secessionist West Tennessee. Ironically, the first federal occupation occurred in the secessionist regions of Middle and West Tennessee, while the Unionist stronghold of East Tennessee remained under Confederate rule, resulting in a civil war within the Civil War.

Tennessee contributed the largest number of soldiers among the eleven Confederate states to the Union army, and the state's strategic importance for both armies caused the second largest number of battles fought on its soil. Tennessee was the only state that President Abraham Lincoln exempted in its entirety from his Emancipation Proclamation. The continued legality of slavery complicated the freedom of slaves and made it precarious. Black Tennesseans' determination to be free, however, countered what the exemption from the proclamation attempted to accomplish—the preservation of slavery. Enlistment in the Union army became the only path to freedom, and Tennessee had the largest percentage among the Confederate states of Afro-American men of military, age enlisted in the Union army The enlistment of Afro-Tennessean men not only helped the Union cause but prepared them to become citizens after the war.

Tennessee escaped military reconstruction, partly because of a Tennessean president, Andrew Johnson. While the influence of non-Tennesseans was small compared to other former Confederate states during Reconstruction, homegrown white radical Republicans imposed heavy-handed policy upon former secessionists. Black Tennesseans gained rights and privileges as citizens in quick succession, because of their political mobilization and radical Republicans' need for their votes. The rapid progress black Tennesseans made soon after the end of the war testifies to the preparedness of their able leaders doting slavery, but also led to the Memphis Riot and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. Reconstruction in Tennessee failed to make a democratic form of government, but paved the way for black leaders to insist upon the significance of equality as an essential component of freedom.