TTHN Ep 2 - What's In a (Nick) Name?

Why is Tennessee called the Volunteer State?

It’s one of those names everyone recognizes—but not everyone really understands. The answer isn’t just a slogan or a bit of folklore. It’s a story rooted in moments when Tennesseans stepped forward—sometimes unexpectedly—and left a lasting mark on American history.

In this episode of The Tennessee History Nerd, we trace the origins of Tennessee’s nickname and explore the events that helped define it. From early conflicts to pivotal turning points, we look at how the idea of “volunteerism” became part of the state’s identity—and why it still resonates today.

Because sometimes a nickname isn’t just a name. It’s a legacy.

So grab your favorite beverage, find a comfortable place, and let’s dig into the story behind Tennessee’s most famous title.

Sources

• Tennessee Encyclopedia — https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net
• Tennessee Blue Book
• Tennessee History for Kids — https://www.tnhistoryforkids.org
  
  

🎙️ Credits

Hosted by Big John Summers
Produced by Summers Media Enterprises

Music by Big John Summers

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If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show, share it with someone who loves history, and leave a review—it helps more folks discover the stories of the Volunteer State.

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Advertise with us!  John.summers@summersmediaenterprises.com

Check out our sister podcast Dauphin Island Diaries

Check out merchandise from The Tennessee History Nerd.   www.summersmediaenterprises.com/merch

If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show, share it with someone who loves history, and leave a review—it helps more folks discover the stories of the Volunteer State.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to The Tennessee History Nerd. This is a podcast dedicated to Tennessee's past. Every week we bring you a new story about the people, places, and events that have shaped Tennessee and made it and us who and what we are. So grab your favorite beverage, find a comfortable place, and sit back and enjoy. Do you have a nickname? Most of us do. They can be descriptive, and sometimes they're not especially complimentary. Shorty, baldy, slick, or stinky. In the military, nicknames are practically an art form. You've got skipper or chief for the commander, serge for a sergeant, but since military personnel are also often called by their last names, the nickname may be derived from those. Nick's for the last name of Nixon, Sully for Sullivan, Smitty for Smith. And they can get pretty creative. Gasser for the guy with flatulence issues, Bull for the strong aggressive guy, and so on. A lot of times they're not even repeatable in polite company, but everybody in the military picks up one sooner or later. But nicknames aren't limited to people. States have them too, official ones even, and some of them are pretty strange if you're not from there. Take Alabama, the Yellowhammer State. If you've ever heard that one, it was probably shouted at you as part of the Crimson Tides rammer jammer chant. Or Hawaii, the Aloha State. No mystery there. Just saying the name calls up flowered shirts, hula skirts, and a guy with a mustache driving around in a Ferrari. Then there's Tennessee. Most folks already know its nickname thanks to the University of Tennessee's sports teams, the Volunteers, the Lady Volunteers, or as we tend to say down south, the Vols, but not everybody knows how the state got that name. So how did Tennessee come to be known as the Volunteer State? Well, the short answer's simple. Tennesseans have always had a reputation for stepping up when called upon to defend the nation. That may not seem remarkable now in the 21st century because every branch of the military recruits nationwide. But in earlier centuries, things worked a lot differently. You see, it wasn't until the mid-20th century that the United States maintained a truly large standing military. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, for example, U.S. forces were cut back drastically. By the time peace returned, only small garrisons remained in the Philippines, Cuba, and scattered posts back home. And that cycle largely repeated itself after World War I. The armed forces again shrank to a fraction of their wartime strength. The idea of keeping a permanent, powerful army just didn't sit well with the early American mindset, and that distrust went all the way back to the Founding Fathers. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Virginia delegate George Mason warned no man has a greater regard for the military gentleman than I have. But when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty. When against a regular and disciplined army, yeomanry are the only defense, yeomanry unskillful and unarmed, what chance is there for preserving freedom? So historically, whenever the United States faced a national crisis, the government had to call for volunteers to fill the ranks. And Tennesseans were always among the first to answer. From the earliest years of statehood, they offered up their sons and later their daughters in substantial numbers. That spirit earned Tennessee its nickname back in the eighteen hundreds when it became known for responding generously to the nation's calls for troops. But when did the name really take hold? That's trickier to pin down. A lot of historians trace it to the War of 1812, so let's rewind to that moment. In eighteen twelve, the United States was still in its infancy. European empires, Britain and France especially, had centuries of history behind them. Britain ruled the seas. France, under Napoleon Bonaparte, was dominating the land war and trying to conquer anything that stood still long enough. His ambitions terrified the rest of Europe until they finally ganged up on him a few years later at a little place in Belgium called Waterloo. During those years, both Britain and France made a habit of stopping American merchant ships, kidnapping sailors, and forcing them into naval service, a practice called impressment. The U.S. at that time was tiny compared to either power, but after one too many outrages, Congress declared war on Britain in June 1812. And since we're telling Tennessee history, it's worth noting that one of the warhawks that pushed hardest for that declaration was Tennessee's own Felix Grundy. And yes, that's the same guy for whom Grundy County is named. When the call went out for troops, Tennessee's governor Wiley Blunt asked for 2,000 militia volunteers. True to form, Tennesseans responded immediately. The militia was placed under the command of Andrew Jackson, a fiery but as yet untested general from Nashville. Now, of course, while we're talking nicknames, it was during this period that Jackson's men started calling him Old Hickory, saying that he was tough as the hardwood itself. Jackson led his Tennessee troops, along with U.S. regulars and Cherokee and Lower Creek allies, against the Red Stick Creek faction in Alabama after the Fort Mims massacre. They met at Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, where Jackson's forces won a decisive victory. Among those wounded there was one of his young officers, a young man from East Tennessee who would later play a significant role in Texas history, a guy by the name of Sam Houston. Later that year, Jackson was promoted to Major General in order to defend New Orleans against a full scale British invasion. Pulling together militia from Tennessee and Kentucky, and pretty much every butcher, baker, and candlestick maker he could find, he repelled the attack on January eighth, eighteen fifteen. Ironically, the Treaty of Ghana, which had officially ended the war, had already been signed on December 24, 1814, but news of it hadn't yet crossed the Atlantic. The stunning American victory at the Battle of New Orleans made Jackson a national hero and eventually propelled him to the presidency. Many historians credit Tennessee's overwhelming volunteer response in that conflict as the true birth of the state's enduring nickname, the volunteer state. But that's only part of the story. Because about 30 years later, Tennessee would answer another call. And this time the numbers were so staggering that they'd cement the nickname forever. And that's where we pick up next as we turn to the Mexican War of 1846. So let's fast forward a few decades. After the War of 1812, the United States kept growing westward, ambitious, restless. And as that frontier moved, Tennesseans kept going right along with it. By the early 1830s, a whole wave of settlers was heading southwest into the Mexican territory that would become Texas. Many of those pioneers were from right here in Tennessee. And you could often see GTT gone to Texas, carved or chalked on the doors of empty cabins across the hills. When the settlers there declared independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836, Tennesseans were front and center again. And just a few weeks later, they made history at the Battle of San Jacinto, or as the Texans today say, San Jacinto. There the Texian forces commanded by former Tennessee governor Sam Houston, remember him from earlier, crushed the Mexican army under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana in an 18-minute fight. That victory ended the Texas Revolution and launched the Republic of Texas, though Mexico never really accepted it. When the United States recognized the new Republic in 1837, things got tense. And by 1845, when the U.S. formally annexed Texas, the tension turned into war. President James K. Polk, another Tennessean, signed the annexation order on December 29, 1845. Just a few months later, American and Mexican troops clashed near the Rio Grande. Congress declared war in 1846. Now here's the key part for our story. When the U.S. government called for 2,800 volunteers from Tennessee to fight in the Mexican War, a staggering 30,000 Tennesseans answered that call. That's more than 10 times what Washington asked for. To put that in further perspective, the entire U.S. Army at the start of the war had fewer than 5,500 regular troops. Over the course of the conflict, roughly 27,000 regulars and 73,000 volunteers served, and almost a third of those volunteers came from Tennessee. That overwhelming response, historians tell us, clinched the nickname first earned in 1812. From that point forward, no one doubted which state best represented the spirit of service and sacrifice. It was the volunteer state. But Tennessee's military legacy didn't stop there. In fact, the state's volunteer spirit would again be tested. This time it would be in a war that tore the entire country apart. When Fort Sumter fell in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called on all states to supply troops to suppress the rebellion. Tennessee's governor, Isham G. Harris, replied with a sharp refusal. Tennessee will not furnish a single man for the purpose of coercion, but fifty thousand, if necessary, for the defense of our rights and those of our Southern brothers. And he meant it. Ultimately, Tennessee supplied far more than 50,000 men. According to census data from 1861, the state's total population was just over 1.1 million, including 834,802 free citizens and 275,719 enslaved people. Out of that population, approximately 135,812 Tennesseans served in the Confederate Army. 37,869 served in the Union Army. Of those, 31,092 were white soldiers and 6,777 were black soldiers. If you're doing the math, that's nearly 174,000 total participants. That's about 16% of everyone living in the state at that time. Men, women, and children included. Now, since women weren't serving in active combat roles back then, that means that roughly one-third of the male population fought in uniform for one side or the other. That's staggering when you think about it. Of course, not all those soldiers were volunteers because both sides eventually turned to conscription when enlistments ran short. We would call it today the draft. But even with that in mind, Tennessee's numbers are astonishing. Aside from Virginia, the state supplied more troops to the Confederacy than any other, and it provided more troops to the Union Army than all other Confederate states combined. So once again, whether they wore gray or blue, Tennesseans showed the same readiness to serve. And that's why some historians argued that the nickname Volunteer State might owe as much to the Civil War as it does to 1812 or 1846. Now, before we wrap up the wartime chapters, let's take a quick detour. Because Volunteer State isn't the only nickname Tennessee's ever had. There were a few others floating around in the 1800s, and they paint a colorful picture of what life and pride looked like back then. Tennessee has carried a lot of nicknames over the years, and not all of them stuck, thankfully. One of the earliest was the Big Bend State, and that one came from the shape of the Tennessee River, which bends south into Alabama and then loops back up north into West Tennessee, forming that wide natural curve across the state. Early travelers used that landmark as a geographic marker, and that name caught on for a while. Another old favorite was the mother of southwestern statesmen. That one may sound odd today because Tennessee's not exactly the Southwest anymore. But in the early 1800s, it was. And the nickname fit. Before the Civil War, Tennessee produced an incredible roster of national leaders. Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson. Also prominent figures like Felix Grundy and Sam Houston and David Crockett. For a frontier state, that's a pretty impressive resume. A more down home label, a more down home nickname we might say, was the Hog and Hominy State. That popped up in the 1830s and 1940s because Tennessee produced so much pork and corn relative to its population. And during the Civil War, some Confederate soldiers from Tennessee wore uniforms dyed a light brownish tan color from butternut extract, which earned another nickname, the Butternut State. But none of those nicknames had the staying power that the volunteer state has. In 1902, a sports writer for the Atlanta Constitution used the term volunteers when covering a University of Tennessee football game against Georgia Tech. The Vols won, by the way, 10-6, and the name stuck. Within just a few years, local newspapers in Knoxville and across the state had picked it up, and by 1905, the Knoxville Journal and Tribune was using it regularly. For a great number of Tennesseans, and you can count me among them, there's nothing quite like a fall Saturday afternoon at Neiland Stadium, that great football cathedral on the banks of the Tennessee River in Knoxville, and the cheers of the OLS, Go Valls, Go. Isn't it ironic that it was a Georgia sports writer who nudged the tradition in that direction? But from that point forward, volunteer became both a symbol of school pride and a nod to Tennessee's longstanding legacy of service and sacrifice. And once the flagship state university adopted the moniker, all those older nicknames, Big Bend, Butternut, Hog and Hominy, those quietly faded into history. And I gotta tell you, I for one am glad that that last one didn't stick. Hog and hominy state just doesn't have the same ring to it. We'll leave the hogs to Arkansas and the corn to the Midwest states. But now you all know the story of how Tennessee earned its most enduring nickname, the volunteer state. So that answers, at least from a Tennessee perspective, the question, what's in a nickname? And tells how Tennessee became the volunteer state. Thanks for joining me today and keep your eyes open. Episode three is already out there. And speaking of which, in that next episode, we're heading into rural Warren County and looking for the Lost Resort, the Nicholson Springs Resort Hotel and Spa. Until then, I'm Big John Summers, the Tennessee History Nerd, and I am history. I want to make it a habit as I go forward with this project to acknowledge those folks whose research and documentation have made it possible to do what we do. So in putting this episode together, I leaned heavily on Tennessee Encyclopedia.net, along with the Tennessee Blue Book and resources from Tennessee History for Kids. I've noted those sources in the show notes for anyone who'd like to dig a little deeper. These stories come to us through the work of historians and educators who've helped preserve them. Really appreciate the work that they do and want to make sure that we give them the proper acknowledgement here. And as always, thanks for listening.