VOLUNTEER STATE

Tennessee first earned the nickname "Volunteer State" in 1812. When war broke out between the United States and Britain, 2,000 Tennesseans volunteered to fight under the command of Tennessee Militia General Andrew Jackson. Those soldiers made up the main part of Jackson's army that destroyed the British at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815.
The Battle of New Orleans
IMAGE: Library of Congress
The Battle of New Orleans was an incredible event, and it gave Tennesseans a reputation for toughness that they've never lost. "In the waning days of the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson shocked the world by leading a ragtag force of local and state militia, regular U. S. troops, free men of color, Choctaw Indians, and Baratarian pirates to a crushing victory of an invading army of proud, tested, elite British soldiers determined to seize New Orleans," is the way that a brochure for The Historic New Orleans Collection summarized it.

A generation later, the U. S. Secretary of War requested 2,800 infantrymen to fight a war against Mexico. Thirty thousand men volunteered.

Tennessee thus earned the nickname "Volunteer State"... although, to be honest, no one is absolutely certain who came up with the name and when it was first used.

An early Tennessee flag
The November 12, 1885, edition of the Knoxville Journal contained a long editorial about the origins of the phrase "Volunteer State." Here is an excerpt from it:

"Many years ago Tennessee earned the sobriquet of 'Volunteer State,' growing out of the alacrity with which her sons have enlisted in the various wars in which the country has engaged. Scores of Tennesseans figure prominently in the Indian wars in the early history of the country.. In the Mexican war regiments were formed in many instances in advance of calls and waited impatiently for their turn. Tennessee's quota was always full, and scores of men enrolled their names whose services were never called for at all. And in the late war [the Civil War] Tennessee fully maintained her reputation as the 'Volunteer State.'"

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