Tennessee Mountains Text Set Directions

DEPARTMENT OF TEACHING & LEARNING Educate · Equip · Empower 8th Grade ELA: Tennessee Mountains Text Set Directions: Read and annotate the connected texts in this packet. As you read, look for evidence of what life in East Tennessee is like. Once you have read all of the texts, complete the questions that follow in a complete paragraph, then choose one writing prompt to write a full essay. Responses should be turned into your teacher, and can be completed on paper or digitally. Text 1: Illustrated Map of Tennessee Map Highlighting East Tennessee 1 DEPARTMENT OF TEACHING & LEARNING Educate · Equip · Empower Text 2: “My Tennessee Mountain Home” by Dolly Parton Sittin' on the front porch on a summer afternoon In a straightback chair on two legs, leans against the wall Watch the kids a' playin' with June bugs on a string And chase the glowin' fireflies when evenin' shadows fall In my Tennessee mountain home Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh In my Tennessee mountain home Crickets sing in the fields near by Honeysuckle vine clings to the fence along the lane Their fragrance makes the summer wind so sweet And on a distant hilltop, an eagle spreads it's wings An' a songbird on a fence post sings a melody In my Tennessee mountain home Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh In my Tennessee mountain home Crickets sing in the fields near by Walkin' home from church on a Sunday with the one ya' love Just laughin', talkin', making future plans And when the folks ain't lookin', you might steal a kiss or two Sittin' in the porch swing, holdin' hands In my Tennessee mountain home Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh In my Tennessee mountain home Crickets sing in the fields near by Text 3: “Geology of the Great Smoky Mountains” by National Park Service Between about 310 and 245 million years ago, the eastern edge of the North American tectonic plate collided with the African tectonic plate becoming part of a "supercontinent" known as Pangaea. Continental collisions 2 DEPARTMENT OF TEACHING & LEARNING Educate · Equip · Empower take place at a rate of a few inches per year over many millions of years and are the result of continuing global-scale plate tectonics. Evidence of earlier plate tectonic geologic events are found in rocks of the Great Smoky Mountains, attesting to an incredibly long and active geologic history in this area. During one of these earlier continental collisions, tremendous pressures and heat were generated, which changed or "metamorphosed" the Smokies sedimentary rocks. For example, sandstone became recrystallized to metasandstone or quartzite, and shale became slate. The last great episode of mountain building uplifted the entire Appalachian mountain chain from Newfound-land, Canada to Alabama. These mountains probably were much higher than today, with elevations similar to today's Rockies. As the African tectonic plate gradually pushed against the edge of the North American plate, the original horizontal layers of the rocks were bent or folded and broken by faults. Huge masses of older, deeply buried rocks were pushed northwestward, up and over younger rocks along a large, nearly flat-lying thrust fault, known as the Great Smoky Fault. Following this final episode of Appalachian mountain building, the supercontinent of Pangaea broke apart, and the North American and African tectonic plates gradually moved to their present position. The new rugged highlands, the ancient ancestors of the Smokies, were subjected to intense erosion from ice, wind, and water. As mountain valleys were carved, tremendous quantities of eroded sediment were transported toward the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico by rivers and streams. Some of these sediments formed our Gulf of Mexico beaches. As the mountains were worn down, the layers of rock most resistant to erosion were left to form the highest peaks in the Smokies, such as the hard metasandstone on top of Clingmans Dome. Most of the beautiful waterfalls in the park were formed where downcutting streams encountered ledges of very resistant metasandstone that erodes more slowly than the adjacent slate or metasiltstone. Today, geologists estimate that the mountains are being eroded about two inches every thousand years. Text 4: “East Tennessee: The Switzerland of America” By Aaron Astor East Tennessee, wrote an author shortly after the end of the Civil War, had long been considered the Switzerland of America. “Its towering mountains locking up deep, rich and verdant valleys and coves, its succession of ridges and valleys, its magnificent forests, its roaring streams, the general fertility of the soil, the glory of the climate, the salubrity of the atmosphere, the sublimity, beauty and picturesqueness of the scenery, the freshness and voluptuous abundance of the country, all conspire to make it one of the most desirable spots in America.” The two regions had more in common than just natural beauty. East Tennessee was fiercely independent and often contrarian in its political currents, especially during the Civil War. When Middle and West Tennessee citizens voted on June 8, 1861 to join the Confederacy, most East Tennessee voters rejected the call. It would remain a thorn in the eyes of the Confederate republic, and an enticing and romantic rallying cry for the 3 DEPARTMENT OF TEACHING & LEARNING Educate · Equip · Empower Union—even though its complex views on race and the government would vex both contemporaries and historians for decades to come. At the center of the Tennessee state flag sit three stars, representing the three geographic sections of the state – East, Middle and West. The division is more than just a cartographic feature: each region has its own economic foundation, social makeup, political traditions and culture rooted deeply in the state’s history. The state of Tennessee was born in 1796; so too was the rivalry between East and Middle (and later West) Tennessee. East Tennesseans quickly grew frustrated as economic and political power shifted to the Nashville area. The promise of a river-born empire based in Knoxville proved fleeting as the sucks and shoals downstream along the Tennessee River, which flows through Knoxville and eventually reaches the Ohio River, prevented boats from reaching the Mississippi River for most of the year. Knoxville, it became clear, would never be an American commercial and industrial powerhouse like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati or St. Louis—though it soon became clear that Nashville, located on the more navigable Cumberland River, might one day be. Finally in the early 1850s, after decades of frustration, population loss, and threats to create a separate state of East Tennessee, the region received state support for a new railroad connecting Knoxville to Virginia and Georgia, boosting its small but growing commercial class. Few East Tennesseans, however, lived close enough to the railroad to capitalize on the growing market connections to the rest of the South. For the most part, the region remained defined by small farmers and communities, with few connections to, or sympathy with, the slaveholding economy of the Coastal and Lower South. Meanwhile, the new cotton-based Mississippi River city of Memphis had begun to siphon what little political power East Tennessee still possessed. By 1860, Middle and West Tennessee were the dominant regions in state affairs, with cotton planters and traders around Memphis allying with slave-owning cereal producers around Nashville. A robust trade in goods to the Cotton Belt of Alabama and Mississippi – and slaves, traded on the Memphis levee by future Confederates like Nathan Bedford Forrest – cemented Middle and West Tennessee to the destiny of the Lower South. Pulled in various directions, Tennessee faced the Civil War with fear and uncertainty. The state’s moment of decision came on June 8, 1861, when citizens across the Volunteer State cast their ballots in a referendum on separation from the federal government. The Middle and West Tennessee counties voted overwhelmingly to join the new Confederacy. Support for secession was almost unanimous among the white population along the Alabama border; Franklin County, today the home of the University of the South at Sewanee, even voted to secede from Tennessee and join the state of Alabama during the impatient months before Tennessee’s own secession vote. Some voters in East Tennessee supported secession too, especially those living in railroad towns like Bristol, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. But most East Tennesseans resented those wealthier secessionists and despised the dominant plantation-owners in the rest of the state. No politicians symbolized this spirit better than Senator Andrew Johnson, who refused to yield his seat in Congress after secession, and a vituperative Knoxville editor – and later governor and senator – named 4 DEPARTMENT OF TEACHING & LEARNING Educate · Equip · Empower William “Parson” Brownlow. Johnson, as defender of the class interests of the non-slaveholding masses of East Tennessee, warned that “it is not the free men of the north that [secessionists] are fearing most but the free men South.” In a letter to a former newspaper subscriber, the colorful Brownlow wrote that secession was based in “falsehood, fraud, and perjury” and affirmed, “I think it the most natural thing in the world for a nation to fight for its Government against a vile rebellion which has never yet been able to allege an excuse.” What explains East Tennessee’s persistent Unionism? The loss of political power to the rest of the state clearly grated on the region’s frustrated citizens. But more important was the relative unimportance of slavery. To be sure, nearly all white East Tennesseans supported the institution of slavery in 1860 – Parson Brownlow famously defended the peculiar institution in an 1858 debate with a Connecticut abolitionist, while Andrew Johnson owned slaves at his Greeneville home.

Load more