Nashville, the capital of Tennessee

A legislature on the move

Before statehood, the Southwest Territory was governed from Rocky Mount, at William Cobb’s house, and from 1792 from Knoxville. Knoxville became the first state capital in 1796. In September 1807 the legislature met for a single day at Kingston, to satisfy a treaty promise made to the Cherokee, and then returned to Knoxville.

Over the next two decades the legislature moved again and again. It met in Nashville from 1812 to 1817, went briefly back to Knoxville, and in 1818 moved to Murfreesboro, chosen as the geographic center of the state, where it met in a Presbyterian church. In 1826 it returned to Nashville.

A permanent capital

The 1834 state constitution required the legislature meeting in 1843 to choose a permanent seat of government. The choice split along party lines: Whigs generally backed Nashville and Democrats generally backed Murfreesboro. The General Assembly settled on Nashville in 1843.

During the Civil War the Confederate state government fled to Memphis in February 1862, but the federally recognized government, under Military Governor Andrew Johnson and later Governor William G. Brownlow, sat in Nashville, so the capital never moved.

The Capitol

William Strickland designed the Capitol in the Greek Revival style, built of Tennessee marble on a hill originally known as Cedar Knob. The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1845, and the legislature first met in the unfinished building on October 3, 1853. Strickland died during construction in 1854 and, at his own request, was entombed in the Capitol’s walls; his son Francis and Samuel D. Morgan saw the work through to completion in 1859.

It is one of the oldest working state capitols in the country and one of a small number without a dome. President James K. Polk and his wife, Sarah Childress Polk, are buried on the grounds.

Visiting

Free guided and self-guided tours are offered on weekdays. See the Tennessee State Museum’s Capitol page for details.