Tennessee's 1st congressional district

Tennessee's 1st congressional district

Tennessee's 1st congressional district - since January 3, 2013.
Current Representative Phil Roe (R)
Distribution
  • % urban
  • % rural
Population (2000) 632,143
Median income 31,228
Ethnicity
Occupation
Cook PVI R+21[1]

The Tennessee 1st Congressional District is the congressional district of northeast Tennessee, including all of Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Hancock, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington counties and parts of Jefferson County and Sevier County. Cities and towns represented within the district include Blountville, Bristol, Church Hill, Elizabethton, Erwin, Greeneville, Johnson City, Jonesborough, Kingsport, Morristown, Mountain City, Newport, Pigeon Forge, Roan Mountain, Rogersville, Sneedville, Sevierville and Tusculum. The 1st District's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been held by Republicans since 1881.

The district was created in 1805 when the At-large seat was divided among multiple districts.

The district's current Congressman, Phil Roe was first elected in 2008 after defeating one-term incumbent David Davis in the Republican primary[2]

Political characteristics

The 1st has generally been a very secure voting district for the Republican Party since the American Civil War, and is one of only two ancestrally Republican districts in the state (the other being the neighboring 2nd district).

Democratic
U.S. Representatives Andrew Jackson (1796-1797, at large) and Andrew Johnson (1843-1853, 1st) represented this area and later served as President of the United States

Republicans (or their antecedents) have held the seat continuously since 1881 and for all but four years since 1859, while Democrats (or their antecedents) have held the congressional seat for all but eight years from when Andrew Jackson was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1796 (as the state's single at large representative) up to the term of Albert Galiton Watkins ending in 1859.

Andrew Johnson later ascended to the office of President of the United States.

The 1st was one of four districts in Tennessee whose congressmen did not resign when Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861. Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson was reelected as a Unionist (the name used by a coalition of Republicans, northern Democrats and anti-Confederate Southern Democrats) to the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was arrested by Confederate troops while en route to Washington, D.C. and taken to Richmond. Nelson was paroled and returned home to Jonesborough, where he kept a low profile for the length of his term.[3]

Like the rest of East Tennessee, slavery was not as common in this area as the rest of the state due to its mountain terrain, which was dominated by small farms instead of plantations.[4] The district was also the home of the first exclusively abolitionist periodicals in the nation, The Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator, founded in Jonesborough by Elihu Embree in 1819.[5]

Due to these factors, this area supported the Union over the Confederacy in the Civil War, and identified with the Republican Party after Tennessee was readmitted to the Union in 1867, electing candidates representing the Unionist Party—a merger of Republicans and pro-Union Democrats—both before and after the war. This allegiance continues to this day, with Republicans dominating every level of government. While a few Democratic pockets exist in the district's urban areas, they are not enough to sway the district.

The district typically gives its congressmen long tenures in Washington; indeed, it elected some of the few truly senior Republican congressmen from Southern districts before the 1950s. Only eight people have represented it since 1921.

List of representatives

Representative Party Years Electoral history
District created March 4, 1805
John Rhea Democratic-
Republican		 March 4, 1805 –
March 3, 1815		 Redistricted from the at-large district
Samuel Powell Democratic-
Republican		 March 4, 1815 –
March 3, 1817		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
John Rhea Democratic-
Republican		 March 4, 1817 –
March 3, 1823		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
John Blair Jacksonian
Democratic-
Republican		 March 4, 1823 –
March 3, 1825		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Jacksonian March 4, 1825 –
March 3, 1835		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
William B. Carter Anti-
Jacksonian		 March 4, 1835 –
March 3, 1837		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Whig March 4, 1837 –
March 3, 1841		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Thomas D. Arnold Whig March 4, 1841 –
March 3, 1843		 Retired
Andrew Johnson Democratic March 4, 1843 –
March 3, 1853		 Elected Governor of Tennessee
Brookins Campbell Democratic March 4, 1853 –
December 25, 1853		 Died
Vacant December 25, 1853 –
March 30, 1854		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Nathaniel G. Taylor Whig March 30, 1854 –
March 3, 1855		 Lost re-election
Albert G. Watkins Democratic March 4, 1855 –
March 3, 1859		 Redistricted from the 2nd district
Retired
Thomas A. R. Nelson Opposition March 4, 1859 –
March 3, 1861		 Re-elected in 1860, but captured en route to Congress and failed to take his seat in 1861
Civil War and Reconstruction
Nathaniel G. Taylor Unionist July 24, 1866 – March 3, 1867 Retired
Roderick R. Butler Republican March 4, 1867 –
March 3, 1875		 Lost re-election
William McFarland Democratic March 4, 1875 –
March 3, 1877		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
James H. Randolph Republican March 4, 1877 –
March 3, 1879		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Robert L. Taylor Democratic March 4, 1879 –
March 3, 1881		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Augustus H. Pettibone Republican March 4, 1881 –
March 3, 1887		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Roderick R. Butler Republican March 4, 1887 –
March 3, 1889		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Alfred A. Taylor Republican March 4, 1889 –
March 3, 1895		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
William C. Anderson Republican March 4, 1895 –
March 3, 1897		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Walter P. Brownlow Republican March 4, 1897 –
July 8, 1910		 Died
Vacant July 9, 1910 –
November 7, 1910		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Zachary D. Massey Republican November 8, 1910 –
March 3, 1911		 Retired
Sam R. Sells Republican March 4, 1911 –
March 3, 1921		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
B. Carroll Reece Republican March 4, 1921 –
March 3, 1931		 Lost renomination to Oscar Lovette
Oscar B. Lovette Republican March 4, 1931 –
March 3, 1933		 Lost renomination
B. Carroll Reece Republican March 4, 1933 –
January 3, 1947		 Retired to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee
Dayton E. Phillips Republican January 3, 1947 –
January 3, 1951		 Lost renomination
B. Carroll Reece Republican January 3, 1951 –
March 19, 1961		 Died
Vacant March 20, 1961 –
May 15, 1961		 [Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Louise Reece Republican May 16, 1961 –
January 3, 1963		 Elected to finish her husband's term
Retired
Jimmy Quillen Republican January 3, 1963 –
January 3, 1997		 Retired
William L. Jenkins Republican January 3, 1997 –
January 3, 2007		 Retired
David Davis Republican January 3, 2007 –
January 3, 2009		 Lost renomination
Phil Roe Republican January 3, 2009 –
present		 First elected in 2008

Historical district boundaries

2003 - 2013

See also

Sources

References

  1. ↑ "Partisan Voting Index Districts of the 113th Congress: 2004 & 2008" (PDF). The Cook Political Report. 2012. Retrieved 2013-01-10.
  2. ↑ "Roe defeats incumbent Davis for 1st Congressional District nomination", Johnson City Press, August 8, 2008.
  3. ↑ "A Patriot's Voice", Neal O'Steen, Tennessee Alumnus Summer 1997
  4. ↑ Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: Slavery
  5. ↑ Waymarking: First Abolition Publications

Coordinates: 36°12′45″N 82°48′00″W / 36.21250°N 82.80000°W / 36.21250; -82.80000

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