Andrew Jackson (b.South Carolina, 1767–1845), the 7th president, moved to Tennessee as a young man. He won renown in the War of 1812 and became the first Democratic president in 1828. Jackson's close friend and associate, James Knox Polk(b.North Carolina, 1795–1849), came to Tennessee at the age of 10. He was elected the nation's 11th president in 1844 and served one term. Andrew Johnson (b.North Carolina, 1808–75) also a Democrat, remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War and was elected vice president with Abraham Lincoln in 1864. He became president upon Lincoln's assassination in 1865 and served out his predecessor's second term. Impeached because of a dispute over Reconstruction policies and presidential power, Johnson escaped conviction by one vote in 1868. Albert Gore, Jr.(b.Washington, D.C., 1948), was elected vice president in 1992 and 1996 on the Democratic ticket with Bill Clinton; Gore, whose father was a prominent US senator from Tennessee, had previously served in the Senate as well.
Supreme Court justices from Tennessee include John Catron(b.Pennsylvania, 1786–1865), Howell Jackson (1832–95), James C. McReynolds (b.Kentucky, 1862–1946), and Edward T. Sanford (1865–1930). Tennesseans who became cabinet officials include Secretary of State Cordell Hull (1871–1955), secretaries of war John Eaton (1790–1856) and John Bell (1797–1869), Secretary of the Treasury George Campbell (b.Scotland, 1769–1848), and attorneys general Felix Grundy (b.Virginia, 1777–1840) and James C. McReynolds (1862–1946).
Other nationally prominent political figures from Tennessee are Cary Estes Kefauver (1903–63), two-term US senator who ran unsuccessfully for vice president in 1956 on the Democratic ticket; Albert Gore (1907–98), three-term member of the US Senate; and Howard Baker (b.1925), who in 1966 became the first popularly elected Republican senator in Tennessee history. Three Tennesseans have been speaker of the US House of Representatives: James K. Polk, John Bell, and Joseph W. Byrns (1869–1936). Nancy Ward (1738–1822) was an outstanding Cherokee leader, and Sue Shelton White (1887–1943) played a major role in the campaign for women's suffrage.
Tennessee history features several military leaders and combat heroes. John Sevier (b.Virginia, 1745–1815), the first governor of the state, defeated British troops at Kings Mountain in the Revolution. David "Davy" Crockett (1786–1836) was a frontiersman who fought the British with Jackson in the War of 1812. Sam Houston (b.Virginia, 1793–1863) also fought in the War of 1812 and was governor of Tennessee before migrating to Texas. Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–77) and Sam Davis (1842–63) were heroes of the Civil War. Sergeant Alvin C. York (1887–1964) won the Medal of Honor for his bravery in World War I.
Cordell Hull was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for his work on behalf of the United Nations. In 1971, Earl W. Sutherland, Jr. (b.Kansas 1915–75), a biomedical scientist at Vanderbilt University, won a Nobel Prize for his discoveries concerning the mechanisms of hormones. Outstanding educators include Philip Lindsey (1786–1855), a Presbyterian minister and first president of the University of Nashville, and Alexander Heard (b.Georgia, 1917), nationally known political scientist and chancellor of Vanderbilt University.
Famous Tennessee writers are Mary Noailles Murfree (1850– 1922), who used the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock; influential poet and critic John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974); author and critic James Agee (1909–55), posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Death in the Family; poet Randall Jarrell (1914–65), winner of two National Book Awards; and Wilma Dykeman (b.1920), novelist and historian. Peter Taylor (Trenton, Tenn., 1917–94) won a Pulitzer in 1987 for A Summons to Memphis . Sportswriter Grantland Rice (1880–1954) was born in Murfreesboro.
Tennessee has long been a center of popular music. Musician and songwriter William C. Handy (1873–1958) wrote "St Louis Blues" and "Memphis Blues," among other classics. Bessie Smith (1898?–1937) was a leading blues singer. Elvis Presley(b.Mississippi, 1935–77) fused rhythm-and-blues with country-and-western styles to become one of the most popular entertainers in US history. Other Tennessee-born singers are Dinah Shore (1917–1994), Aretha Franklin (b.1942), and Dolly Parton (b.1946). Morgan Freeman, star of movies including Driving Miss Daisy, was born in Memphis in 1937.