Two Governors, Two Governments

Andrew Johnson's years in this building shaped how freedom came to Tennessee. As military governor he persuaded Lincoln to leave the state out of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, so slavery stayed legal in occupied Tennessee, though Johnson later backed emancipation as a war measure. Around him the statehouse turned into a strongpoint. Federal troops barracked inside and ringed the hill with a cedar log stockade and a battery of fifteen cannon, works that came to be called Fort Andrew Johnson. Graffiti left by those soldiers still marks the Capitol tower.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee State Capitol — steps away
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 0.4 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• Ryman Auditorium — 0.5 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• National Museum of African American Music — 0.6 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Tennessee State Capitol — steps away
• Morris Memorial Building — 0.2 mi
• The Nashville Slave Market — 0.2 mi
• Nashville Sit-Ins — 0.2 mi