Tennessee's Republican governor, William Brownlow, had swiftly called a special session of the legislature in Nashville to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, only the third state to do so. Brownlow's action was met with an almost immediate reward when the grateful Republicans, with the approval of President Andrew Johnson, engineered the readmission of Tennessee to representation in the United States Congress. The state became the first former Confederate state to have its representatives sit again in Congress. (By John Osborne)
Public Laws of the United States of America. Carefully Collated with the Originals at Washington (New York, Little, Brown & Company, 1868), xiii.
"Welcome Tennessee!," Harper's Weekly Magazine, August 11, 1866, 498-499.
