We hope you enjoyed this tour!

Congratulations! You’ve completed the Downtown Civil War tour on Nashville Sites. We hope the tour has provided you with a greater understanding of Nashville’s role in the Civil War. From a Confederate state to an occupied state to the first state readmitted to the Union, Tennessee displayed the complicated relationship of a state torn between regional and national loyalties. Nashville was the first southern city to be occupied by Union forces, and in many ways, it benefited from this occupation. As other southern cities experienced destruction through fire, evacuation, and derailment, Nashville escaped such devastation.

As a result, Nashville was perhaps best poised to follow a New South vision because it was less tied to the antebellum slave economy. The city emerged from the war with a desire to work with its northern counterparts to develop new industry, transportation, and institutions of higher education. These historical developments, from 1865-1920, are often referred to as the New South. We hope you will take our New South Nashville tour to learn more about our city in the decades following the Civil War.