* 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called " Monkey Trial " begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach evolution in any state-funded school.

State Representative John W. Butler, head of the World's Christian Fundamentals Association, lobbied state legislatures to pass anti-evolution laws, succeeding in Tennessee when the Butler Act was passed.

Third, it was argued that the terms of the Butler Act violated the Tennessee State Constitution, which provided that " It shall be the duty of the General Assembly in all future periods of this government, to cherish literature and science.

Nevertheless, having found the statute to be constitutional, the court set aside the conviction on appeal because of a legal technicality: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge, since under the state constitution, Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above $ 50, and the Butler Act specified a minimum fine of $ 100.

Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

This led to a weakening of the backlash in Texas, as well as to the repeal of the Butler Law in Tennessee in 1967.

** Tennessee Governor Ellington repeals the " Monkey Law " ( officially the Butler Act ; see the Scopes Trial ).

* March 21 – Tennessee Governor Austin Peay signs the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the state's public schools.

* Butler, Tennessee

* Butler Act, a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man's origin

Reece was born on a farm near Butler, Tennessee, one of thirteen children of John Isaac and Sarah Maples Reece.

He attended Watauga Academy in Butler, and Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee.

The Scopes Trial, which resulted from the teaching of evolution being banned in Tennessee public schools under the Butler Act, took place in Rhea County in 1925.

From Fort Butler the Cherokee were taken over the mountains on the Unicoi Turnpike to the main internment camps at Fort Cass ( today Charleston, Tennessee ).

The name of the town was changed to " Mountain City " in 1885, presumably at the urging of Roderick R. Butler ( 1827 – 1902 ), a prominent citizen and U. S. Congressman, who wanted the town's name to reflect its situation amidst one of the highest valleys in Tennessee.

Likewise, the Butler Act, which Scopes was supposed to have violated — though it was never invoked again — remained on the books until 1967, when it was repealed by the Tennessee Legislature.

John Thomas Scopes ( August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970 ) was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925 for violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tenneissee schools.

Scopes ' involvement in the so-called Monkey Trial came about after the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) announced that it would finance a test case challenging the confstitutionality of the Butler Act if they could find a Tennessee teacher willing to act as a defendant.

The Butler Act remained until 1967 when it was repealed by the Tennessee legislature.

Watauga Lake is bridged by Tennessee State Route 67 at Butler Bridge just as the watercourse enters Carter County, Tennessee.

Except for the willingness of William Jennings Bryan to be cross-examined by Clarence Darrow, Stewart's positions controlled the trial and the Scopes defense had no recourse but to ask the jury to convict the defendant so the case could be appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court ( which overturned the conviction on a legal technicality but upheld the constitutionality of the Butler Act ).

( This was years before the Tennessee Valley Authority Act brought basic utilities like electricity and running water to the region.

The decisions of the Supreme Court in cases such as Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee v. U. S. Atomic Energy Commission ( broadly reading the procedural requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act ), Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill ( broadly reading the Endangered Species Act ), and, much more recently, Massachusetts v. EPA ( requiring EPA to reconsider regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act ) have had policy impacts far beyond the facts of the particular case.

* 1983 – The U. S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee ( ultimately found to be 4. 2 million pounds ), in response to the Appalachian Observer's Freedom of Information Act request.

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union financed a test case in which John Scopes, a Tennessee high school science teacher, agreed to be tried for violating the Act.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act ( ch.

On November 27, 1821, the Alabama State legislature passed an Act that altered the boundary of Limestone County include the area east of the mouth of the Elk River with the Tennessee River.

Dyer County was founded by a Private Act of Tennessee, passed on October 16, 1823.

The county was established by an Act of the Tennessee General Assembly on October 9, 1797, from a part of Jefferson County, Tennessee.

In 1878, Benjamin " Pap " Singleton chose Dunlap as the site for his second Singleton Colony, a community of freedmen who had migrated from Tennessee, because of land available under the Homestead Act.

The new site, the county seat, bore the name Hatchie until by Act of the Tennessee State Legislature, on October 18, 1825, it was changed to Bolivar.

In 1869, Thomas Hughes, a Union-sympathizer and president of East Tennessee University, secured federal wartime restitution funding and state-designated Morrill Act funding to expand the college, which had been occupied by both armies during the war.

More splenetic was Senator Edward Carmack of Tennessee, a Parker man.

Mobile was to be the anchor of a chain of posts extending northward to the sources of the Tennessee River.

Fort Toulouse, on the Alabama River, had been erected in 1714 for trade with the Alabamas and Choctaws, but money was available for only one other new post, near the present Nashville, Tennessee, and this was soon abandoned.

Their territory lay to the north, near the sources of the Alabama, the Tombigbee, the Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers, and was easily accessible to traders among the near-by Cherokees.

In these terms, the `` economic withdrawal '' of the Negroes of Nashville, Tennessee, from trading in the center city, for example, was clearly justified, since these distinctions do not require that only people subjectively guilty be singled out.

He was permitted to call on governors of Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi for new troops, although this authority was largely stifled by politics, especially with respect to Mississippi.

Eastern Tennessee was held for the Confederacy by two unimpressive brigadier generals appointed by Jefferson Davis, Felix Zollicoffer, a brave but untrained and inexperienced officer, and soon to be Maj. Gen. George B. Crittenden, a former U. S. Army officer with apparent alcohol problems.

Fort Henry on the Tennessee River was in an especially unfavorable low – lying location commanded by hills on the Kentucky side of the river.

Among his staff was Isham G. Harris, the Governor of Tennessee, who had ceased to make any real effort to function as governor after learning that Abraham Lincoln had appointed Andrew Johnson as military governor of Tennessee.

Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend ( 1814 ), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans ( 1815 ).

He was elected as an alderman and as Mayor of Greeneville, Tennessee before being elected to the state assembly.

He was elected as Governor of Tennessee for two terms ; all these offices were gained as a member of the Democratic Party.

When Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861, Johnson was a Democratic U. S. Senator from Tennessee and was dedicated to Jacksonian Democracy, nationalism and limited government.

In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of occupied Tennessee, where he was effective in fighting and ending the rebellion ; he implemented Reconstruction policies in the state and transitioned for a time to a pro-emancipation policy.

His failure to make the National Union brand a genuine party made Johnson an independent during his presidency, though he was supported by Democrats and later rejoined the party briefly as a Democratic Senator from Tennessee in 1875 until his death that year.

Neither the Democratic or the newly formed Whig party was then well organized in that part of Tennessee.

In 1839, Johnson entered the race for re-election to his House seat, initially as a Whig ; when another Whig entry arose, to enhance his position in the campaign, he ran as a Democrat and was elected to his second, non-consecutive term in the Tennessee House.

He was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1841, where he served one two-year term.

With the party split, Whig nominee Zachary Taylor was easily victorious, and carried Tennessee as well.