Greeneville, Tenn., sits in the eastern corner of the state above Knoxville. It is a little town of about 14,000 people. The county seat of Greene County, Greeneville has the distinction of having served as the capital of the only state in the Union to be denied existence. “The Lost State of Franklin” was founded in Jonesborough in 1784, after the settlement was denied representation in the government of the state of North Carolina. North Carolina’s response was to cede the entire “overmountain” territory to the federal government, which, typically, didn’t know what to do with it.
In response, the Franklanders, as they called themselves, created their own state constitution and determined to be their own state, even after North Carolina thought better of its actions and repealed the cession act. For four years, beginning in 1785, the State of Franklin and the State of North Carolina were virtually at war with each other. But the State of Franklin eventually collapsed when Gov. John Sevier’s term of office expired and no one could be found to succeed him. The whole “overmountain” area remained a territory until the state of Tennessee was organized in 1796.
Ever since, Greeneville, like most of East Tennessee, has seemed at odds with the rest of the state. Mountainous, Republican and skeptical, it has often been left out of the state’s decision making. Statewide Republican candidates can usually be assured of carrying the region, but it has never been enough just to take East Tennessee. And, as Winfield Dunn found out when he ran against Ned McWherter for governor, folks in East Tennessee have long memories. Dunn had talked about building a state prison there back in 1970, and that memory was enough to dampen his popularity in 1986.
Greeneville has other kinds of memories too. A beautiful little community dropped in among the mountains, it doesn’t seem to have changed all that much since its frontier days. The downtown is lined with old buildings, many of them in the process of restoration under the Main Street Program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. After its short stint as capital of Franklin, Greeneville’s next brush with greatness occurred in 1827, when Andrew Johnson showed up with the intent of opening a tailor shop.
The story has it that, in order to show his skill, Johnson turned every piece of cloth in town into a suit. By 1829, tired of sewing clothes, Johnson decided to run for town alderman. He was still running 39 years later when he became the first U.S. president to be impeached. His tailor shop and home are open as museums, but a recently dedicated statue (a gift from a private donor) is tucked away from Main Street, as if inhabitants are not certain, still, what to make of the tailor-turned-president.
When the Late Unpleasantness occurred in 1861, Greenevillians still were not sure which way to turn. While Tennessee voted to leave the Union, East Tennessee wanted no part in secession. A convention in Greeneville petitioned Washington for separate statehood, but nothing came of it. Between 1861 and 1865, living in East Tennessee made for a particularly chancy existence. Guerrilla warfare abounded—you could be taken out and shot for waving a flag. It didn’t matter whether it was a Confederate banner or the U.S. flag. Either way, you were sure to rile somebody.
“Greeneville really was divided,” says Nancy McNeese, executive director of Main Street Greeneville. “If anything, I’d say it was slightly pro-Union.”
Just how slightly could be seen in September 1864, when Confederate Cavalry Gen. John Hunt Morgan occupied the town and bedded down in Greeneville’s best house. A Union cavalry unit was able to surprise him—and kill him—without a word from the townspeople, who knew the Union and Confederate units were camping within a mile of each other. No one raised a word of protest when Morgan’s body was thrown over a horse and paraded down Main Street.
Small towns like Greeneville have two choices when it comes to achieving prosperity: Either they can welcome commercial, industrial or residential development, or they can depend on less invasive means, such as tourism. Compare Greeneville and nearby Kingsport, for example. Greeneville is 150 years older than Kingsport, but it has only 14,000 residents, compared to Kingsport’s 41,000.
All along Greeneville’s main street, there are great old buildings. The problem is that many of them are vacant, awaiting someone with the imagination and the money to utilize them. But few people in Greeneville have that kind of money, so Main Street Greeneville, along with the Grand Heritage Hotel organization—the developers of a yet to be finished hotel and conference center—are actively marketing their wares. The going has been slow.
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Kingsport was founded in 1917 as Tennessee’s first “planned community”—it boasted wide, pedestrian-friendly streets and all the other comforts of modern urban life. Over the intervening years, with the exception of “Church Circle,” where five local congregations surround a cul-de-sac, Kingsport has lost most of those attributes. Busy, crowded and dirty, it is home to Eastman Kodak, which generates 39 percent of the city’s tax dollars. Last year, when Kingsport officials visited Moody’s Investor Services in New York to see about the town’s bond rating, Moody’s refused to give the town an improved Aa rating, citing Kingsport’s lack of diversity in revenue-production.
The choice of lifestyles between the two cities is stark. Anyone who wants peace of mind would move to Greeneville; anyone who wants to make a buck would go to Kingsport. And those differences have left each community with its own dilemma.
Kingsport Mayor Ruth C. Montgomery is a former state representative and state senator. Under her tenure as mayor, Kingsport has purchased nearby Bay’s Mountain and turned 3,000 acres of it into a nature preserve. The city also has several miles of riverwalks along the Holston River. But much of the rest of the city is nondescript at best.
“We run into the same problems most other towns our size have,” Montgomery says. “Too much traffic, too much sprawl. People come to town and see the Eastman plant and just shake their heads. But Eastman has been a good corporate citizen. They’ve contributed a lot to the community, particularly jobs.”
Rooms with a view
Both Greeneville and Kingsport want to take advantage of the East Tennessee mountains to attract tourists and business citizens. Like nearby Johnson City, Greeneville and Kingsport are both building convention/conference centers adjacent to hotels. Kingsport’s center, The Meadow View Conference and Convention Center, is located next door to a golf course and beside the nature preserve. The Meadow View Center will be operated by Marriott and will contain more than 35,000 square feet of exhibit space, in addition to two ballrooms, an amphitheater and a series of boardrooms equipped with computers, video equipment and all the other amenities expected by the modern corporate traveler.
Greeneville’s General Morgan Inn and Conference Center, by contrast, will contain barely 14,000 square feet, the largest portion of which will be a 7,000-square-foot rooftop terrace overlooking downtown. The conference center will be a new structure, built to match the hotel, which is being created from four interconnected railroad hotels dating from the 1800s.
The project is part of a much more ambitious plan to create a “Morgan Square” by converting old buildings and tearing down 20th-century encroachments. The Square will occupy the site of the garden where John Hunt Morgan was shot down in 1864. The home where he spent his last night is being restored after being hidden, for most of the century, by the walls of the county hospital. The money for the project was raised by a combination of federal and state grants and private monies.
Kingsport makes no secret of the kind of clients it wants to attract to its convention center—the corporate kind. Kingsport is looking for the next Eastman Kodak, the kind of corporate citizen that can transform a community.
Greeneville’s prospects are much more iffy.
“We’ll get our share of corporate people, but we’ll be much more likely to get the smaller, chamber-of-commerce type or nonprofit group,” says Jennifer Barnes, director of sales for the General Morgan Inn. “We’re not trying to compete with the huge convention centers around it. We’re selling our history and ambience.”
Tennessee has long been known as a state of great contrasts. Here, in East Tennessee, are two towns, less than an hour apart, hoping to achieve similar goals—future prosperity for their citizens—but coming out of decidedly different histories. Both conference centers are scheduled to open in 1996. As with so many other cities hoping to attract the tourism dollar, the risks and uncertainties are great. Greeneville prays that it has everything to gain; Kingsport hopes that it has nothing to lose.
