Tennessee's history makes the case for D.C. statehood
As the nation celebrates its founding, Tennessee's own path to statehood underscores why Washington, DC, still deserves full representation in Congress.
When the British burned Washington, DC to the ground, Tennessee's volunteers answered the call, earning their name, and after winning the final major battle of the War of 1812, their place in history.
The Volunteer State has a lot to celebrate this week on the National Mall as America turns 250.
But they won't be the only Tennesseans in DC A few blocks away, the Tennessee National Guard has been patrolling residential neighborhoods in DC for nearly a year as part of a federal deployment, a heavy-handed exercise of federal power over a city whose 700,000 residents have not even one voting member of Congress. It is a strange way to mark 250 years of American self-rule and independence.
Tennessee didn't wait for permission to claim statehood
Tennesseans wrote the book on admitting states to the Union. Fed up with being controlled by North Carolina, Tennesseans first tried to break away by establishing a secessionist State of Franklin and then (unsuccessfully) seeking recognition from the Confederation Congress.
A decade later, without waiting for Congress, Tennessee voters approved statehood and elected, and sent to the capital, two senators and Representative Andrew Jackson. Months later, Congress was forced to give in and voted to admit Tennessee as a state. The so-called Tennessee Plan – act first and ask permission later – was successfully used by Michigan, Iowa, California, Oregon, Kansas and Alaska.
Washington, DC, followed Tennessee's playbook – and was blocked
Nearly two centuries later, DC voters took the lesson to heart, ratifying a constitution for a state they called New Columbia, and electing a shadow Senate and House delegation. Congress responded by prohibiting DC from spending money to pay its shadow delegation or lobby for statehood. None of this was ever about whether the District measured up.
Today, DC is nearly ten times bigger than Tennessee was at the time of admission, and both Tennessee and DC have larger populations today than Vermont and Wyoming.
Size, though, is not the same as say.
Representation – not population – is the real divide
Tennessee's National Guard deployment in the District is part of a larger federal task force costing $1.65 million a day, deployed over the objections of local leaders, and having no measurable impact on violent crime. Memphians know the feeling well.
But the difference – and the point – is that when Tennesseans object to what their federal government does, they have senators and representatives with ballots to cast. DC has neither. People in DC pay more in federal taxes per capita than any state, have served in every American war – they also volunteered to answer the call in the War of 1812 – but remain powerless, with real consequences. Last year, the federal government seized temporary control of the local police and barred the District from spending $1 billion in its own locally raised tax dollars.
Tennesseans have a voice in Washington – DC still does not
As America turns 250, there is a lot to celebrate in Tennessee and DC There is nothing more American than striving to live up to this country's founding promise, to form a more perfect Union. That starts by expanding the vote, at home, in the nation's capital.
But we can't do it alone. We urge you, Tennesseans, to answer the call one more time, by contacting your elected leaders and telling them to make the District the 51st state.