1865 Tennessee gubernatorial election

The 1865 Tennessee gubernatorial election was held on March 4, 1865, to elect the next governor of Tennessee. Incumbent Democratic Governor Andrew Johnson was appointed by Abraham Lincoln on March 12, 1862, as a military governor after most of Tennessee had been taken back by the Unionists during the Civil War. He ran with Lincoln as Vice President in 1864. Johnson appointed Republican Edward H. East as the state's acting governor during the interim between his inauguration as Vice President of the United States on March 4, 1865, and the inauguration of the state's new governor on April 5, 1865.

Republican candidate Parson Brownlow was nominated for governor by a convention of Tennessee Unionists in January 1865. He was the only nominee. On March 4, Brownlow was elected with 99.85% of the vote. The vote met President Lincoln's "1/10th test," which recognized elections in Southern states if the total vote was at least one-tenth the total vote in the 1860 presidential election.

Tennessee would be completely brought back into the United States in 1866, without having to go through the Congressional Reconstruction.

Background
The convention of Tennessee Unionists in January 1865 also submitted state constitutional amendments outlawing slavery and repealing the Ordinance of Secession, thus making Tennessee the first of the Southern states to leave the Confederacy. The military governor, Andrew Johnson, had enacted a series of measures that essentially prevented ex-Confederates from voting.

In the general election, the state constitutional amendments outlawing slavery and repealing the Ordinance of Secession overwhelmingly passed.