 Though this movement was unsuccessful, the idea that East Tennessee should be a separate state periodically resurfaced over the subsequent two decades.From the late 1830s until the early 1850s, Tennessee was politically divided between the Democratic Party and the Whig Party, with the Whigs drawing much of their support from East Tennessee.The collapse of the Whig Party over the issue of slavery in the mid-1850s left East Tennessee's Whigs in a difficult position.